Beavers, bugs and borders...A hike to the Canadian border from Amity, Maine.

The Canadian border is a field and a stretch of woods away, directly behind my house to the east. It's about 1.5 miles as a crow flies from the back of my land, but almost three miles by the winding series of "woods roads" (roads constructed for harvesting timber by skidders) and old walking trails by foot. Few people would even know how to get there, and the Border Patrol likes it that way. This morning, at 8:30, with no breeze and a cool 63-degrees, I set off to see how things had changed in the years since I'd been there.

Here is the tree line at the back of the field behind the house. If I were to walk straight through these woods to the border it would be only about a mile, but there are some swamps, and no direct trail that goes straight back:

My land ends where the old corn stalks stop and the grassier section of the field begins:

The first woods road I needed to find is at the southeast corner of the field:

Looking back to the old homestead from the southeast corner:

Aha! The first woods road:

What has happened in the Maine woods as a result of mandatory recycling and charging people $10-20 to dispose of old appliances. Of course, there are large fines if they get caught:

You can just make out the "tree stand" in this photo, where the landowner has set up a place to watch for deer traveling this road during deer season. Deer never look up for predators, and so they are an easy kill if you happen to be at the right place at the right time when they walk by, below:

Ahead on the left of the woods road is the first of two beaver "hutches" (or "lodges") as they alternatively known. This first one is now huge. The beaver has added a room and turned it into a duplex. Just a few yards down the road is "junior's house" on the right and on a slightly lower pond; which, highly unusually, is not built in the middle of his pond, but on the banks of it. You'll see that I actually walked right up to Junior's place and took some photos that show what he would see from the roof, if he were being sociable and came out for a visit. (But, of course, he wasn't having any of that-- as these guys always dart inside when they hear me coming, and are rarely seen:)

Junior's place:

Leaving Bearverland Estates behind, I soon took a sharp turn onto the second woods road. The bugs, to this point of the trip weren't too bad. As long as you have a few feet of open space on either side of you, you can beat them back. But, once you get on to the walking trails (that you'll soon see) they get much worse, and you are moving fast just to keep them from picking you up and carrying you away for dinner. There was this one bug, though, that I just had to stop and photograph, as I had never seen a dragonfly quite like this one-- all brown and furry:

At last I came to the place where the "major interstate" ended, and I had to take off onto a side trail:

Yep, we're in moose country all right. There are piles like this everywhere in the northern Maine woods:

After turning on to walking trail number two, I came to this odd sight. Someone, apparently, thinks you can hunt deer sitting in a chair on the ground right next to a path. Nope. Unless he was plastered with deer scent, they'd smell him a mile away and come nowhere near that chair. Maybe he thought the chair being green would help:

Just a little distance after turning on to walking trail #3, you come to this derelict old hunter's camp (we call them "camps" here, but people call them "cabins" in the other 49 states, I believe.) It is right close to the border and my last landmark. From here there is NO TRAIL at all, and you have to just poke your way the best you can straight through some pretty dense forest and undergrowth. I took several photos of the old camp, because I think it's cool and kinda photogenic now:

After leaving the camp, it's just a couple hundred yards to the border, but it's the toughest couple hundred of the entire hike. As I mentioned, there is no trail now, and you are going downhill through what would have been some pretty serious standing water just a few weeks ago. Now, it's perfect mosquito breeding ground, and they swarm you hard! I don't like using bug spray, so I just tough it out, and fortunately, I didn't get bit more than a couple times.

The border used to be much more clear. It was about a twenty-yard wide "clear cut" in the woods, running due north and south. They've let it grow in a TON since I went all the way to it fifteen years ago, and it was hard to find at first. This is it:

Well, that's my photoblog for today. I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the deep woods of northern Maine. BTW...should you cross that stretch of clearcut...they will find you and come after you, because there are tall-tree and tall-pole-mounted motion sensing cameras mounted all over the place. Also, these beaver hutches were my inspiration for one of my personal favorite poems, "The Beaver Hutch" which posted a few days back in my blog. Enjoy!