Lubec  June23

It was a misty Maine morning, fog hanging low creating an intimacy of limited vision and muted sounds. Instead of heading directly here via busy US 1, I turned south onto SR 191 and headed for Cutler at the end of yet another one of the many fingers that reach into the Atlantic in this state.

Low-growing blueberries ripening.

As I’ve encountered so many times in Maine I soon passed a sign that indicated the start of a town’s boundary line—Cutler Town Line, the sign stated.  I learned my lesson many days ago: don’t get your hopes up that the town will actually appear soon. Around here town boundaries can be placed an untold number of miles away from any actual settlement bearing the town’s name. Maybe it’s so the taxing authority can cast its net as wide as possible. So, I pedaled on.

Eventually what I came upon was the former U.S. Naval Station-Cutler. Since the early 1960s until the early 2000s Navy personnel stationed at Cutler maintained a field of 900-foot high Very Low Frequency antennas. VLF radio waves are used by Navy submarines to communicate with HQ. The fog was so thick today that I couldn’t even the base of a 900-foot high structure that was basically in front of me.

Budgetary cuts led to the closing of the base. The towers, which are a still in use, are now maintained by a contractor. The base was purchased by developers who have rehabbed the former base personnel houses and are selling them as waterfront condos. The location on Machias Cove Beach is fabulous. The Navy sure knew about location, location, location when it came to buying land. www.beachwoodbayestates.com

All of this information was imparted to me by Adam Myer who was clerking at the small on-base convenience store. It’s one of several jobs he has—store clerk, lobsterman, clammer, Christmas decoration maker, and creator of polished concrete countertops and tables.

“You gotta have several jobs up here to survive,” he said. “But I like changing around, it keeps each job more interesting.”

His biggest pleasure comes when he uses crushed clam, mussel and lobster shells to make his decorations and countertops.  He gets the shells from local seafood processors, cleans and crushes them, and mixes them into either concrete or epoxy. The results are quite varied and very sturdy.

www.mainecoastcreations.com

On the eastern side of the finger I saw several people far out in the tidal flats bent over clawing at the sand. I made my way out to the closest one, not an easy feat in bicycle shoes, and introduced myself.

The hefty young man before me introduced himself as Tyler Warner, a rising senior at a local high school.

“I do this to earn money. I also go lobstering with my step-father and do any odd job I can find,” he said as he continued to dig into the sand. Using a short-handled rake, he drove it into the sand where he saw holes. “Breathing holes for the clams,” he explained.

He pulled back and upwards with the rake and uncovered lots of clams. Not all of them could be harvested; keepers had to be bigger than a ring he had on his basket.  These were soft shelled clams.  They weren’t soft and pliable, just not as hard as most clams. “You have to be a little more careful when harvesting these than a quahog, or something like that,” Tyler explained.

He figured he had close to a bushel (52 pounds) so far for a couple hours of work. He’ll be paid $1.40 per pound by a buyer. “So, I’ll make about $70 this morning. Not bad,” he said.

Despite the money and his love of the sea, Warner said he wants to go to college to become a nurse.

What sort of reasoning makes a driver stop their car in the middle of the road and ask me for directions? I was pedaling along on a road that I thought would get me to Lubec. Two young women in a beat up old car with Maine plates pulled alongside and asked, “Which way is the playground?” “What?” I said, incredulous that they figured me, a bicyclist with four saddlebags, a go-slow triangle on his backside and a flag sticking up from where his tent and sleeping pad were strapped and who was wearing orange “hair” from his helmet and an orange T-shirt stating “Deirdre’s Ride for ALS,” would be an authority on local landmarks. 

This was the fifth time I’ve been asked directions to a local place or to a street/road. It started in GA when a lady stopped traffic on a very busy highway to ask me if she was headed in the right direction to get to some town. I could tell by the chorus of horns that the folks behind her were none too happy. Neither was I as she stopped to ask me her dumb-assed question on a hill.

West Quoddy Head is the easternmost point on the U.S. mainland. On it sits West Quoddy Head Light, built in 1808 to warn mariners away from Quoddy’s dangerous cliffs, ledges and Sail Rock which is at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy.

Lubec, with 1,600 residents, is the easternmost incorporated town in the contiguous U.S. (FYI—the westernmost is Cape Alva, WA(Been there.), Key West, where this ride started, is the southernmost while the northernmost is Northwest Angle, MN. (Bike trip!))

Founded in 1811, Lubec was once home to a prosperous fishing fleet, shipyards and smugglers. More than 20 sardine canneries and smokehouses lined its shores. Today all of that is gone, replaced by tourists who come to whale watch, kayak, take boat trips to several lighthouses in the area, watch bald eagles and harbor seals, or visit Campobello Island where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had his summer home. Tomorrow I’ll cross the border.