Maine Coast Philosophy

I

LET us take our location and background well east, where the fog is always ready to drift in from the sea, against the spruce trees that rise in ragged outline above the granite shore. The day has five requirements to be met and dealt with, each with its own ceremonial: food, water, wood, ice, and garbage! These are very ancient necessities, but the city, by intensive organization, has taken away from many of us the curious pleasure of dealing with them directly. The city makes us forget what our grandfathers knew; how much more diverting it can be to keep the machinery of life running than it is to provide conscious amusement for one’s self.

The camp usually starts the day with the water problem, which is wholly in the hands of a minor but capable gasolene engine; an engine of infinite personality, ready to perform its whole duty with a merry heart if, and only if, it is dealt with in a spirit of sympathy and understanding. There are, I believe, mechanical souls, born that way, to whom the care of a temperamental engine presents neither problem nor amusement; of them I speak not. This record is the record of the thoroughly non-mechanical city man, who has these things done for him at home, either by John, or by somebody who is telephoned to in the village.

But the camp has neither John, nor telephone; if we ourselves cannot make the engine run. the penalty is immediate, and the camp must go without water, at least in quantity. This bald statement of fact is not intended to be a threat, however; we can make the engine run, most of the time, and we take the special pleasure in dry cells, igniters, and gaskets that comes with the partial attainment of any unfamiliar handicraft. When the engine is running sweetly, with the proper number of explosions to the minute, we wipe our hands on our khaki trousers, with a profound sense of satisfaction and accomplishment . The morning pipe tastes best then, and there is nothing but friendly comradeship in the passing comment of the gulls watching over the pump-house cove.

The charm of getting in the ice is more obscure; it arises, I think, from determined and successful dealing with a rather unscrupulous adversary; cold, wet, slippery, and intensely heavy by nature, with no thought of meeting you halfway. What the ice would best like to do is to remain frozen in the floor of the house in the woods, where it has been spending the summer; it would also like immensely to wet you thoroughly with enormously cold water, and then slip off on your foot. But you circumvent it and defeat it at every turn. Your first weapon is a very mighty one — the crowbar. Then, the piece of ice being fairly ejected, torn loose from its stronghold by superior intelligence, aided by the mechanical principle of the lever, you turn its own natural attributes against it. It wants to slip; it shall slip, therefore, into the wheelbarrow. It is inordinately heavy, but the camp is down hill from the icehouse, so we need merely restrain it in its natural instinct to go down hill.

To get it into the ice-box requires a lift, and various fittings and chippings. We used to lift the ice against our bosom, strainingly, wetly, and coldly; we did not know any better, because we were raised in the city. Now, however, we use ice-tackle, with the mechanical aid of two double blocks, and we play again on an unsuspected weakness in ice character. Ice can never resist the driven sharp point, that is, the ice-tongs; but, the point once in, it applies all its massive, silly stubbornness against any tearing-out process which would so easily release it. And so the ‘piece’ is tonged and swung up on the block tackle, all without effort or struggle. We have learned what the country all around us always knew; we have relearned what our grandfathers knew. Not only have we got the ice in, but we have not exerted ourselves!

The infinite range and variety of things which the Maine native can cause to happen without exerting himself, is worthy a separate study. Take, for example, the setting of my mooring: a native boulder weighing some fifteen hundred pounds, which was induced to leave its chosen resting-place at the head of the cove, and moved a quarter of a mile into position. And nobody exerted himself!

The manner of it was this. On a rising tide, a stout dory was floated over the boulder, and chains, with a device to trip them, were passed under the boulder and around the comfortable waist of the dory. It was time, then, for the attendants to smoke their pipes and watch the tide rise. Two hours later, the dory, a little flushed, but triumphant, floated away with the boulder under it. In the proper part of the cove the chain was tripped and the mooring set — and nobody had exerted himself; nobody, that is, except the tide and the dory.

But we are gossiping when we ought to be at work. At this time of day, it would be better if we were to go for a row with the garbage, intending, quite frankly, to come back alone! Should this seem too definite a yielding to poor company, let us hasten to assure you that this is one of our best overtures to nature, always ready to provide amusement in these latitudes. The point of the adventure being, not the garbage, but the sea gulls, who go so far out of their way to show what basely material souls may be hidden beneath a snowy exterior.

There is only one gull about when we issue the invitation to the banquet, and that one is far overhead, aloof, and rather coldly majestic. He comes down immediately, however; finds, to his regret, that he is not as courageous in our presence as he supposed he would be; and circles away again, rather anxiously. Then there is a rush of wings as two other gulls arrive, at great speed, out of nowhere, bank against the breeze, and alight.

