LETTER FROM BOBOLINK FARM
SHORE VISIT
By Barbara Tatham Johnson
On January first, the temperature is well over forty degrees. The highways
are clear of snow and ice. A brisk wind blows. My husband and I decide to
drive to the shore at Popham and walk the mile-and-a-half of beach from Fort
Popham to Popham Beach State Park. At this time of year, for all of
January’s mildness, we want wide ocean vistas, tangy sea smells, and the
boom of surf on sand to lift our spirits.
In Phippsburg, we pass a small slate headstone decorated with an American
flag and plastic flowers that is close to the berm of Route 209. Years ago,
when we first noticed this stone, we found it a curiosity and used it as a
signal as we approached the junction of Route 209 and Route 216 where we
made the choice to hike Morse Mountain to Seawall Beach or to visit the
state park and Fort Popham. Recently, I learned the grave had a story of
constancy and memory.
Nathaniel Morason, citizen of Sebasco, a village on the west side of the
Phippsburg peninsular, died in his twenty-eighth year on October 15, 1815, of
influenza while serving as part of the local garrison at Cox Head on the
Kennebec River as the War of 1812 dragged to its conclusion. Friends carried
his body homeward across the swamps and marshes of the roadless peninsular.
Exhausted, they stopped three-quarters of the way to Sebasco on that hot
Indian Summer day and laid Nathaniel to rest on a piece of high ground.
Years later, a road was constructed to Small Point, and Nathaniel’s
resting place became visible and accessible to passersby. Residents and
school children continue to tend the grave with flowers and flag in a
touching act of remembrance of a common man.
We park at the massive construction of granite blocks that is Fort Popham,
built at the start of the Civil War to protect maritime interests on the
Kennebec River. On hot summer days, the Fort offers cool recesses to
visitors. On a January day, we move on to the sandy beach that is the
western shore of the Kennebec River where it empties into the Atlantic
Ocean.
We pass the spread of clapboard buildings of Spinney’s restaurant and
guesthouse, now closed for the season. Spinney’s is a survivor of the
thriving vacation hotel community at Popham Colony in the early twentieth
century. The forces of storm and tide have erased most of the seaside
hotels, but a few seasonal bed and breakfast cottages and the decommissioned
Coast Guard station, now converted to a guest inn, remain for summer
visitors. A small skeleton forest of tilting weathered pilings, remains of
the pier and wharf that served the community, stands on the river’s shore.
Two common loons in their drab winter plumage ride the chop in the middle of
the river, far removed from their summer life on Maine’s quiet lakes and
ponds.
The sun, low in the sky, moves in and out of the clouds, and the afternoon
is not bright. The wind blows at our backs off shore as we walk toward Wood
Island. In summer at low tide, the island is accessible on foot across a
broad sandbar, or tombolo, formed from the low-energy wave action between the
island and shore where the river deposits more sand than is eroded over
time. The rocky outcrop of Fox Island farther along the shore is connected
to the mainland by its own tombolo. The sand at Popham is fine and
light-colored and comes from the sediment brought by the Kennebec River.
Most of Maine’s other beaches are composed of pulverized glacial till.
Low-energy wave action is not the norm in December. We see evidence of the
river’s might and the sea’s surge as we head toward the ocean. Large
windrows of finely broken leaves, grass, and stems mark the limits of
successive high tides. Almost two feet deep, a yard across, and one hundred
fifty or more feet long, each windrow appears as if a huge composting
machine has been at work. Here and there beached logs and tree trunks lay
atop or beside the windrows. This material is the result of a mid-December thaw
that melted deep snows and brought heavy rains that created flood
conditions, sending the river grinding and grating along its banks. Storm
surges in spring will remove the debris, and, by summer, the beach will be
clear for summer visitors. Winter shore forces are at work now.
Skeins of nylon rope and hawsers, broken plastic gear, planks, and parts of
decks lodge against the three-foot-high cut the waves have made in the low
dunes of the beach’s winter berm. As we walk west toward the park beach, the
wet sand of the pummeled beach sinks beneath our steps. Any shell remnants
are tiny bits and crumbs not worth picking up. The sunlight glaring off the
choppy surf between Fox Island and the beach seems brighter than the sun
itself. Winter sunlight feels more reflective than heat giving in the open
space of surf and sand. We search with binoculars for gulls or shore birds.
A few crows sort through debris in the low dunes. We catch sight of the
wind-whipped wave crests of the sea coming ashore in front of the expanse of
Sprague marsh far down the beach toward Small Point. The wind beating down
the length of the marsh catches the gathering swells just as they break and
whips the topping spume seaward in great plumes of froth and mist. These
waves pound the sand with several thousand tons of pressure per square foot.
At high tide, they tear particles from the granite ledges of Morse Mountain
to mix with the river’s finer sand particles.
We walk back to the car past the cottages of Popham Colony. Some are close
to the encroaching sea that erodes more of the ocean frontage each year.
Clouds block the sun as we drive toward Bath on Parker Head Road. Then, as
we near Route 209, the pyramidal branching crown of a tall European linden
tree and the spire of the nineteenth-century Phippsburg Congregational
Church that stands behind it on a hill are lit by a ray of sun. The tree,
planted in 1774 by James Cobb, has flourished in its maritime environment to
reach a circumference of two hundred inches and a height of one hundred four
feet.
This piece of Maine coast between the Kennebec and the ocean abides its
removal and rearrangement, and those who live here find their own ways to
endure.
