THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9510030429
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SHERRIE BOYER, TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 191 lines
THERE IS NOTHING quite like a good rock.
On a good rock, you can feel the baked-in heat of the sun, run your fingers over fissures carved in an ice age, brace your back against something your worries can never budge.
On a good rock, you can see the ocean, the sky and the trees. And if you can see and feel all of these things, then you will be in Maine, at Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, preferably in the fall, beside fiery leaves, amid granite cliffs, surrounded by glittering seas.
And it will be glorious.
Fall and spring are the best times to visit this popular paradise. And while you can fly into Portland or Bangor, many people drive to the island, roughly 16 hours northeast of Norfolk. It's a vexing trip, but the rocks are worth the journey.
While the spring boasts many of the 500 species of wildflowers in bloom, the fall offers truly pleasant weather through October. The vistas, of changing leaves (best in late September and very early October), are clearer than the haze-hindered views in July and August.
Even the legendary giant Maine mosquitoes seem less threatening in the fall. These bugs are so big, they could put a welt on Godzilla, but in the fall, the gentle weather calms their nerves. Temperatures during the day will climb to 60 degrees, but at night, the high may only be in the mid-30s.
It is ideal camping and hiking weather.
Our trip to Acadia this year was the first time since 1984 that we had visited this beautiful island tucked in close to Maine's jagged coast.
The path there had changed. Now, we drove along Route 3 toward the island past outlet malls and restaurant franchises, part of a massive, slow-moving stream of cars, vans and campers. In the fall, however, the traffic isn't nearly as bad.
The park, too, had changed; it was more beautiful, more haunting, and more dramatic than we remembered, with mountains, beach, woods and trails all intertwined in a tumbled dance between salty sea breezes and freshwater ponds.
Acadia National Park takes up most of the island; the rest of the land is privately owned and sports many luxurious homes, beaches and quaint seaside harbor towns that cater to the shopping frenzy of the yuppie generation. Bed-and-breakfast inns, small hotels and homey restaurants (not all serving the Maine standard of lobster roll, onion rings and blueberry pie) abound.
But we had come to see the park. Acadia sports such lush natural gems as beaches formed from shell fragments, a wave-cut chasm (Thunder Hole) that reverberates when waves and tides are right, and a wild garden that is a living encyclopedia of flowers and trees.
Travel within the park is easy; there is a 20-mile loop road that encircles much of the national area and offers entrances to Cadillac Mountain (the U.S. Atlantic seaboard's highest peak), a public campground and the villages.
There are more than 120 miles of hiking trails and 45 miles of paved carriage roads in the woodlands (courtesy of John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the 1930s). These are perfect for mountain bikes, horseback riding, walking or cross-country skiing in winter. (The park's Thompson Island Information Center, on Route 3 as you cross from the mainland to the island, is a great stopping place for maps and information. Pick up a list of trails, graded by difficulty.)
We planned to hike into this wilderness a little with friends, then camp for two nights at Blackwoods, the year-round public campground, located on the Park Loop Road between Seal and Bar harbors.
Our friends are avid back-country hikers, even with children ages 6 and 2. But we amble more than we hike. So we were worried about a climb into Acadia, on any trail more than 30 minutes in length.
The last time we hiked Acadia, 12 years ago, Tom and I had longed for something hearty but short.
Aware of our inexperience, we prudently read the list of available trails and picked the shortest route, The Precipice Trail, roughly one-half mile long.
We started the climb by ambling easily over rocks and hiking past scraggly bushes, home to scads of black flies and mosquitoes.
Then the terrain changed. We met our first rusty iron bar, welded into the vertical surface of a rock, and wondered for a second why it was there before grabbing it for support. We looked up to a series of bars jutting out from the tower of rock and understood instantly that these bars were meant to sustain life.
The Precipice is one of four ``ladder'' trails at the park; all are recommended for able hikers, we later learned.
We ducked through brief tunnels carved in the rocks by ice as the island was formed and balanced on narrow ledges barely a foot wide. We went on like this for several minutes before Tom got the nerve to look down. He never looked again. By then we were yards above the tops of the highest trees.
I don't know how long the climb took us. It was breathtakingly beautiful, vistas of forests alternately shrouded in haze or radiant in the afternoon sun. Above us, there was only blue sky and vertical stretches of barren rock. There seemed no way to move but up. So we climbed.
At the top, we scampered away from the edge before we stood to take in a rocky plateau swept by a strong breeze. There were bits of brush here and there, proof that life can survive on any surface, even rock, if it tries hard enough.
The wind ferried clouds above our heads and we relished the solitude of our little spot on the top of the world. For a moment, time was still.
