Coast of Maine

We loved Maine, and the Wonderland Trail in Acadia National Park was all we had hoped Maine would be:

A trail through the woods is dotted with wild berry bushes but you have to keep a sharp eye out to spot the tiny raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. It isn’t a feast, but it is a sweet taste, and Annabelle learns a lot about which berries we eat and which are “not for picking.”

I tell her that some of the berries “aren’t good for us, they’re for the birds to eat.” Reliable Ada pipes up with “And the fairies!”

As we get closer to the beach (but don’t yet know it), wild rose bushes become abundant with plump and healthy rosehips mimicking the form of your local innkeeper’s shy but buxom daughter. The bushes are everywhere, as are their hips, and the remaining roses nestle in their leafy nests like pink jewels in a wildwood crown.

And suddenly the woods fall back and you’re on a pebbly beach and the pebbles grow until they are flat slabs and round boulders couching sparkling pools that each forms a whole universe to the seaweed and snails and coral growing there…

Ada builds stone alters while Annabelle climbs, sometimes two-legged, sometimes four-legged, and peers into the pools Pooh Bear style: knees bent, bottom stuck out, leaning too far forward until inevitably becoming a part of the wet landscapes she is observing with a splash and cute red lips making the letter “o” with surprise.  This happens enough times that her clothes are soaking wet and we lay them out on the rocks to dry.

My shoes and socks become equally soggy after the third time ending up in the ocean up to my ankles to snatch at the naked and speedy little imp whose mission has become losing herself in the untamed ocean waves.  So Ada and I take off our shoes and socks, leaving them high enough up on the beach to dry out, only when we come back for them, we’re lucky they haven’t floated away in the rising tide.

David and Cassidy are far off on the rocks that jutt out into the ocean.  I send the girls after them and we’re lucky when our speed reaches snail pace in a forwardly direction, but whenever we’re close enough to shout, David urges me to come see the tremendously beautiful view just around the next bend that outdoes the one I’ve just accomplished.  So we press onward, careful on the wet rocks, and the girls don’t care what’s ahead because they’re loving it where we are.

Plenty of rocks to choose from when I sit down to nurse and when David takes Cassidy out of the wrap, Annabelle is suddenly done exploring and wants to be wrapped up and since we only brought one wrap, we’re just as happy to have the heavy one wrapped, and she stays that way all the way back along the rocks, through the woods, and right into our livingroom parked in the parking lot that is really just a wide shoulder of the road.