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I considered slipping away from my deep-sleeping dog to fetch a little more coffee from the camp stove, but the memory of the speedy tide that had flooded my feet earlier stopped me, and I decided to stay put. As water refilled the flats and air bubbles rose from the bottom, a soft breeze blew in. Esther fell asleep in the warmth of early sunshine on the rocks that rim the cove at our Cobscook campsite. The tidal rhythms remind me of this morning. One woman told of seeing a pair of humpback whales off Herring Cove during a recent excursion to Campobello Island, and said that, from land or from her sea kayak, she’s observed more whales around Lubec in the past year than she had in a decade. At the Water Street Tavern, we had gotten into a conversation with some of the guests near us about whale sightings. From the 70- to 80-foot-high cliffs along the trail that begins beside the candy-striped West Quoddy Lighthouse, we watch the now-sparkling chop of seawater of the Lubec Channel. Heading back toward Lubec, a man at a roadside stand is selling winter squash, beets, potatoes, apples, and orange masses of pumpkins. Following a peninsula that pierces into Cobscook Bay, we take a public trail into Pike Lands, where we pass through a collector’s orchard of trees from around the world, where knobby red and yellow apples are still clinging to the branches.
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And I’ll make a campfire snack of popcorn later, once the coals get hot enough to keep the kernels popping under the foil of their Jiffy Pop pan.Īfter we warm up with cocoa and coffee heated on the Coleman stove, we head out for more exploring. Disappointing, but we’re still rich with duck, beans, and pie. The campground allows campers to dig up to a peck of clams, when in season-but a sign at the gate noted that the clamming is closed because of a red tide warning. But we won’t be gathering our own seafood dinner today. Below me, rambling around in rubber boots as the tide washes in, Peter Frank points to scattering green crabs, and he lifts periwinkles, soft-shell clams, and blue mussels to show to me. I decide to seek higher ground and find a perch on sunny rock to watch the cove. On the incoming tide, the cove we’re on begins to fill so fast that, when I crouch at the water’s edge to look for some shrimp swimming in the pooling water, I suddenly feel the rising water creeping into my shoe. Cobscook is derived from a Maliseet-Passamaquoddy word for “boiling tides,” and we’re excited to have this shoreside view to watch the rapid tidal changes and diverse marine ecology. I can see the glint of a parked RV through the woods, but besides that it looks like we’ll have this observation point to ourselves-right in the heart of where rocks, mud, and saltwater meet for the extravagant tides.