We got home late yesterday afternoon, tired and filthy from the five days we spent camping at Baxter State Park. Non-Mainers may not be familiar with this remarkable place: more than 200,000 acres of pristine wilderness in northern Piscataquis County, with relatively primitive access and facilities: no concessions, no running water, no trash cans, and a single narrow gravel road winding into the forest. Mount Katahdin is the park's most famous feature. It's the end point of the Appalachian Trail--a massive granite presence looming over woods that bear considerable resemblance to my Harmony land. For all of us, that eerie familiarity was one of the hallmarks of this vacation. We could have been camping beside our own stream . . . except for the mountains surrounding us.

It's usually very difficult to get campsites at Baxter. There aren't many, and most are reserved in January. But Covid cancelations worked in our favor, and Tom was able to snag a huge tent site in a camping area that's usually saved for large groups. So for five days we lounged in hammocks and hiked on trails and splashed on stream ledges and cooked elaborate camp meals and played Yahtzee and read books and whittled sticks and killed many, many mosquitoes. We had no cell access, no news, no electricity. It was wonderful.

Here are a few photos. The first are from a hike I took alone to Cranberry Pond while the boys climbed Katahdin. The pond is surrounded by a cranberry bog, and among the cranberries are thousands of tiny sundews: carnivorous plants that attract insects into their pitcher-shaped throats. I saw no one else on this trail; not another human or human-made structure anywhere near it.

If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you'll get a better view of the sundews: the little red plants among the cranberries.

We did not see any large wildlife, though we did see bear scat and moose droppings. But I saw much interesting small wildlife, including this handsome snail.

A view of the understory, a mixture of ferns, bunchberries, wild oats, violets, winterberries, and many more whose names I don't know.

Photo of our kitchen shelter, taken from the comfort of  a hammock--

Art Deco beetle

Doubletop Mountain (I think), as seems from a bridge over Nesowadnehunk Stream. Later that day I sat in the water under that bridge. The next day we watched a mother merganser herd her ducklings downstream.

West Mountain (I think), looming over a tributary of the Nesowadnehunk--

 

James and Paul kayaking up a little outlet on Kidney Pond. Tom and I were behind them in a canoe.  Eventually we encountered a beaver dam and had to turn around.

Cute red salamander on the road, just after eating an enormous mosquito--

Paul playing Bob Dylan songs on his mandolin--

Tom whittling a piece of cedar firewood into a funny-looking garden ornament--

James making one in a series of over-elaborate marshmallow toasters--