... using a maine gazetteer and his own built-in inertial guidance system, john perfectly navigated us over fifteen miles of unpaved roads through the woods to the narrow isthmus connecting mount kineo to the mainland ... just a good rock throw out from the swing is one of the deepest spots of any body of water in maine, a darkly submerged ravine over 200 feet beneath the choppy surface of moosehead lake ... this swing—a most perfect swing, i will add—is one of those special "1% places" ...
... the beach ridge is almost a quarter-mile of these smooth skipping stones ... on this side of the peninsula the wind creates waves which make such activity difficult, but only thirty-forty feet away on the south side the water is mill pond smooth ... if my brother and i had been brought here as kids we probably would've never left ...
... mount kineo is a mystical place ... millions of years in the past some sort of volcanic activity pushed this huge mass of metamorphic and sedimentary rocks above the surface of the earth, only 17,000 years ago mile-high glaciers carved the mountain into its present shape ...
... john ponders a picture above a shore line that would have been most familiar to the paleo-indians who first inhabited this place ... they discovered that mount kineo was a source (north america's most extensive, it turns out) of flint-like "kineo rhyolite, a hard smooth-grained stone that is ideal for producing sharp knives, cutters, axes, and arrow and spearheads ... this material was so prized that tools made of it are found all along the eastern seaboard and as far inland as the ohio river valley, proof that thousands of years before the first europeans arrived here there was a well developed trading network connecting much of north america ...
... always, in time, even the hardest of rocks surrenders to life ...
... thanks to john, another "i've always wanted to go there" places checked off what is a rather long list ... after a few minutes standing on this little rocky point i decided it's now one of my favorite spots in the world ...
... from one of the greens of the little nine-hole golf course we watched a family of geese ...
... i had seen this fellow on the way in, as we were driving out several hours later he was still browsing away in the swamp alongside the tote road ... we pulled over and did a little out-the-window picture taking ...
... he was quite curious, and seem to have no fear of us ... john remarked, "his nose must be three-feet long" ...
... we ended our moosehead wanderabout with a nice late-lunch in greenville ... as we drove away i snapped a picture of the lake steamer "katahdin," which is over one-hundred years old and still going strong ... i've wonderful memories of the time i brought liz, adrien, sarah, and jon for an afternoon cruise on moosehead lake, a summer outing i highly recommend ...
