Final Night's Camp, Chesuncook.

The Crooked Blue Spine Of Maine

"a heaving, swelling, sea of color, chanting overhead."
"How deep our sleep, under the starry composite. Only the unwinding yarn of our exhausted fire, scribbles itself against the dark cluttered backdrop."

"The light, its cheek pressed against the lake, burns the skin of the deep unsettled. Over in the trees that spring from shore, as arrows do from the chest of an unfinished man, labored breath laps at the shore I can hardly see, my squint filtering nothing. My blindness on this day, that took so long to arrive, is more apparent than the clear-cut scars along the soft crooked spine of Maine."

Leafing Through The Last Days "Journal Quotes"

"The lake jostles in it's earthy cup -reverberating against stars that tonight are tourists that flock to my magnificent sleep."

"So big a lake, after being confined to the hallways of the Penobscot, you feel and hear; rising and cowering tides."
"Paddling open wind swept lakes -keeps shores at a distance and arms strong."
"No matter how glorious the river is, rushing beside this campfire I enjoy alone among the quiet; it is meant to be shared!

On Chesuncook...

the hours wait, hanging in the sky smelling of charred arrangements, the sun expelling itself wringing the lake of light so that emptiness could only be more emptyto voyeur the nudness of loons and the great body of Chesuncook curling its shoulder into the corner of the open rock, accepting it’s loose advances,

so that underneath the retracting tide the hips of rock hiking skirt, reveal the dried bone and warmth, bed and coal of what we could and shouldn’t be.

bivouacked in moonlight and sound so that escaping the wheeze of shore in a scattered lace written out along the beach you can read you, in a scribbled, tide-abandoned tongue, the hours waiting and smelling themselves.

Prose Flows Down The River

the linoleum reflecting cheap 70’s blue sky, the covers of magazines trickling through the limbs of downed trees, newsprint smoldering above poorly enunciated fires and books, books stack, leaning and reaching towards the sun, telling no stories, inventing no truths about eddy foam swirling, panting after crawling through the lungs of wheezing channels and roads that swell and slosh against the creek of camp, searching the cracking and aging, the pale and smooth bed its flesh sweats against.

The Burden Of Watch & Motor

The quiet opened and revealed the end of the Nob, which seemed to widen with each paddle stroke as it nudged its shoulders toward Chesuncook; the end of the trip, the final night. The sound of phones and traffic, nines & fives, un-raked leaves and the burden of watches and noise of motors arrive, the machinery of everyday life, all seemed closer now, and our beers were warmer than the water we fought through on our way towards Gero Island. The quiet was heavy until it was ripped through.......

Taut Cellophane

The late afternoon brought a slow river of taut cellophane, it's flat sheets disturbed only by the random surfacing bubble. We cut through it easily, slow and quiet. The river's soundlessness only amplified the slosh of paddle-blades, cutting at the flesh of the Penobscot. The water dripping, littered a trail of cylindrical ripples that echoed through the corridors.

This stretch between Big Island and Chesuncook was the most flat, dead water we had yet encountered; which lent to a mood of childish boredom. Every turn had something new, every stump erect in the distant water was a staring moose, every downed tree and protruding river stone an obstical worthy of a skate park.

As we approached (pronounced in a low baritone native accent): "Chesuncook".... the winds seem to hold their breath.

Purging Itself Of Light

The Productive
Prolific
Repleting River

purging itself of light.

Flies Only!

Along the Penobscot the average bobber and beer fisherman is not aloud. It is fly against fish on the Upper West Branch. So our only recourse was to drink and watch the fine art the angler employs in deceiving trout with a deliciously swooping artificial fly....from shore.

The white Hips Of White Water

Theres something about the white, the crumple of flesh in the hip, where water decides to fold itself, attack whatever object its white fists engage. Something ultimately feminine that draws men towards it. Some seduction only understood when you touch it, walk through it or are finally engulfed by its power. Something that makes you feel triumphant when you emerge from its persuasion.

wha?

photos by rick beaty