Our first guest rather feared that this would happen. He returns, nervously; finds a great sense of security in the society of others; and joins the party with eager haste and a certain laying aside of dignity.

Somebody has to squawk, now. I am sure it is unintentional, or at least not intended to arouse the neighbors, because there is nothing ostensibly cooperative in sea-gull nature. But somebody squawks.

And now the Folly Island squad arrives, skimming very close to the water. A gull does this when he is in a special hurry; optical illusion, perhaps, because the sense of progress, twelve inches above the water, must be tremendous.¹

Now forty gulls have accepted our invitation; now seventy; now a hundred, and it is not yet five minutes since the table, so to speak, was set. Looking at this matter purely from the gulls’ standpoint, and disregarding entirely any question of personal taste in viands, we cannot get away from the feeling that this mad competition, this dreadful urgency to arrive ahead of one’s neighbor, and the consequent necessity of bolting one’s food, mars an existence that might otherwise be almost idyllic. The gull has a singularly beautiful person; he enjoys admirable health and vigor, lives to an advanced age, and carries himself on his solitary watches with the pride and dignity of the elder Cato. How sad, therefore, that his true life, lying so near the surface, should be intensely acrimonious, bitter, and greedy.

Taste, we know, is not debatable; there are certain refinements which seem important to us and do not seem important to the gull, and that is all there is to it. But to feel obliged to bolt whole a thorny sea-perch a foot long, afterward shaking the tail convulsively, to register success and satisfaction — this does not go with the demeanor and bearing of a Cato; it makes life less worth while, somehow. A hundred gulls, living together on a reef in a state of suspended hostility, seem all to keep fit and to get plenty to eat between these mad and rather unproductive rushes after the boat that is cleaning fish, or the other sudden and unexpected banquets that get provided from time to time. It may be, then, that we are dealing merely with the pleasure of the chase, which often assumes strange forms. But if it is socially and athletically important to arrive instantly at every fish-cleaning, every garbage party, the nervous strain must indeed be great, and ever present. No wonder that dispositions get tense and crabbed and that the vocabulary of the sport is rude and hasty.

II

In discussing the camp’s food-supply, let us touch lightly on the semiweekly trip to town in the car, and the effort, on the return trip, to separate and keep separate the children, the kerosene, the leg of lamb, the sugar, and the bread. We buy meats and groceries, but the charm of the general store, down by the fish-wharf, with its tempting cod-lines, hooks, and sinkers, marine hardware, and, of course, gasolene, dry cells, and ‘Fig Newtons,’ is less than the special joys attendant upon the direct pursuit of fish and berries. These the camp provides for itself, with much organization and ritual.

Nobody wants to eat a sea-perch, for example, although he abounds in our waterways. But the cod; his red cousin the rock cod; the pollock, the haddock, and the bounder, — disgraceful in his personal tastes but objectively delicious, — all these are eagerly sought, and each is a highly specialized character, with habits and customs that may be odd, but must be respected.

Consider this matter of catching a big cod. The supper-table size is rather plentiful; but the forty-pounders require organization — something akin really to folk-lore. The local marine characters, and their fathers and grandfathers before them, take and have taken the same ‘ranges’ to get the big fellows. You get the spindle in line with Schoodic Point; then you bisect with a line from the church-steeple to the outer corner of the Ducks. At the intersection is a famous feeding ground — or a sanitarium, perhaps — for stout, elderly cod. To induce them on board the launch is no matter of dainty casts, light rods, and carefully selected flies. The elderly cod are seventy-five feet or so below the surface, and have made all their arrangements to stay there. Two enormous hooks, clam-baited and attached to a sort of clothes-line, weighted down with a couple of pounds of lead, constitute an almost undeclinable invitation, however.

The big cod takes your bait in a leisurely way; he does not hurry, nor does he want to be hurried, and landing him is something like frisking a trunk out of the hold of a steamer. But the thrill is there! Your passenger, as he approaches the surface of the water, is enormous, — unbelievably enormous; and your personal satisfaction goes back, no doubt, to old barbarous beginnings. This thing is huge; it did not want to be caught, and you have caught it and intend to eat it — or a pound or two of it! Do not inquire whether the point of view is so particularly different from that of the sea gull triumphantly bolting a perch two sizes too big for the obvious limitations of comfort and digestion. Perhaps the strong sea air makes us alike barbaric; we do not know, nor do we care; we have caught a big cod, and would very likely swallow it whole, if our mouths were not so absurdly small.

