RE: [Paddlewise] Acadia trip part three, Sutton Island.

Your Acadia trip report brought back one of my stranger memories of that
area. I studied photography with a well know photographer, Minor White, then
head of photography at MIT in the late 60s. We used to spend the month of
August camped out in Maine, either in the Acadia Park or Quoddy Head area. I
was with a group of 3 or 4 other students.

We'd be up before dawn with our tripods and view cameras ready for first
light. By 10 or so the light had changed and we generally put the gear away
until late afternoon.

I was out scouting perspective shooting sites, when I stopped at a small
inlet in the Acadia Park. I decided I'd collect some periwinkles and dulce
seaweed, to supplement dinner. I pulled my car off the road and then
scrambled down a steep embankment, and began collecting. The road was at the
upper edge of the embankment and at the point I descended, I could see a
good 1/2 mile in either direction.

After collecting a sufficient amount, and feeling a little guilty, since it
was a national park, I climbed back up the 50 foot steep embankment and as
my head cleared the road level, to my horror, I saw a ranger looking out at
the area I had been collecting with binoculars. He was no more then 25 feet
away but didn't seem to notice me. He was wearing one of the old fashioned
ranger hats, which I noted but didn't dwell on. I ran across the narrow road
to my car and tossed the bag of periwinkles and dulce into the woods and
turned around expecting to have to deal with the ranger. He was gone! There
was no other vehicle on the road and had he decide to sprint away, he'd
easily be visible on the exposed road.

I was dumbfounded. I looked down the embankment and he wasn't there, and he
couldn't have gone into the woods without my seeing him.

A few days later I mentioned this to a ranger who said that similar stories
occasionally turn up. He said that there was a ranger killed many years ago
in that area when his vehicle went over the side in a heavy fog.

I've never experienced any thing like that again and I wasn't on any type of
drug or intoxicant. Even today, the image of the ranger is as clear in my
mind as if it happened yesterday.

cya

***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not
to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission
Submissions:     PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net
Subscriptions:   PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net
Website:         http://www.paddlewise.net/
***************************************************************************