Fluffy

Early to rise one recent June morning, I decided to take a walk around Montrose Harbor, a place dear to my heart. The place where I learned to sail and where, in many ways, I grew up. It is also where Carrie Rose, our 32’ Nordic Tug, was moored for over a decade.

This June will be the ninth year since Carrie Rose, and us, left Lake Michigan and our mooring at Montrose. We have traveled thousands of miles through Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, the canals of Canada, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River to Lake Champlain and the Hudson River, out into the North Atlantic along the coast of New Jersey to Chesapeake Bay and last year north to Maine where she sits awaiting our return.

A few highlights have been the canals of Canada, the wind and waves and weather especially on the Great Lakes, the sincere and earnest people of Vermont, and then NYC. How exciting to motor on the Hudson under the Tappen Zee bridge, pass the Palisades and into downtown Manhattan with as much hustle bustle on the water as on the streets.

There was the trepidation of leaving, passing through the Verrazano Narrows and around Sandy Hook for the first time into the North Atlantic and south on the New Jersey coast. The New Jersey folk were as gregarious, as their coast was treacherous.

Then to Chesapeake Bay, which at first seemed an isolated cruising ground, but turned out to be surrounded by millions of people, with a McMansion around every bend. The year spent there was one of the hottest ever, 100 degree plus everyday. But we were in the perfect spot, and though we did, we rarely needed to travel more then twenty miles for another perfect anchorage. There were so many eagles that at first I mistook them for flocks of crows.

Last year (2017) it was north to Maine. Throughout the cruise, we interacted with multiple diverse communities and cultures. Though not historically true, America seemed to get older the farther north we went. I think because much of the “oldness” is still present. It is in the buildings, in the speech, in the food and drink, and in the attitude of the people.

When we finally crossed the border into Maine the isolation was palpable. The coastline is more on the edge and the lobster culture predominates. Carrie Rose negotiated dense forests of lobster buoys, which predominate the landscape at about one per square foot. It is hard to imagine how the cages sort themselves out on the bottom, as it is to believe there are enough crawly lobsters to fill them.

This summer Maine’s coast will be explored. The water is deep and cold; the tides are eleven feet or more. I am thinking of this as I sit on the Montrose Harbor promontory. I can see the center city with cranes building taller skyscrapers into the perfectly blue sky. There is just a fringe of clouds, lacelike in the distance outlining the blue green water.

There are only a couple of boats out on the lake. The cribs sit stoically three or four miles offshore. A slight breeze disturbs the surface just enough to obscure the reflections of the buildings on Lake Shore Drive and in the distance the sun’s rays are sparkling off the wavelets.

Along the abutment, it is obvious that it was a drunken melee over Memorial Day, cans and bottles, smashed and broken, litter the pale concrete along with trash. I am depressed to think that the revelers can be so clueless to make such a mess for someone else (hopefully) to clean. But I choose not to dwell on the negative this glorious spring day.

I have inhabited this place since I was a kid on a one speed bike. Back then there was a group of German immigrants, many trained in the classical arts of stonework that chiseled and craved the limestone rocks that made up the shoreline into beautiful images. Images of mermaids and moon landings and family crest were painted with vibrant colors. They tolerated me and even gave me tools to do my own primitive memorials.

Little by little, as limestone is apt to do, the paint faded, the sharp chiseled corners rounded, and their world disappeared. I wish I had a camera for now I fear the images only exsist in my mind. The lake reclaimed the wood and stone to the point where it has been replaced with a functional but sterile series of concrete steps.

The Great Lakes are a magnificent background to live one’s life, and representative of that, is Montrose Harbor’s Magic Hedge. It provides a resting place for thousands of birds migrating north and south along the coast. The hedge, born out of neglect and saved by the local birding community, is a world famous site amidst a decidedly urban setting.

The rustic hedge is packed with birds, some exotic and some not, depending on the time of year. As I walked through it that morning, I kept waiting to be attack by one of the cranky red-winged blackbirds. Lucky, I escaped injury.

When I started to walk along the harbor, fluffy fledgling geese were laid out helter-skelter on the boat ramp. Their necks placed haphazardly as they stretched pitch-black legs readying them for another day of foraging. Compared to their alert caretakers, their lethargy was striking.

So this is my tale of a June morning spent wandering in familiar territory that I still find full of surprises. A place that keeps me here, and a place I think of when people from afar ask me how can I stay in Chicago, and I always say, “How could I leave!”

Bar Harbor, ME