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Acadia National Park: Art of the Trail
by Wayne Curtis
Magnificent vistas along the miles of hiking paths and carriage roads in Acadia National Park are the result of man's planning as much as nature's hand.
On a cloudless August morning, I'm sitting atop The Beehive, an open, rocky hilltop in Acadia National Park that overlooks Sand Beach and the Gulf of Maine beyond. The sun is glinting off a dappled sea, lightly scored with iridescent ridges, like scales on a brook trout. Not a single other person is in sight. I hear only the sound of waves lapping, breezes murmuring in the conifers below me, and my heart thumping with perhaps a bit too much vigor. The ascent up this low knob follows a rugged path inscribed up the hillside about a century ago. The trail consists in part of ladders and rungs hammered into rock, providing access to one ledge and then another, each of which one traverses--one hand on the rock face for security, the other extended out into space like a tightrope walker's--before coming to another set of rungs, or perhaps boulders crafted into steps. (The layered ledges give the hill its name.) When people think of Acadia, they think of it mostly as a refuge for nature; it's been viewed as such since the first artists from Eastern Seaboard cities ventured here in the 1840s. But Acadia is no more a work of pure nature than Michelangelo's David is a block of pure marble. The landscape and our access to it have been subtly crafted by generations of artists who designed and built an extensive network of trails: some 125 miles of footpaths and 45 miles of carriage roads suited to walking.
A good many of the pathways of Acadia, like the Beehive Trail, were designed for aesthetic impact. Visitors may not realize it, but when they hike Acadia, they're being manipulated every bit as much as when they stroll through the galleries of an art museum. That stunning view of Frenchman Bay that suddenly filled the northern horizon when I pulled myself up that ledge? That wasn't happenstance. The view was, essentially, curated and put on display for me. Indeed, there's a much easier way to ascend The Beehive: Just follow the trail through the woods around the north side and come up from behind. The view from the top is the same--yet it's somehow diminished. The trail up the ledges was crafted with every bit of the precision of an Albrecht Duerer engraving. The artists here worked in the medium of trails; they were among the Old Masters of the big landscape.
Today I'm planning a full day in Acadia's gallery, setting off on a nearly 12-mile hike, from Sand Beach halfway across the island's eastern lobe to the civilized splendor of the Jordan Pond House. The route will take me across three peaks--including Cadillac Mountain, at 1,530 feet the park's highest summit--sampling a broad collection of trails and trail types along the way.
At 9:15, I stand up, face northwest, and set off.
The tribes of Acadia hikers aren't identifiable by dress--everyone here wears "Life is good" T-shirts and hats--but rather by the trail greetings they proffer. And today I have plenty of opportunity for classification, at least after cresting Champlain Mountain and beginning my descent. Bar Harbor's excellent breakfast restaurants have apparently emptied out, and the trail population has started to swell.
The most populous tribe I encounter are the "How's-It-Going?"s followed by the "Much Farther?"s (a group, incidentally, that changes into the "Not Much Farther!"s when descending a hill). Another faction consists of the Grim Hikers, who soldier past with eyes to the ground and not so much as a grunt or a nod. A subset of the Grim Hikers clatters through the woods with a pair of extendable aluminum hiking sticks, scuttling like human/crab hybrids. They're often unwilling to cede an inch of trail.
Reader Comments
Comment from Bea Collins-Stroupe on August 2, 2011
The most beautiful place on earth.
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