Reporting Scene: Stone Steps

Jeff Meller

19 Oct 13

522 words

“One man’s warning is another man’s invitation,” Craig Nitreau, 50, tells his daughters.

“PARK CLOSED” warns the sign.

“Perhaps it was not meant as an invitation,” cautions[1] the obedient, older daughter, Aurora Nitreau, 9, accustomed to her father’s independence.

“Well maybe,” admits Craig. “But I want you girls to think for yourselves.”

The Nitreaus stroll slowly though the deserted parking lots, closed by a federal government shutdown, delighting in the quiet. It is peak foliage season on the Maine coast and normally the lots would be full. But no one is venturing up Dorr Mountain on Mount Desert Island. They have the mountain to themselves.

It’s a soft, yellow Indian summer morning. Craig, Aurora and 6-year-old Acadia have come to see the stone steps on the Murray Young Path. Hundreds of stone steps were built on this trail in the 19^th century by the Rusticators, rugged men who believed one goal of American civilization was to master nature.

The Young Path starts in the pine needle quiet at the edge of the parking lots and gives way to the brittle crunch of oak leaves higher up as the Nitreaus reach the first series of stone steps.

“The Rusticators didn’t look for the easy way up the mountain,” Craig explains. “They looked for the hard way up because that presented the greatest challenges.”

“The stairs almost look natural,” Aurora marvels, “as if they are part of the mountain.”

“What are those little burrow things in the front of each step?” asks Acadia, pointing to a series of hemispherical grooves about 4 inches deep.

Craig acts out for his daughters the process of building the steps. First, he wields an imaginary sledgehammer and chisel to split a large granite boulder by boring a series of deep holes. Then he tamps in black power to blast a slab from the boulder. Next, he drills smaller holes in the slab. Finally, he gently taps wedges in these holes until the slab split into stone steps, leaving the half-burrows Acadia observed.

They resume their climb up several more flights of steps, passing through waves of warmth on open trail and coolness when the trail returns to the shade. A whiff of skunk drifts across the path. They reach a lookout point half way up the mountain and break for cookies.

Eastward across the Gulf of Maine oak and birch tint the hills brown and yellow against the green backdrop of the predominant evergreens. Intermingled in the green are the blue jigsaw bays of Bar Harbor. Incongruously interjected into this bucolic wilderness is an immense cruise ship - 950 feet long with 19 decks – seemingly at anchor in a pine forest.

The hikers resume the trek. In an hour reach they top. It is not a long hike, but it is a lot of stairs, roughly the equivalent of climbing the Empire State Building. Their reward is a 360° view, 75 miles in every direction. They break out sandwiches as a vintage propeller-driven plane put-puts by, its propeller thwacking the crisp air at a leisurely 85 mph.

“It feels like we’re on top of the world,” Acadia exclaims.

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Sources:

None.

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[1] I appreciate the advice to use the more neutral verb “said” in connection with quotations. But I will use more descriptive verbs as a matter of personal style.