Sometimes we think the principal industry in Maine is publishing giveaway newspapers filled with ads for local businesses, human interest stories, and columns about local gardening, hunting, fishing, and hiking. I envision people who worked for the Boston Globe and the New York Times retiring to Maine, saying, “I always really wanted to run my own newspaper,” and starting one. At any rate, Arlene picks up as many of those papers as she can find at Hannaford’s and flips through all of them. This time she noticed an outdoors column that described a hike not far from us, up Rattlesnake Mountain.
Arlene’s cousin Neil and his wife Olga were visiting. Neil had surgery for a detached retina within the past week. He was pretty much running on one eye at this point, but he felt that some walking would do him good. The description of that hike sounded about like what he wanted.
Olga asked me if I would like to drive their car to the start. Since I knew roughly where we were going, that made pretty good sense. It turned out to be a special treat, though, because they have a Prius. It’s quite a bit different from anything I’ve driven before. Firstly, the key is entirely electronic. You plug the remote door control gizmo into the dashboard rather than turning a starter switch. Secondly, the instrument panel is not on the dashboard but rather way up in front under the bottom of the window. It’s entirely electronic, also. Third, the gear selector is a little bitty joystick rather than a selector lever. You just move it to “drive” or “reverse” and let it pop back to its resting position, and the car remembers which way you wanted to go. If you stand still for more than a few seconds, the engine shuts off — it just figures, why should I waste gasoline not going anywhere?
The trailhead was surprisingly easy to find. There were several cars parked in a grassy lot exactly where the newspaper described it. It’s on privately owned land that the owners have marked off for hikers to use. The owners have named it the Bri-Mar trail after people with whom they hiked in the 1960s. There’s a very professional looking sign at the parking area with a few rules, mostly along the lines of “please don’t litter” and “no fires anywhere on the trail.” No motorized vehicles are allowed beyond the parking area, nor are bicycles. This time of year there weren’t a lot of wildflowers in bloom in the meadow at the start of the trail, but there were monarch butterflies flying around the milkweed.
After a couple of hundred yards on a logging road through a fairly level stretch of forest (which Neil said was already enough to make them feel as though they were far from New York City) the trail started steeply up a rocky hillside.
We met several groups of hikers on the way up, at the view overlook area, and on the way down. We seemed to be out of step with the rest of them in that we didn’t have any Labrador retrievers with us. Most of the walk was in pretty dense woods, but there were two open spots with impressive views. This is looking over Crescent Lake —
… and this is a view of the more distant Panther Pond, with a little of Lake Sebago beyond. There’s supposed to be more of a view over Sebago further along the trail. but this is as far as we went.
and Neil and Olga at the top.
