Today, it is a beautiful, rainy-drizzle-foggy kind of day on the Maine coast. I have been staying at Seawall Campground in Acadia National Park for the past four nights. It has been fantastic. It is so beautiful. I did several energetic walks, as well as some enthusiastically beautiful bike rides. This is my fifth day here. The first three days had plenty of sunshine. Yesterday was foggy, but I still did a two-hour ride. I became covered with moisture from the tiny droplets condensing on my clothing and also from water dropping off of tree leaves. The fog hits the leaves, water condenses on them, then falls to the ground. Ride under a tree, it feels like rain.
But wait … right now I am in Bass Harbor Memorial Library. It is amazing. It is an older, small library, which is not surprising in such a little town. It has a fantastic feeling. The library has three rooms. One room is the original library, built in 1922. The shelves of its four walls are covered with books. It is both bright and dark in this room. Bright from a number of large multipaned windows, dark from the wood paneling that lines the walls above the book cases. There is artwork done by local artists: drawings, paintings, and pottery. There are several fish plates: a tuna, a flounder, and grouper.
I am sitting at a long table in the room, and I have had it for about a half hour. I was only person in the room … until suddenly … a class of kindergarten kids showed up! How lucky am I? They are here for a “read aloud” with the Director, whose name is Bob. He’s going to read “The Stinky Cheeseman.” The kids are paying attention carefully. There are a few others here, too, probably teachers. The kids make comments. Voices like music. They are laughing and laughing so much!
After the book is done, the kids are learning about libraries. This is the first time these kids have ever been to the library, so it seems. They are learning about how a library works, that they can come here and take books home to read. And they have a program where kids can receive rewards for reading. They can actually receive pizza and ice cream as rewards for reading!
I had an easy drive up to Acadia from Danbury. I left on Sunday, stopping at Bradbury Mountain State Park, which is about half an hour from Portland. I had been there a couple times before. There are good roads in the area. I did a bike ride, two hours of hard riding on rolling hills. That was fun.
Monday morning, I drove to Portland to meet Sierra, the daughter of a friend from high school, Kevin Fahrnam. Kev passed away about a year ago, after which it was revealed that he was the originator and main character in a tradition called “The Valentine’s Day Bandit.” For decades, The Bandit and his accomplices would roam around Portland putting hearts on buildings and hanging banners in some unusual places. Some were small, printed on 8X11 paper, and placed on people’s doors or on the windows of businesses. Others were large, bed-sheet sized white backgrounds with giant red hearts on them, which would be hung from tall buildings and/or placed in a number of landmark locations.
I did not know Kev well in high school, but we touched base on Facebook sometime around 2010 and stayed in contact regularly. I visited him at his home in Maine in June 2021, when I drove to Lewiston, Maine to buy a new bicycle, staying at Bradbury Mountain my first time. We met again at an outdoor music event at a local restaurant in September 2022 at the start of a month-long road trip I took. I was in Utah in 2023 when I learned of his passing.
Sierra and her Mom, Patty, ambitiously and lovingly keep Kevin’s Spirit alive: more about this at the BeAKevin website.
It was nice meeting Sierra and hearing about a few things she is up to. She is a really good sailor, having a lot of experience with sailboats through years of practice, training, and competing. Kev was a professional photographer and artist, and he loved going to the events in Portland Harbor and photographing the action. His work was amazing.
One thing Sierra stressed was that the Valentine’s Bandit was only one aspect of her Dad’s love for community and people in general. He was active in many areas. One example, I recall he would open his shop occasionally to provide free portraits, encouraging people to make donations to charities rather than pay for the session.
After having breakfast with Sierra, I headed north to Acadia, another easy drive of about 200 miles, where I wandered into Sewall Campground. Sewall is in a quiet section of the park. It is on the southern part of Mount Desert Island, about 20 miles away from Hulls Cove Visitor Center and popular and better-known attractions such as Cadillac Mountain, the Park Loop Road, and Carriage Trails system. I will be going there next Tuesday for a couple days, after visiting the Schoodic area Saturday-Monday.
It is interesting that Sierra told me she was named after the Sierra-Nevada Mountains. This was the result of Kev having done a great deal of backpacking and exploring in those mountains in his earlier years. What makes it more interesting is that the day after she and I met for breakfast, I met a woman at the campground named Sequoia.
I was just returning from a 40-mile bike ride, coasting up to the ranger station at the campground, when a woman pulled in from the opposite direction on her bike. She “great day for a ride!” as we both entered the building. She and another woman were on Day One of a month-long bike trip from Acadia to Burlington, Vermont. She was looking for her cell phone and hoped she had left it at the ranger station. But they did not have it. We used my phone to track it down to the IGA grocery store, where she apparently misplaced it. She talked with someone there, who found it “near the firewood out front,” just as Sequoia described. Sequoia was named after the trees and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park in California, which happen also to be in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Two days. Two women. Unrelated. Living in the northeast. Named after basically the same natural landmarks in California.
The children have left the library now. It is back to quiet, with only Bob and myself in the building, he in the entrance room, me in this wonderful older structure attached off the side of the new building. I want to note that back in Fall 1973, after graduating high school that year, I drove a school bus. One of my runs was King Street School kindergarten kids. I would pick up a busload of five-year olds daily, somewhere in the range of 20-25 kids, and drop them off later in the day. It was an amazing experience. Their energy and excitement about life was fantastic. I loved it.
Another interesting experience I had at Seawall had to do with the swiftness of the rising tide here. I have been going down to the ocean at sunrise and/or sunset. OK, only once for sunrise, as it is at 4:50AM! I was there Tuesday night as the tide was coming in. I was taking some photographs, and in looking out on some rocks, I determined I would obtain a better perspective out there. I walked out there. My pathway across the collection of rocks was completely dry. I made my way I to the high point of the formation to take photos and a video. I estimate I was out there about 10-15 minutes. When I turned to come back in, I was shocked to see that the tide had covered a section about fifteen yards wide with water. I was now on a mini-island. The water was only about 6”-10” deep, but still kind of startling. There were a few rocks rising above the water, so I was able to use them most of the way, jumping quickly from rock to rock. They were 3-4 feet apart. Then I arrived at the last ten feet, where I had to step on rocks that were slightly submerged, getting my feet a little bit wet. I am lucky I did not wait longer where I was taking the photos. I could have been in bigger trouble!
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