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Acadia National Park, Maine
Outside, outside the world, out there you don't hear the echoes and calls
Acadia's only sand beach hides in Newport Cove in the shadow of familiar mountains and under the watchful eyes of the Precipice Trail's resident Peregrine Falcons. This is the view from halfway up the Great Head Trail, a good hundred feet above the madness of what could best be described as a damn cold beach.
At zero feet above sea level, where the rocks just can't agree on a common color, the ocean itself refuses yet again to stop its punishing, relentless attacks.
Five minutes south of town, the shore path winds toward the fog as even the local trees try to get a better view.
Not nearly as precipitous as the real (Champlain) Precipice Trail, the well worn trail that scales the Beehive still has its moments. Times when those who fail to follow the clever blue blazes find themselves plunging down cliffs, times when the ladders and rungs and bridges feel just unsafe enough to make them feel as dangerous as they really are, times when hanging off a cliff feels just as good as it sounds.
Rising only 525 feet above the adjacent Atlantic, the Beehive actually does kind of looks like a beehive from this view (sadly I have yet to find the view where Cadillac Mountain looks like a Cadillac). The Beehive Precipice Trail scales this face of the mountain, a lone hiker wearing a red jacket can just barely be seen near the summit, just right of center.
At the midpoint of a moderately ambitious trail, the North Bubble rises moderately high above the brave shores of Eagle Lake. The higher and far less popular of the two bubbles, the North Bubble has always been the one on the left, the one without that damn rock, without the glory. Its inferiority complex is not without its benefits, it is the only one of the two bubbles which allows one the chance, for just a moment, to find enough peace to make the entire moderate hike feel worth it.
Before you climb the South Bubble, before you climb the North Bubble, before you even reach the terribly reachable summit of Conner's Nubble, you find yourself traversing the surprisingly varied shoreline of Eagle Lake for a good hour. Across rustic boardwalks, across marshy shores, over rocks much larger than expected, through colonies of insects just happy to be alive and awake after a tough winter, all making an easy hour hike with no elevation gain somehow painfully long and difficult. Or you could just be like everyone else and park right at the South Bubble parking lot, walk an easy ten minutes, take a picture and leave- but where's the fun in that?
Giant, scaleless rocks stretch as far as the eye can see, especially if the eye ignores those trees and mountains just beyond the giant, scaleless rocks.
Fog and the sea slowly consume Bar Island's lupine, fields and trails as the harbor blindly continues along as if nothing was happening.
