And we're off to Mother Carey
Our day trip out of state was a success and I didn't even have to eat a thunderstorm. Flouting the forecast, the rain kindly got itself out of the way on the drive up to Portsmouth and we were able to spend a wonderfully brightening day on Star Island.
In the sense that his father ran summer conferences while he ran feral across the island with older children and college students,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch partly grew up on Star Island, as a result of which I deeply enjoyed that every story from the Isles of Shoals which the captain told us on the voyage out from Portsmouth Harbor on the Challenger and home on the Thomas Laighton, I had heard already from my husband, sometimes right as we passed the relevant landmarks and seconds before the captain began his version. No one had any stories about the Memorial Bridge across the Piscataqua, but I liked its massive steel.
We passed a number of container ships on our way out into the Gulf of Maine, of which the Ultra Infinity out of Singapore had the hands down most dramatic name. It had docked by the time we returned and was being lightened of its cargo of salt.
At all stages of the day, there were gorgeous skies.
Appledore, Malaga, Smuttynose, and Star Islands in view. I was disappointed that visitors are not allowed to walk across the breakwater between the latter two. Rob told me the story of the time his father swam the relevant slice of Gosport Harbor, which took him across the state line from New Hampshire into Maine.
Arriving at Star Island.
The elegant still life of the butts can.
The Lyman V. Rutledge Marine Laboratory was technically closed, but the Pelican—the traditional name for the island's summer volunteer staff—who was mopping the floor didn't mind if we looked around. It strongly resembled one of the kinds of house I would have wanted in third grade, especially the half of the room which was tanks of kelp and crabs and barnacles and jars of preserved specimens and shelves of field guides and ceiling-hung models of fish and jellies and lobster traps.
We saw two seals during the day, one while waiting on the waterfront at Portsmouth and the other while we were climbing around the schists and granites and pegmatites on the eastern side of Star Island. It put its head of wet slate up out of the water to look at us; I sang it the beginning of Jean Redpath's seal-calling song and a hiker we had met suggested that I had scared it off instead when it ducked out of sight, but it came back when I finished the song and stayed for long minutes afterward, bobbing in the waves by the buoy, occasionally sleeking itself forward in the foam to maintain its position, always looking our way. We left only after it did. It seemed rude otherwise.
The auditorium of the Gosport Building, where Rob remembered hiding in the curtained alcoves.
When I stepped back from the window, the present came up like a Pepper's ghost.
The porch of the Oceanic Hotel, where we obviously propped ourselves in the cane-backed rocking chairs.
The path to the chapel—
—which reminded me of a George Mackay Brown poem inside.
Or the Vermeer of your choice.
Solar panels in the distance through centuries of glass.
We spent the bulk of the afternoon on exactly the kind of towering, time-folded, heaved and scoured ledges of rock that I love, although we did not intend to circumnavigate quite so much of the island as we did: we had to find a passage back to the Oceanic Hotel that did not involve wading through poison ivy.
On the way, this seagull was photogenic.
I am beaming because one of the medical features that has heavily impeded this spring and summer was the injury of my knee and I had just gone up a mica-wrinkled face of granite with my fingers and feet wedged at stretched angles and nothing buckled under me even after I got to the top.
Unlike the ill-fated namesake of this shelf known as Miss Underhill's Chair, I was not washed off into the churning ocean by some kind of wrath-of-Poseidon king tide.
Nor were Rob and I parted by drowning like the namesakes of the Lovers' Cave. I detected a common theme in a lot of these islands' stories.
When we finally made it out of reach of the poison ivy and had recovered on the porch of the hotel with ginger beer and coconut water from the same snack bar which had earlier furnished us with lime rickeys to eat with the sandwiches we had packed for lunch, we were able to get into the auditorium.
Of course someone never comes back in the story which furnishes the traditional chant called back and forth from shore to boat as the conference and day guests depart, but Rob not only came back after decades away, he shouted his appropriate half of the chant louder than anyone except a couple of Pelicans who were going out on the same boat.
By that time, the sky had become stunning.
I was fond of this abstract from the top deck of the Thomas Laighton.
