Grand Manan Island offers outdoor treats, even in winter

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

The island of Grand Manan has always been like a cookie jar placed high on an upper shelf -- I looked upon it from afar wishing I could get at its contents. Recently this winter, I got a chance to make my way to the island and get at those goodies.

Admittedly, I'd love to return in the spring as migratory warblers return and again in the summer when a number of whale species come back to the Bay of Fundy to feed in the rich, tidally churned waters. Regardless, I had a chance to explore Grand Manan in February, so I did.

Before my visit, I'd only seen Grand Manan from the cliffs of the Bold Coast Trail in the Cutler Public Reserved Land Unit. The island loomed steep-walled out across miles of open water. With the aid of my binoculars, I could see massive cliffs all along the western face of the long island. It looked more like a fortress than an island.

It's a long way from Kennebec County to the Downeast coast in Washington County. It's even further to Grand Manan. After crossing the border in Calais, one must travel another 45 minutes or so to Blacks Harbour, where you wait to see if you can catch the imposing Grand Manan V ferry. Thankfully, Blacks Harbour, a cozy little port dominated by a sardine cannery, makes for a decent place to wait for your lift to Manan.

While waiting for the ferry, I watched splotchy-feathered young eagles act like the teenagers they were and I got a good look at a big, pale gull (a winter gull species that leaves us to breed in the high Arctic).

The ferry ride itself must be quite pleasant on a warm summer day, though I wouldn't know. My wife and I braved the open top deck for a while, but wound up spending more time in the warm cafeteria and saloon. An hour and a half after departing, we were greeted to Grand Manan by the striking white, cone-shaped Swallowtail Light perched atop the snow clad, bare citadel of North Head.

Just before getting into our car in the belly of the ferry, I spotted a couple thick-billed murres out a window in the ferry. These topped, white bellied diving birds (who are related to puffins and razorbills) were just the type of treat I was hoping to experience on this Island in the middle of the entrance to the Bay of Fundy.

Our time on the island was wonderful, though my twisted take on wonderful may not meet everyone's standards. We stayed in a beachfront cottage with fine views of wooded islands, a quaint working seaside village, and a glittering sea.

The beach was a broad and comprised of dark grained sands. It blended into a rocky, seaweed clad point where a black scoter floated placidly.

However, we didn't exactly need our SPF sunscreen and beach towels. One moment I recall best was telling my wife to turn around so that I could snap a photo and then seeing her eyes immediately start to run like a facet as the fierce north wind ripped against her face.

Our main activity was hiking. Instead of hiking the dramatic cliff side trail running all along the unspoiled western coastline, we took a several shorter, snowy walks in a number of locations around the island. The day we had the most hiking time, it snowed a few inches and the wind howled and wined.

My impressions of Grand Manan were fairly close to what I'd expected, although I was surprised by the concentration of villages on the eastern side (the western side is all cliffs and forest).

There was the rugged beauty I'd hoped for and the communities harboring a rough total of 2,600 permanent residents still maintained a traditional character. Although I didn't spy huge numbers of wildlife or anything exceptionally unexpected, I was able to observe quite a few birds doing their thing in the icy chill of winter. What really made the trip, though, was the way the community had managed to share its story, even in the tourism off-season.

Before leaving for the trip, I'd found a rather simple yet effective web site established to provide information about Grand Manan. In my cottage, the owner had left a book with historical, ecological, and community oriented information. Even the Ferry provided a degree of story telling. A map detailing shipwrecks around the island was mounted on board the ferry; my wife counted over 80 wrecks and that was not even an exhaustive list.

As we hiked through stands of wind carved spruce and next to snow draped smokehouses, we had the story of this place in our heads. The bite of the wind and the glint of light off cliff hanging ice made me connect with the horror of those shipwrecks, which so often were on stormy winter nights. I wouldn't have had the same experience, or generated the same memories, if I didn't know that the bones of old vessels lay beneath the waters I watched low gray clouds pass over.

Maine towns, regions, and natural areas have stories that are told in a number of ways. Museums, visitor centers, books, panels, and guides artfully share who we, as Mainers, are. They share how the land shapes us and we shape the land. Still, we can all reexamine how we interpret our communities, wildlife, and lands. I think that too many visitors pass through the tollbooths in Kittery having not fully gotten a chance to understand the uniqueness of Maine.

The land, the sea, and the stories I read influence my memories of Grand Manan. Those elements are inseparable. I guess the cookies in that hard to reach jar weren't just plain old cookies. They were cookies mingling all kinds of great ingredients.

Correspondent Rex Turner, of Augusta, writes outdoors columns for the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal.