Campobello & Grand Manan Islands
Morning, bright and clear and we find ourselves on a picturesque quilt of water and headlands, not really the sea, not really the land. We are anchored off of Campobello Island, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Beloved Island”, where the family’s 34-room summer home still stands and is now the centerpiece of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. Now, where once the young President-to-be explored the woods, beaches, bogs and sea, so too did we.
I do not get ashore a lot, it is not my ecosystem, I float rather than stand, but I took a rare stroll to the visitor center and was surprised by the number of late flowers: rose, dogwood, snapdragon, evening primrose, mustard and more. I also thought about when this was someone’s home. The world was bigger with fewer roads, no commercial jets and one did not just stop here for the weekend, but rather for the entire summer.
The local residents of Campobello and Grand Manan, our afternoon destination, still make their living fishing the bountiful waters of the Bay of Fundy, but more and more it is fish farming. There were two fish farms near our anchorage that raise and harvest over a million Atlantic salmon in three-year cycles. I wonder what young FDR would have thought about that? Change seems out of place where summer and childhood are timeless.
My world, the bottom of the sea, can also seem timeless, untouched, unchanging, but that is not true either, usually it is just the world turning, although, more and more it is our own footprints I see. I took a look, this afternoon with our Remotely Operated Vehicle, and yesterday and the day before that with SCUBA. I am pleased, there are still cod, haddock, scallop, lobster, clam and crab, all edible, all harvested, all there, albeit smaller and fewer, but all there and summer is not yet over. Why should it be? The lobsters are really big at the little marina, at Flaggs Cove where we anchored at Grand Manan, they are protected now and I bet they will be even bigger next year. That will be good, to see, to remember, a place beloved where you would want to spend the whole summer!
Morning, bright and clear and we find ourselves on a picturesque quilt of water and headlands, not really the sea, not really the land. We are anchored off of Campobello Island, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Beloved Island”, where the family’s 34-room summer home still stands and is now the centerpiece of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. Now, where once the young President-to-be explored the woods, beaches, bogs and sea, so too did we.
I do not get ashore a lot, it is not my ecosystem, I float rather than stand, but I took a rare stroll to the visitor center and was surprised by the number of late flowers: rose, dogwood, snapdragon, evening primrose, mustard and more. I also thought about when this was someone’s home. The world was bigger with fewer roads, no commercial jets and one did not just stop here for the weekend, but rather for the entire summer.
The local residents of Campobello and Grand Manan, our afternoon destination, still make their living fishing the bountiful waters of the Bay of Fundy, but more and more it is fish farming. There were two fish farms near our anchorage that raise and harvest over a million Atlantic salmon in three-year cycles. I wonder what young FDR would have thought about that? Change seems out of place where summer and childhood are timeless.
My world, the bottom of the sea, can also seem timeless, untouched, unchanging, but that is not true either, usually it is just the world turning, although, more and more it is our own footprints I see. I took a look, this afternoon with our Remotely Operated Vehicle, and yesterday and the day before that with SCUBA. I am pleased, there are still cod, haddock, scallop, lobster, clam and crab, all edible, all harvested, all there, albeit smaller and fewer, but all there and summer is not yet over. Why should it be? The lobsters are really big at the little marina, at Flaggs Cove where we anchored at Grand Manan, they are protected now and I bet they will be even bigger next year. That will be good, to see, to remember, a place beloved where you would want to spend the whole summer!