Then the silence was broken by the rustling of wax paper as the hikers near us unwrapped hearty sandwiches. That's when we realized our mistake. We had climbed, innocent of knowledge and free of baggage - we had no water, no lunch, no camera. We stayed a half hour to regain our composure and breath and left, climbing down the same treacherous way we'd come up, this time driven by thirst.
The Precipice remains a great trail, but regrettably it is not open this year. While it annually closes from March through August for the nesting of falcons, it has stayed closed this year while rangers grapple with the rebuilding of a natural bridge on the path. Apparently, it is not easy to make repairs on a vertical site.
But our trail this time was on solid ground.
We parked on a small gravel lot off of Route 3 at the intersection of a trail near Parkman Mountain, crossed Route 3 on foot and hiked in on a glorious, muddy trail. An early afternoon sun sparkled through the leaves and turned the creek into glitter. Spruce and pine climbed high over our heads. Birds chattered, chipmunks scurried.
The five children, ages 2-6, jumped over fallen logs and tripped on tree roots. They stepped in the mud holes in hiking boots and stepped out with just socks. We heard and then spotted a toad in mid-ballad. We stroked moss thicker and greener than any in Virginia.
We scampered across rough-hewn bridges of graying timber and teetered on knee-high boulders blocking the path before falling down in a leap of laughter.
Ten minutes down the path and we hit bubbling pay dirt: a brook in full glory with rocks to bask upon, water striders to stalk, tree toads to jump with and a low, natural stone water slide down algae into a shallow pool. The children stripped to bathing suits and water shoes, the snacks came out and we played.
An hour later, we trudged on, just another short jaunt, to a waterfall with more rough bridges, enormous rocks to scamper down, and larger pools in which to splash.
We spent the rest of the day here, untroubled by the prospect that the trail offered more possibilities. We had found a bit of nirvana. So we stayed until the sun had peaked and the first tired child tumbled on the rocks.
We had walked barely a quarter mile of Acadia's trails, but we had fun.
That night we camped in the rain and woke to a smoky sky of varying shades of gray. We drove up Cadillac Mountain, 1,530 feet above sea level, and met a gray wall.
The last time we visited this mountain, at sunrise 12 years ago, we met a timeless view across miles of grayish pink rock, greening forests, a jeweled sea and a scatter of tiny islands stretching to the horizon.
This time we saw 20 feet of gray rock bounded by gray sky. The children scampered away and we lost them in the fog momentarily.
The top of Cadillac Mountain is one giant bump of a rock after another, huge piles of boulders, the face of the mountain, carved by ice, swept by the wind, baked by the sun.
This bald giant of a mountain is perhaps the best-known natural gem of Acadia. Rangers give sunset talks here. Spotted by French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1604, who went aground in the narrows along the rocky coast, it was named Mount Desert for its mountainous yet barren heights.
Hardy blueberry bushes struggle to survive in cracks along the boulders; we picked as many berries as we could find that the gulls hadn't spotted first.
On a clear day, the view extends for miles. On a shrouded day, the haze lifts and you can spot the next peak over, maybe a glimpse of the sea.
Wandering far from our group with the children, I was startled to see the haze lift suddenly and realize that we were merely 20 feet from the edge of the mountain.
But Cadillac is like that. It extends for an eternity; a gray, granite head of a silent giant. Then, suddenly, the sides fall away and you look down, miles it seems, to the first crop of boulders. You guess this is the giant's ear. Farther and farther down, you spot outreaches of the mountain that are shoulders and then the view melts into trees. The giant is sitting in a huge forest, his feet in the sea, his head in the clouds. And you are playing on the surface, teased by gulls, chilled by the breeze, silenced by the view.
It is a good place to sit for a while; to eat a hearty lunch worthy of the weight of the rock: peanut butter on thick slices of wheat bread, apples and water. And to contemplate the worth of things that are solid. ILLUSTRATION: JIM WALKER/Staff color photos
LEFT: Early morning sunlight tints the rugged granite face of Otter
Cliffs.
RIGHT: Cadillac Mountain is the highest point on the U.S. Atlantic
coast and one of the first place from which to see the sunrise.
ABOVE: Bubble Pond reflects the colors of autumn foliage. Fall
offers truly pleasant weather through October.
ABOVE: Twilight over Acadia.
LEFT: Visitors gather on Cadillac Mountain to view the sunset.
Graphic\ GET THE SCOOP
For more info, contact:
Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 158, Bar Harbor, Maine
04609; (800) 288-5103.
Acadia National Park Headquarters, P.O. Box 177, Bar Harbor,
Maine 04609; (207) 288-3338.
by CNB