Month: June 2025

After a spate of fog, cold, and roiling water, good weather has returned. With the heat dome enveloping the east coast, we sit contentedly on Seguin.  Saturday the 21^st was a day of firsts. It marked the first trip upta town to replenish the larder that was getting thin and clean work clothes that were getting ripe. Though traffic and parking were reminders of what I hadn’t missed, ice cream at the Fountain and seeing a groom and his entourage walking to his wedding on the Bath waterfront were a treat. Mainland friends Logan and Shawn made the purposeful trip easier as they re-supplied us with fresh water and laundered clothes.

While I was gone to town, two traditional wooden boats jockeyed for the new deep-water mooring. The Harvey Gamage, a 130’ gaff rigged schooner tipped out the 87’ Bowdoin designed for Arctic exploration. The Harvey Gamage crew brought an influx of visitors as they made a quick visit up to the light. We hope the Bowdoin returns soon!

As beautiful as the island undeniably is, it is the eclectic visitors who continue to make the place and our stay here rich. A young Dutch family, just a few weeks from finishing an 18-month circumnavigation of the North Atlantic, had tales of distant ports and crossing with other boats from the Azores but found Maine familiar and a good transition to their imminent return to Amsterdam. The three kids aboard loved Po the dog and in the cove fashioned him a driftwood shelter adorned with buoys.

I got the museum shop in order, and Peter tasked himself with building new rock steps making the way from the beach to the wooden staircase easier to negotiate. As he worked, some spry Kennebunk octogenarians arrived for an annual visit they hadn’t missed since the late 1950s. They embraced the views and relished them as though it were their first time on the island.

Neighbors, formerly of Mouse Island, brought their grandson just freed from the school year to see the light and look at where they’d been and where they were heading. The summer, and all it offers, lay out in front of him.

Last, we had a great visit from the crew of the Isabella. Fresh from a reenactment of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the 39’ scaled down version of a halibut schooner put into the cove. Out of the Essex Maritime Museum and Burham boat shop, it overnighted before heading, like many others, to Boothbay’s Windjammer days. The young apprentices aboard were learning both traditional boat building skills, sailing, and navigation. As the hail and hearty crew departed, they left with the rallying cry, “Keep our coast analog!”

From our vantage point, we see where the Kennebec River meets the ocean, and the wind and currents swirl the shades of blue and white in every direction. This view has changed little since the Western Etchemins plied these waters long before George Popham, Christopher Levett, or the French explorers arrived in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Historian Bill Haviland writes that Etchemin means “’real people’ as opposed to animals, monsters and other people.” They were coastal hunters and gatherers who fished the quinibequi for salmon, sturgeon and other anadromous fish and traded furs first with neighboring indigenous groups and later the Europeans. Writing in the early 17^th century about the Etchemins, French Jesuit Priest Pierre Baird recounts, “from the month of May until mid-September, they are free from all anxiety about their food; for the cod are upon the coast and all kinds of shellfish.” He describes how they sometimes ventured beyond the shore to open water to harpoon whales.

Though people have asked and we have looked, to date we haven’t seen any whales or sharks. Father’s Day did bring an affable group of picnicking marine scientists specializing in sharks. They, like the post-blueberry-pancake family from Fiddler’s Reach and the folks cruising up from Yarmouth, took advantage of the sunny weather and fair seas to enjoy the newly cleared trails and sandy beach.

Today, a few days later, the whale adjacent theme continued when a new NOAA vessel speed monitoring system arrived for installation. Seguin will house the device which analyzes ship speed compliance in a conservation effort to reduce Right Whale collisions.

The marine bounty the Etchemins and early Europeans found off Seguin and environs has changed, but we still hear the fishermen who head out in their boats early most mornings in all weather and challenging visibility to catch what lies beneath.

Read more about the Western Etchemin and early Maine history in Emerson W. Baker’s “Trouble to the eastward: the failure of Anglo-Indian relations in early Maine”

Nearly 100 years ago, Connie Scoville Small and her husband Elson arrived at Seguin for the post of first officer Lightkeeper and wife. They came from Avery Rock light down east near Machias. They arrived by steamer with their furniture and cat ready for a new opportunity. Connie writes of her household items being pulled up the tramway and the beautiful clover and grass as she was greeted by two families with a clutch of children. Peter and I arrived June 4^th on a perfect Maine day to our stay as caretakers of this wonderful spot. With no tram in order, we were fortunate to have John and young and fit Dan, FOSIL volunteers, along with Chris and Tom to help us lug our provisions, gear, and water for the beginning of our stay. The steep hill was mounted by the collective dozens of times, and Po, the leggy black dog, made the trip up and down each time.

Coming up over the rise we were greeted with the idyllic sight of the house, light, and fields of lush grass. Andrew Wyeth could not have hoped for a purer scene to paint. After an orientation of all systems mechanical and historic, the others returned to Popham on the boat with Dave at 4:00.

Connie Small writes of housekeeping in The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife.  As a couple, they were responsible for the care and maintenance of the home and tower where they resided. Inspections could come at any time and early in the morning hours. A poster reads: “Good housekeeping is the key to safety. Cleanliness, order, and a place for everything are essentials of safety.” When we arrived, the Seguin house and museum needed some tending after a damp, shuttered winter. Murphy’s oil soap, the broom, and a scrub brush were all employed forthwith to spruce up the building. Outside the mowing began earnestly first down below for campers and later on top of the hill. The purple martin roosting in the bird house and garter and smooth green snakes supervised as we attacked the Sisyphusian task of cutting and raking the grass near the buildings.

Fog and windy wet on a few days made clear that not all days would be picture perfect, but the charms of ‘soft weather’ are many. Heavy winds meant our Wednesday constitutional off island had to be postponed, but in the end, there wasn’t a particularly urgent need to leave for the mainland anyway.

When discussing visitors, Connie Small mentions a throng of gill netters who arrived eager to listen to opera on her radio and an uncontrolled monkey that ransacked her bushel basket of hard-earned blueberries. We, fortunately, have been monkey free; however, a few visitors have already made their way “before season”. On our first night, a sailor who is narrating an audio book on Maine lighthouses stopped by the backdoor to welcome us to our experience. Others spanned in age from a two-month-old with pre-school siblings and Harpswell parents to college women and their dad making an annual pilgrimage via Hermit Island to delightful Popham residents out for a Sunday boat ride. Each brought good cheer and well wishes as we embark on our summer on Seguin.