Weather Patterns

It was cold and damp yesterday on Spruce Head Island. Not the kind of day you want in the middle of May, but the kind of day you accept when you live on the coast of Maine. Temperatures were in the 40's, wind howled off the ocean, and sheets of rain were spitting sideways all afternoon. The ground was soggy, the air was raw, and the smell of rain was everywhere. The forecast had called for a back door cold front to stall over the state, a front that carried with it a healthy dose of low pressure. The weather was terrible, but the work of the coast had to go on. Down at Atwood's Lobster Pound, two hardy souls were loading large wooden planks onto a lobster boat. The men ignored the rain and continued to press on, even as the wind began to really blow off the water. Muscle Ridge channel, the beautiful body of water that surrounds Spruce Head Island, looked ominous in the afternoon mist. Large whitecaps formed off rolling waves, as surges of spray slammed into the shore of this small island. It was not certainly not a day to be out on the water for any reason. I asked the men where they were taking the wood, noting that the boat was out of Criehaven, a lonely and distant outpost some 27 miles out in the Penobscot Bay. "Taking her out to the island," one of the men said. "But not today, she's too rough out there." I nodded in agreement, and left the men to their task. The main dock of the pound was covered in all sorts of lobster gear. Freshly painted buoys lay strewn about, many of them resting against rows of neatly stacked traps. Large multi-colored piles of coiled rope, painted red, black, and yellow, were scattered all around, their distinctive markings giving the old grey wooden dock a brief burst of color, on an otherwise dreary day. I continued to snap my faithful Nikon, until the rain became too much for me to bear. As I walked back to my car, I glanced back at the two men who had been loading the wooden planks onto their boat, half expecting them to have taken shelter from the pounding rain. They had never left their place on the dock and were still working as hard as when I had left them, an hour before.