For a touch of sporting gayety, the plunging, rearing, dashing kind of fish, either the pollock or the haddock, will satisfy. The pollock is a silvery, lavender-shaded fish, built along speed lines. The haddock is much the same shape, but has decorated himself in a grotesque, court-beauty manner: a ‘stream line’ on each side, and one great foolish spot of purple, quite unconnected with the general design, but very fetching, nevertheless. Either of these fast-moving gentlemen knows how to impersonate a salmon; and if you get two at once, as you often do,— one on each hook, and splitting tacks on the way up, — you have no doubt that you have caught something. The cod rests ponderously on or near the bottom; the pollock and the haddock are always going somewhere, or coming from somewhere, in a great hurry, and half-way to the surface.

I am a little ashamed to talk about flounder-fishing, but let us be frank with each other. The way to catch flounder, breakfast size, is to have a flounder garden to catch them out of; the way to plant a flounder garden is always to clean your fish off the float. But let us not examine this subject further. You do not wonder what the flounder finds to eat one half as dainty as he is himself; you know what he finds to eat, because you put it there for him. Although we have had more personal experience with the care and feeding of flounders than with the care and feeding of pigs, our country background prompts the impression that we admire bacon in spite of, rather than because of, the varied and somewhat hasty diet of the pig.

III

There is so much to Maine coast deepsea fishing, besides the culinary and sporting aspects, however, that we must not dwell too long on these. The foundation of it all is the launch; and the foundation of launch navigation is dry cells and gasolene, those prime staples of marine life east of Rockland. We speak not of mahogany speedabouts: we mean the native launch — one cylinder, make-and-break; and you mix your lubricating oil with your gasolene in the tank forward. We do not operate with a captain; why should we delegate to another the thrilling satisfaction of training that onecylinder engine to heel; of making it go when you want to, and of diagnosing and remedying its absurd complaints? Enslaved, illogical, elate, we greet the embarrassed marine gods. Much of navigating, much of marine engineering, we do wrong; but we have left untouched all the principal reefs, and, as we write, we are safely at home, after dealing with fog, smoky southwesters, and carbon on the igniter. Gaudeamus, igitur, juvenes dum sumus!

The best time of day on the Maine coast, is early in the morning. It is also by far the most fashionable time of day to begin launch operations. Lie at anchor in Burnt Coat Harbor, and note the time of day when the line fishermen get under way for their day’s work. About dawn the put-put-putter out of the harbor begins. Some of the boats syncopate, while cold in the morning. Others are loud, clear, and amazingly punctual in their explosions. One we named the Peter Piper, because it dealt so accurately with the line about the peck of pickled peppers.

Dawn is too early for us, however; but about seven o’clock the sea air is wonderfuly fragrant; the early morning mists are rising, and the gray, unpainted wharf, with the gray, unpainted sheds on it and around it, and the quick, stirring boat-life all about, is a charming thing. In common with the camp dog, we like the smell of the Maine coast as well as anything else about it, and it is at its very best in these early hours.

Nor is the enjoyment lessened by the thrilling fact t hat we may have a little fog navigating to do. Our compass is of the best; but a launch is a very receptacle of iron, in all shapes and forms, from the engine to the anchor, and launcn compasses are given to listening to strange voices of attraction. Do not suppose, therefore, that you can parallel-rule your course on the chart and steer it by compass; you will get somewhere, no doubt, but your landfalls will be a bit sketchy. Open-andshut, or glimpse, navigating in the fog, is easy, safe, and thrilling, however. You know pretty well the direction from your own harbor to Moose Island, and so you set for Moose, observing what course the compass pleases to call it with the anchor where it is. That course you hold, through the fog, and fetch Moose Island squarely. Then you get an approximate bearing; edge in to the shore, and eventually pick up Goose Cove Rock, identifying it readily by its scaffolding for tarring weir-nets. And so on, down the coast, proceeding from the known to the unknown, and anchoring in cases of extreme doubt. If you have judged your day shrewdly, the sun has burned the fog off before you get to the fishingground; meanwhile, the only traffic to look out for are the lobstermen, examining their traps and picking them up out of the murk, one after the other, with an unerring, compassless certainty which suggests the carrier pigeon.

A lobster, gridiron-cooked on a rocky island over a driftwood fire, is one of the very good things of this coast; but the lobsterman does other things, too, for your pleasure. During the fall and winter he digs and ‘shucks’ enormous quantities of clams beside his little workshop on a sheltered, diminutive cove. The piles of shells furnish a marvelous fertilizer, and wild raspberries, of great size and lusciousness, grow in profusion beside the shells. The pursuit of berries sounds a bit maiden-auntly for a camping party; but set out some early morning in the launch, with the lobster workshop coves and the shell-piles as your objective, and you will spend your time with much satisfaction.

