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| Goose Pond, which is actually salt water and has quite a tidal flow at Goose Falls |
Holbrook Island Sanctuary is a state park near Castine, Maine (apologies for the lack of chronological order to the posts, but some stories need to be told!) that we visited for an afternoon of nature walks and trail hikes. It encompasses Holbrook Island off the coast as well as a tract of woods and marsh on the mainland.
This time, we were prepared! Bug Spray! Sunscreen! Water! What a difference it makes to being able to walk in comfort for a much longer time. You’d never think this was the same family that set off to climb Pemetic Mountain on Mt. Desert Island two years ago with nothing more than half a pint of water and a trail map in our pockets, we had a backpack even.
We walked the Beaver Pond trail, which turned out to be much more of a swamp/woods walk than a walk around a pond teeming with beavers and otters. We never actually saw the pond, though we saw water, marshes, flowers, plants, frogs, and a variety of insects both beautiful and irritating. It is a very rustic trail, not heavily used but well marked and easy to follow.
When we walk as a family in the woods we always do so with the hope of catching a glimpse of some wildlife. It seems you almost always see something, though we’ve come to realize that we probably ought to head out earlier than noon if we want to see anything bigger than a squirrel. Not that we object to seeing squirrels, they are cute and the red squirrels up here in Maine are different from the gray squirrels we are used to. They chitter at you in annoyance when you invade their space as they scamper from tree to tree, unlike the grey squirrels that just run away.
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| Elusive wildlife not spotted in the Holbrook Sancutary |
We’ll figure it out; maybe head out at dawn if we want to see deer and otters and other more elusive beasts. But for now we enjoy a walk in the woods and what we see.
