Freedom, Skunk Cabbage, and a Nice Organic IPA

It doesn’t take a contagious disease to make an islander grateful for a nice chance to walk. With no commercial gym available, with roads often too icy, muddy, or rutted for getting too rambunctious on a bicycle, with hard physical work erratic and seasonal, and with limited exposure to “the outside world” under the best of circumstances, a brisk hike is often just the ticket for one’s mental health. These days, of course, it is even more the case–and I am hardly the first columnist to make that observation.

Now, we need a little disclaimer to establish authenticity, to wit: we all understand that recreational walking, on this island, has (for as far back as I know) been the almost-exclusive province of women. A man or child seen afoot is typically asked, “Where did you break down?” Occasionally a man will walk under doctor’s orders but it won’t last. There are a few known eccentrics, men who walk for fun, but hey–the exception makes the rule.

I am one of those who walk the roads, beaches, and trails on Matinicus and have done so before the current limitations on activity made “going for a walk” into a big deal. Those who live where they can hike, ramble, or saunter–and not just up and down some gray city street out of necessity for their dog–are the truly lucky. Don’t think we don’t know it. Here, going for a walk is neither an act of defiance nor anything particularly risky. We are indeed fortunate.

I heard that somebody from another Maine island, while stuck in Hawaii this spring, walked the beach and for his sins was summonsed and ordered to appear in court in Honolulu.

Here on the isle of Anarchy-haven we are generally untroubled by hardworking park rangers, well-intentioned local constabulary with itchy ticket-writing fingers, or arrogant neighborhood busybodies. Even indignant snitches haven’t got anybody with real authority they can snitch to. If you won’t respect other islanders’ desire for social distancing, we may bitch about you behind your back, but you aren’t too likely to be issued a summons.

If we could issue you a summons, we might try and make it so you had to appear in court in Honolulu. That would solve our problem.

Anyway, walking the same six or seven total miles of roads and paths means watching the seasons change, noticing slow progressions, and remarking upon details that someone with a more urgent errand could miss. This year’s winterberry and Christmas holly stayed pretty all winter, with brilliant red berries still on the bushes until just a few weeks ago. Last year, not so; the berries on some of them were gone before the holidays. All the business of the birds, I suppose. In any case, bits of primary color in the winter woods are the finest kind of eye-candy.

Likewise, sunsets. Not a lot of people on this side of the continent get to enjoy a full-bore, over-water sunset. Earlier in the winter, when the sun set in the middle of the afternoon, a walker could easily find herself in the right place at the right time to stand, more or less awestruck, and watch until it hurt.

Easter morning this year was unusual for being a pleasant and sunny one, and our annual trek to the beach for sunrise (no service, just sunrise) was maybe the best ever. Paul saw “the elusive green flash” at the moment the edge of the sun touched the tangent line of the horizon. I, sadly, did not, but he is a reliable witness and I cannot dispute his claim.

Any time the wind is not blowing on this island is strange, and worthy of notice and probably a picnic, no matter the temperature. A couple of times on my walks I’d end up at the north end of the island, and see the airstrip windsock hanging limp in the stillness, a genuinely unusual sight for a day without fog. Rare, as the old feller said, as hen’s teeth. Walking on the actual runway while conditions are “flyable,” by the way, is not a socially acceptable form of exercise.

Spring comes regardless of cold and wind, and to pound the same un-pavement day after day means you notice the first red buds on trees, the earliest flowers, the general greening. In the woods off the sides of the road across from well-maintained dooryards you might spot random hunks of flowers, where sod had been pitched at some point years back and with it, by accident, a few bulbs. There are clumps of crocus and daffodils in the roadside tangle where they couldn’t have been planted on purpose. There are also single daffodils planted entirely on purpose by some Daffodil Bandit, who took her extras around last fall to dispense them in public spaces. There are violets in the middles of paths, a mess of lily-of-the-valley here, brilliant yellow forsythia there, and the beginnings of the ubiquitous island lupines. On the road to Libby’s–which I hear is technically more like a bridge–there is skunk cabbage.

Eventually, the briars encroach, and the smaller paths become crowded with prickly things. Strands of spider webbing cross the trails, which I find annoying on my face. Neither of these bother a wintertime walker.

Out stretching my legs the day before the Big Snow on May 9th, I was treated to the delightful smell of freshly mowed grass. This is truly pleasing as long as you’re not at the same time trying to haul a square-wheeled, half-ton push mower up a side hill somewhere. It is a real luxury to be out strolling and be greeted with the fragrance of somebody else’s grass-cutting in the springtime.

For months, in the off-season, an afternoon hiker can think they have this place to themselves. You may never see the other islanders who share the same hobby. We might get a bit defensive, a little bit territorial, about our favorite trails. Evidence that somebody else has been there recently is not unnoticed. It is usually harmless; perhaps forsythia flowers dropped into the path where none grow, or a toddler’s footprint in the mud, or a hole in the road where a rock used to be, clearly dislodged by a four-wheel drive pickup clambering over. Or, it might be that freshly-emptied beverage can.

Picking up some of the trash from time to time makes one think about things. There are Mylar party balloons from the mainland, which find their way here and get stuck in the rosa rugosa, and under the trees there are shotgun shells with rusty ends from “them boys,” and there are cast-off items from the old days, interesting glass bottles with stories, or colors, or rumors about some old uncle who had to imbibe on the sly. It’s the cast-off items from the new days that make a recreational ambler mad, as in, “Hey, who tossed that can here? It wasn’t here yesterday!”

One day not long ago, as I was doing a little adopt-a-highway work, and walking with my hands full of broken pieces of some unidentifiable plastic object I’d hauled out from some bushes, and no doubt having eyes rolled at me for being such an inveterate sissy and general-purpose chump, and gaining for my troubles a handful of blackberry prickers I found left for me, on Rankin’s stone wall, a cool and unopened can of Peak Organic IPA. The neighborhood Cold Beer bandit had been around! Delicious. This island is a pretty decent place to go for a walk.

Eva Murray is the Recycling and Solid Waste Coordinator for Matinicus Island. Eva’s last lobster license was dated 1990, the year her son was born, and cost $53.00, which at the time she thought was an awful lot of money.