The Rising Tides of Mid-Coast Maine
Georgetown Island is a tide-riddled place. On December’s full moon, tiny trickles embark on a brackish slalom through braided marshlands and icy coves. The Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers entwine with the Sasanoa, compelled by the drumbeat of the Atlantic. Then, at the peak of the swell, this liquid triad pirouettes and dances backward on a six-hour retreat of unraveling. The moon tugs hard here at the Seguinland Institute, where I have been an artist-in-residence for the past two weeks.
Nested in a gambrel sleeping loft of knotty pine, my studio is inhabited by friendly ghosts and the echoes of summer dreams, all overlooking the steady curve of Back River Bend. During my first night, I woke to a stranger standing at my bedside. His smile shone down, warm and bright, beneath a gray duff of uncoiffed hair and the folded-back brim of his navy watchman’s cap. The anchor buttons on his peacoat glinted in the dark. “Just a dream,” I whispered to the shadows, falling back toward sleep. “He’s only a dream.” I forced my eyes open one last time, but the darkness offered no witness. People come, people go; our ghosts wander, too.
A few tell-tale signs welcome you to the maritime splendor of Midcoast Maine in winter. The kitchen tap flows with salty water, the beach sand is frozen to the consistency of bouncy concrete, bald eagles scream their catch from tall spruces overhead. Slush-caked license plates announce “Vacationland” in green from every bumper, depicting a lone pine tree with blue star above, half-buried under winter road salt.
The small artworks I created were meditations on elemental forces—a mapping of contoured tides and lightly sketched memories from my recent time in the High Arctic. Between Svalbard and Seguinland lies an ocean equation of growing concern. After recording the sounds of calving glaciers in the far north, I stood before the consequential rise of sea levels in Maine, a bookending experience, with muscular volumes of cold saltwater flexing between the shores of here and there.
I swaddled my recording deck in hand warmer packets so the electronics in the MixPre6 wouldn’t freeze to death, and added extra wind protection to the microphones. Jamming the mic stands into the half-frozen beach, I pressed “RECORD,” and monitored through the headphones. Wave, after wave, after wave surged between my ears. It was the sound of the Arctic Ocean arriving in Maine, one rhythmic shove at a time.
Like the frigid wind whistling through the screened-in porch of my studio, the contemporary Atlantic refuses to be contained by small harbors and delicate coves. It laps and nudges at the edge of the boatyard, elevating the floating dock, submerging vaster quantities of marshland each season. At Back River Bend, the watery surface shimmers with rips of current, merging and yielding to itself in a way that seems fretful and frayed. The deep sea energy here is sublime, but also somehow vulnerable. Perplexed by where to run, water knows only to rise.
With my studio packed and a swirl of hug, heart, and hand-waving emojis flying between me and my fellow artists, I hiked out to Reid State Park to say “goodbye” to the Atlantic. Looking offshore, discordant wind waves sucker-punched the rocks of Little River Ledge, as snow flurries and tidal foam blew sideways down the beach. I couldn't shake the feeling that the sea itself was making a confused effort to navigate a shifting climate. Here on Griffith’s Head stood a Geological Survey station with a rusted, cylindrical phrase etched into its casing: “SAVE. DO NOT DESTROY.” I wondered who these words were intended for.
Given a rising sea and a flooding marsh, would this survey station be submerged when I returned to exhibit my work next year? Would the copious strand of Popham beach be pulled out to sea by winter storm events? What if those stark, imperative words—SAVE. DO NOT DESTROY.—were directed not at some malicious tampering human, but were instead pleading directly to the sea itself? I broke down, tears freezing on my cheeks, feeling that human sense of responsibility for things so far beyond my control.
Between melting glaciers in the Arctic and a marsh in Vacationland, transits a liquid force both buoyant and potentially deadly. The earth does not require our permission to change; we were never the masters of the tide. But if we can finally learn to listen to its rhythm, this receding and returning—the percussion section of our coastal souls—the lessons laid before us are not warnings of an end, but instructions for a new beginning.
Maine’s motto is one Latin word, Dirigo, translated to two words in English, 'I lead.' It’s a heavy claim, but a sturdy one. Dirigo has shifted from a boast of 1800’s expansion to a sobering mandate for 21st-century climate action. With a lone tree to anchor the land and a blue star to steer by, we chart a new course through the flood-tide. The moon pulls, the waters rise, and the beat goes on.