Maine Day of Curiosities
Posted: August 23, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMy friend Karen is a perfect friend because she is my equal when it comes to curiosity. As a former News Anchor of 20 years she is always at the ready with a question and a few follow ups. I am most interested in the absurd and odd. Together we make quite a pair.
Yesterday when we were deciding where we would venture today I suggested we go south as we have done the northern route the past two visits. I knew that Damariscotta had their farmer’s market on Friday morning so it seemed like a good starting place. In the search of the internet I stumbled upon a curiosity I had heard of, but never witnessed; the Fish Ladder at the Damariscotta Mills. I asked Karen if she had ever seen a fish ladder. Neither had we seen one, we were felt our education had been lacking, as we went to high school together.
Off we went this morning to the farmer’s market. It was a sweet one with an accordion player serenading shoppers looking for vegetables, cheese, bread and sausage. All of which we purchased.
From there we decided not to go into the town of Damariscotta, but took a smaller road, closer to the coast heading south, just to see what we could find. We both love to look at houses and guess what the people living in them are like. One nice surprise was the many Harris/Walz yard signs that already dotted the fronts of people’s yards. Given that the signs could barley be two weeks old it was impressive and hopeful how many more of them we saw than Trump signs, which could have been around for years.
As we continued into a village I recognized it as Round Pond, where my friends the Carr’s had once lived and Carter and I visited them there. We stopped at Granite Hall Store which was chocked full of unique toys, penny candy, houseware, cards, books and woolens. It was a fun adventure. I sent Denise Carr a photo of me outside the store she used to visit often.
There was a painter outside the store and he asked us if we were looking for a spot for lunch as it was about that time. He recommended the lobster shack at the end of the road, so we meandered down and found the most beautiful wharf overlooking the harbor. Karen got lobster stew and I got tuna poke and we ate on a picnic bench shaded with the largest blue umbrella. On the way back to the main road we stopped and thanked the artist for the recommendation.
Turning south we encountered the most Maine thing for me, a church called “the little brown church.” It was so sad we did not have Shay with us to get a photo of the little brown dog in front of the little brown church.
The trip continued to New Harbor and eventually ended at the Pemaquid light house. This is where our curiosity ended. We did not want to pay $4 each to go in the tiny light house so we just drove into and out of the parking lot.
We took a different route heading north, but it was a bigger, more boring road. We decided we were tired and thought we would just head home. As we arrived in Damraiscotta I took a left to drive Karen down the main street and over the bridge of the river where the famous oysters grow. Being tired of a bigger roads we took a small random road heading in roughly the right direction.
A mile out of town out of the corner of my eye I caught a barn off the the side of the road with a logo I remembered from our fish ladder exploration on the web. I turned the car around and turned in a deserted tiny driveway. It was the small old warehouse, for the alewives fish that are caught after swimming up the fish ladder to spawn and then coming back down the fish ladder to return to the sea.
We jumped out of the car and took a little walk finally seeing exactly how the sixty some little ponds with the uphill chutes of about 12 inches make up the ladder the fish can swim upstream, ascending a height of 42 feet, as the natural way to swim upstream had been blocked by man made mills two hundred years ago. It was a most exciting discovery for us and show great ingenuity by men two hundred years ago.
What a serendipitous discovery we made and so glad we did. Sadly I am not in Maine during spawning season so I doubt I am ever going to get to see the fish swimming up the fish ladder. Maybe I can find other fish ladders around the world. Oh the world is such an interesting place, especially Maine.
Less Dana, More Good 