Seacoast History Blog #51
June 22, 2009
NEW PHOTOS ADDED: This was our tenth (or maybe 11th) season as stewards on Smuttynose Island and by far the most revealing. The details will all be fleshed out in an essay, but until then, the upshot is, that there was definitely prehistoric activity on the Shoals. A small group of arrowheads found deep in the bottom of an archeological test pit makes it official. I was standing nearby when the digger made the discovery last week. (Continued below)
Earlier tests in the 1990s – and don’t quote me on this – did not turn up anything earlier than the colonial period. But we’ve always assumed that Native Americans made the journey to the Shoals to hunt. Now we know it’s true.
I’ll run down the details soon, but for sure, it was a productive week. The archeological project under Prof. Nate Hamilton will continue for at least three more years and we expect to see a stunning body of data that should redefine the way be think of the islands.
This year we had miniature goats on island instead of sheep. Never caught their names, but both were neutered males and the brownish one dominated his snow white buddy. They seemed to be nowhere and everywhere, one moment following a team of bird counters from the Marine Lab across the island, but forever underfoot whenever we crossed the lawn from the Haley cottage to Rozzie’s or the cove.
They scampered across the rocks like – well, like little goats – tried to climb down into the archeologists’ test pits, and were often seen standing atop the picnic table. They slept curled up on the front steps of Aunt Rozzie’s (or underneath when it rained). Although goats reportedly eat poison ivy, that is abundant on the island, they seem to prefer the tastier rose bushes. Visitors frequently asked if we no longer had to mow the acre of lawn with the goats around. We just laughed and kept on mowing.
I was able to successfully weed whack my beloved nature trail from one end of the island to the other, a process that takes four half-days of constant work. I came back each time coated in a cocktail of unknown vegetable matter.
The gulls and blackbacks seemed less aggressive this year, all 683 nesting pairs. Maybe I’m just used to being swooped and attacked and pooped upon as I whack my way along the trail. Efforts to use a generator and an electric trimmer failed and I went back to the traditional gas-powered unit. I didn’t create the winding path by the cemetery, over large rocks, through two ancient stone walls, through a bog and along the ropewalk to the cairn at the eastern end of the island. My job is simply to widen it from about one foot to three feet, without getting eaten by birds or overcome with poison ivy.
Our niece Sarah was along again and took over the attic of the restored Haley Cottage (circa 1770), which is where I imagine Celia Laighton Thaxter slept during the two years her family stayed on island around 1840. She got a little archeology training, managed the rowboat, rowed to Star for water, and read books.
My wife Maryellen made a memorable leap fully dressed into the cove at high tide to retrieve a boat that was drifting toward Malaga Island. That was the end of her cell phone and, except for my Kindle, our only communication link with the outside world. Thus cut off, we rowed across Gosport Harbor in a heavy wind and rain only to discover that the Uncle Oscar was not making any trips from the mainland due to bad weather that day. Waiting for the rain to let up, we hung out at Star, visited the museum, ate at the snack bar, shopped the bookstore, watched some dancers in the Arts Conference perform and rowed back. It was like visiting New York City compared to our isolated world at Smutty.
Nate has some interesting theories about the location of the Spanish sailor’s graves and the layout of the Honvet murder house. We explored another stone well that I had not seen previously, and conjectured about life in the MidOcean House.
I spent most of my spare time reading up on the murders for a future project. You’d think reading true horror stories by a dim lantern at midnight just a few feet from where the actual ax murders took place would be scary. But it isn’t after all these years. The more I learn about the islands, the more that one evil night falls into perspective. There have been countless thousands of other beautiful nights – including the seven we just spent.
You can almost see your way around out there by the stars alone. There are billions and billions as Carl Sagan used to say. And the tide comes in like clockwork, and the fog still rolls in on silent cat’s feet, and the sunsets are still to die for, and the air is still fresher than anything you find back in America.
Copyright © 2009 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.