Taken by our neighbor on the top deck of the Thomas Laighton, who recognized Rob from overhearing him make reference to the story of the 1873 Smuttynose axe murders while we were browsing the bookstore off the lobby of the Oceanic. She turned out to love sea-stories and ghost stories. I may have sold her on my chapbook. She certainly wanted to hear about the resident ghost of the Somerville Theatre from Rob.
I just liked the colors as we passed the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
This time when we passed under the Memorial Bridge, its lift span had to be raised to accommodate the taller boat. We all waved at the hi-vis-clad bridge operator.
Having returned by the salt marshes of Rye and Salisbury, we had dinner at Revere Beach.
In order to make this trip work, we had to be awake at sunrise and out of the house an hour later. Rob had arranged for the tickets so long as I handled the driving: he had wanted to take me to Star Island for years. We were awake at sunrise. We were in Portsmouth well in time to make our ferry. We had a plan in place if the cruise was canceled for inclement weather and we didn't need to use it. We spent most of the day on the water or beside it, always within earshot and the salt smell of it. I have been so ill this summer, I have terribly missed the sea. It was one of the best days I have had in a long time. Already I want to plan for next summer. We did say we will come back.
In the sense that his father ran summer conferences while he ran feral across the island with older children and college students,
spatch partly grew up on Star Island, as a result of which I deeply enjoyed that every story from the Isles of Shoals which the captain told us on the voyage out from Portsmouth Harbor on the Challenger and home on the Thomas Laighton, I had heard already from my husband, sometimes right as we passed the relevant landmarks and seconds before the captain began his version. No one had any stories about the Memorial Bridge across the Piscataqua, but I liked its massive steel.
We passed a number of container ships on our way out into the Gulf of Maine, of which the Ultra Infinity out of Singapore had the hands down most dramatic name. It had docked by the time we returned and was being lightened of its cargo of salt.
At all stages of the day, there were gorgeous skies.
Appledore, Malaga, Smuttynose, and Star Islands in view. I was disappointed that visitors are not allowed to walk across the breakwater between the latter two. Rob told me the story of the time his father swam the relevant slice of Gosport Harbor, which took him across the state line from New Hampshire into Maine.
Arriving at Star Island.
The elegant still life of the butts can.
The Lyman V. Rutledge Marine Laboratory was technically closed, but the Pelican—the traditional name for the island's summer volunteer staff—who was mopping the floor didn't mind if we looked around. It strongly resembled one of the kinds of house I would have wanted in third grade, especially the half of the room which was tanks of kelp and crabs and barnacles and jars of preserved specimens and shelves of field guides and ceiling-hung models of fish and jellies and lobster traps.
We saw two seals during the day, one while waiting on the waterfront at Portsmouth and the other while we were climbing around the schists and granites and pegmatites on the eastern side of Star Island. It put its head of wet slate up out of the water to look at us; I sang it the beginning of Jean Redpath's seal-calling song and a hiker we had met suggested that I had scared it off instead when it ducked out of sight, but it came back when I finished the song and stayed for long minutes afterward, bobbing in the waves by the buoy, occasionally sleeking itself forward in the foam to maintain its position, always looking our way. We left only after it did. It seemed rude otherwise.
The auditorium of the Gosport Building, where Rob remembered hiding in the curtained alcoves.
When I stepped back from the window, the present came up like a Pepper's ghost.
The porch of the Oceanic Hotel, where we obviously propped ourselves in the cane-backed rocking chairs.
The path to the chapel—
—which reminded me of a George Mackay Brown poem inside.
Or the Vermeer of your choice.
Solar panels in the distance through centuries of glass.
We spent the bulk of the afternoon on exactly the kind of towering, time-folded, heaved and scoured ledges of rock that I love, although we did not intend to circumnavigate quite so much of the island as we did: we had to find a passage back to the Oceanic Hotel that did not involve wading through poison ivy.
On the way, this seagull was photogenic.
I am beaming because one of the medical features that has heavily impeded this spring and summer was the injury of my knee and I had just gone up a mica-wrinkled face of granite with my fingers and feet wedged at stretched angles and nothing buckled under me even after I got to the top.