Among the daily camp responsibilities, we have not spoken, nor do we intend to speak, of ‘wooding,’ except to observe that it is one of the best of sports for a week-end, and easily the worst for a month. Driftwood plays a fascinating part, while it lasts; but the chopping and bucksawing of trees, afterward splitting the billets to stove size, is one of those clinging, obdurate jobs, which eventually embitters the soul.

There is another reason, too, for buying wood. This country of the east Maine coast abounds in shy, friendly characters, who make gently helpful suggestions, and are most efficient in meeting your wants, if you will let them. What else they find to live on is a study in itself. One charming neighbor of ours ‘lobsters’ for a living. He is in the sixties, wears spectacles, smokes a pipe, and presents an altogether serene picture of contentment and human satisfaction. Unmarried, he has a bit of a farm, but it is doubtful if he sells any produce from it. He rises at four, fishes for sculpin, — that amazingly thorny, unsatisfactory fish, so beloved by the lobster, — baits his traps, resets them, and is back in the cove again by nine, ready for lunch, I believe it is. He tells us he often takes in a hundred dollars from his lobstering in a good year. Other cash resources are not in evidence; I do not believe they amount to much.

A little farming; some work on the roads; a certain amount of ‘wooding’ in the winter; odd carpentering jobs, and work on and around the boats and the weirs — this is what our east coast mostly lives by. Weir-fishing — the construction and operation of these great marine mouse-traps, stretching out from the local headlands to intercept the shoals of herring that subsequently become dignified into sardines — is, in spots, a considerable industry, and the factories at Bass Harbor and Southwest Harbor are kept busy. But I suppose no business is more utterly speculative. The Maine coast does not gamble in oil-stocks, but it does gamble in weirs; and many a local little fortune of a thousand dollars or so, plus what the weir-builder can borrow, goes the nay of the white alley. When ‘sardines’ take a streak of running into your weir, you may take in forty, or sixty, or a hundred dollars a day. The sardine boat from the factory put-puts merrily into your cove; the nets from the storage part of the weir pour a shining flood of herring into the dories, and the fishermen, in their hip-boots, wade waist-deep in herring, as they shovel them into the sardine boat, receiving spot cash on the basis of the estimated capacity of the dory. But weirs, at present prices for twine and labor, cost perhaps two thousand dollars to make; the nets must be cared for, repaired, and retarred at the curious little tarring stations; stakes must be set by floating pile-driver—and then the fish go away, as quickly and silently as they came; or else, in their abundance, the bottom falls out of the market; the factories are overstocked, and the sardine boat no longer calls. Weir-building goes in waves: in the latter part of the war it was extremely active and temporarily profitable; but now most of the nets are up, on the section of the coast by the camp, and there remain only the stakes, highly dangerous to launch navigation at high tide — and the unpaid debts for twine and labor.

At the height of the speculation, a thoroughly interesting thing to do was to row out to the weir at sunrise and see the fishermen appraising their catch. Each new day brought its fascinating possibilities of sudden profit; and a gallery of directly interested sea gulls added a touch of color and of subdued but eager comment.

But the day’s work at the camp is done, though we have been long enough about it. There now remains the peculiar and special pleasure of a game of chess, sweetened by tobacco-smoke and the sense of a considerable amount of physical labor punctiliously performed, and followed by a very brief swim in what is probably the coldest unfrozen water in the world. Around sunset we shall have visitors: a party of loons may choose this evening for a perfectly absurd and screamingly noisy ‘jazz’ party in the cove, dashing about half out of the water, and shouting with laughter. Later on, the heron will probably come by, in the dusk, flying heavily, and remarking ‘crawk’ loudly and critically from time to time. The contrast between the impatient, middle-aged dissatisfaction of the heron and the adolescent, flapper gayety of the loon is ridiculous. We wonder, lightly, if the heron was never young, and if the congenial party of loon never grow old, or, if so, how it affects their conduct of life. We think, also, of the sea gull that swallowed whole the perch with all the bones, scales, and so forth, appurtenant thereto, and wonder if it is still perfectly comfortable and selfcomposed. On the whole, we believe so, though we do not know why.

Finally, we get around to the philosophy of living in perfect contentment on a hundred dollars, cash, per year. Are we really any better off than the lobsterman, and is he really happier than the sea gull, or the irrepressible loon? We do not know, but we do not propose to worry about it, because it is bedtime.