Unlike the ill-fated namesake of this shelf known as Miss Underhill's Chair, I was not washed off into the churning ocean by some kind of wrath-of-Poseidon king tide.
Nor were Rob and I parted by drowning like the namesakes of the Lovers' Cave. I detected a common theme in a lot of these islands' stories.
When we finally made it out of reach of the poison ivy and had recovered on the porch of the hotel with ginger beer and coconut water from the same snack bar which had earlier furnished us with lime rickeys to eat with the sandwiches we had packed for lunch, we were able to get into the auditorium.
Of course someone never comes back in the story which furnishes the traditional chant called back and forth from shore to boat as the conference and day guests depart, but Rob not only came back after decades away, he shouted his appropriate half of the chant louder than anyone except a couple of Pelicans who were going out on the same boat.
By that time, the sky had become stunning.
I was fond of this abstract from the top deck of the Thomas Laighton.
Taken by our neighbor on the top deck of the Thomas Laighton, who recognized Rob from overhearing him make reference to the story of the 1873 Smuttynose axe murders while we were browsing the bookstore off the lobby of the Oceanic. She turned out to love sea-stories and ghost stories. I may have sold her on my chapbook. She certainly wanted to hear about the resident ghost of the Somerville Theatre from Rob.
I just liked the colors as we passed the Portsmouth Navy Yard.
This time when we passed under the Memorial Bridge, its lift span had to be raised to accommodate the taller boat. We all waved at the hi-vis-clad bridge operator.
Having returned by the salt marshes of Rye and Salisbury, we had dinner at Revere Beach.
In order to make this trip work, we had to be awake at sunrise and out of the house an hour later. Rob had arranged for the tickets so long as I handled the driving: he had wanted to take me to Star Island for years. We were awake at sunrise. We were in Portsmouth well in time to make our ferry. We had a plan in place if the cruise was canceled for inclement weather and we didn't need to use it. We spent most of the day on the water or beside it, always within earshot and the salt smell of it. I have been so ill this summer, I have terribly missed the sea. It was one of the best days I have had in a long time. Already I want to plan for next summer. We did say we will come back.
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I had several nationally inappropriate folk songs stuck in my head all day! (I didn't realize the names were all from the same part of England, though.)
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Thank you! It was incredible after months of illness just to be able to get up and do something, too. (I am now spending today doing very little.)
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You're welcome! It really was.
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Love,
Nine
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Thank you!
I have also emerged sunburnt, which has not happened to me for decades and may be an effect of the current medication, but it seems to be healing with repeated applications of aloe and in any case was worth it.
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Thank you! I believe it to be the nicest thing I've done all summer.
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Thank you!
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It was named in the belief that it was pointed like a star, which may have been an inaccuracy of mapping, but which I still like.
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Thank you!
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Thank you! I like beaches, but I love rocky coastlines.
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Thank you! It was!
I was literally just in Portsmouth, although I was passing through on my way up to (and then back from) Maine— so many cool little islands around there!
That sounds like a lovely trip in itself! I hadn't been to Portsmouth for years. We used to visit the USS Albacore (which was part of our fallback plan if we arrived to find that the ferries weren't running).
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Thank you! It was great!
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Thank you!
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It was! Thank you!
(We are going out to the Harbor Islands this weekend, which is much less glamorous but I am SO excited to Be On A Boat.)
It's worth being excited over! I haven't been to the harbor islands in ages. Have a wonderful time!
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Thank you! We had a great time.
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You're welcome! Thank you!
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You have brought me back visceral memories of my family's vacations in Maine, when I was young. I've always been afraid of heights when on man-made structures, but I would just *levitate* up rock faces joyfully :) Acadia National Park is well-supplied with such sea-rock; I commend it to your attention.
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I'm so glad! My childhood sea-coast was Cape Elizabeth, which is likewise full of ledges. One summer my grandparents did take me to Acadia National Park. I knew it only from Gordon Bok's "Isle au Haut Lullaby."
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Other thoughts: the beauty of the shades of water. Stories of the elegant life of the butt can. Thank you for sharing!!
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Thank you! It really was marvelous. I was flat as blotting paper all of yesterday, but it was worth it.
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Thank you! It was a beautiful day.