Eagle Island

Eagle Island is a common place-name in New England because having bald eagles nest on your island isn't that unusual around here.

Our Eagle Island is a State Park in the middle of Casco Bay, half way between Popham Point and Portland. Of all the different and unique islands that lie within easy reach of the shore, why visit this one? It has eagles (though this year it had ospreys instead), seals, seabirds and nature trails, but what sets it apart is its human history.

Rangers

Robert Peary (b 1856), the great American Polar explorer, fell in love with Eagle Island in his Portland school days and later as a student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. He eventually bought the island and made it his home. The house is still there and is open to the public in summer. It is a fascinating place, with a history largely unknown to non-Americans who have been brought up on the South Polar stories of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton. I suppose the Antarctic steals the lime-light because it is a mountainous continent while Peary's Arctic is just floating ice: or was until now.

The house

Caretaker's House

In April 1909, when Peary became the first man to reach the Pole, the sea ice would have extended for many thousands of square miles more than today. In the same week as we were visiting Peary's home, the Arctic ice sheet shrank to the smallest extent ever recorded. According to Greenpeace, at the current rate of melting, there will be no summer sea-ice in 20 years' time. The consequences on climate, ecology, agriculture, and of course on us, are going to be serious. Already big changes happening in the sea, with water temperatures climbing in the Gulf of Maine and all the way up to Canada.

Footwear

Robert Peary

We approached Eagle Island by tour-boat from the Dolphin Marina at the end of Harpswell Neck, passing the neighbouring island where Peary kept his husky dogs; hence the name Dog Island. Our landing was delayed because a bigger boat from Portland was embarking passengers and there was a flotilla composed of private boats of all sizes milling about. We had time to take in views of the whole island from the water, sweeping up from the pontoon, along the long gantry, up to the ship-like house and right along the wooded crest to the remote seaward point. Other distant islands stood up like theatre props on the blue horizon. There was even a classic lighthouse on a rocky  island far in the background, called Halfway Rock.

Flickers

After an introductory chat from the two Rangers on duty, we were let looses for over 2 hours to explore the house and the island. Almost everyone does the house first and we did the same. The main "deck" has Peary's office and a host of intriguing artefacts and books to look at. There is an old kitchen and an AV presentation runs continuously in the drawing room next door. We were encouraged to look round and take photos, but not to touch anything. To save on wear and tear, we were asked to remove our shoes or wear overshoes, which was a bit of a novelty. I could have spent days in there. On the other hand, it was a beautiful, calm, tee-shirt day out there and we simply had to see the whole island.

Stove

Harbour seals played around the rocky point and little groups of eider ducks, cormorants and black guillemots dotted the mirror-calm sea. I spotted a pair of old-squaw ducks far out over deep water and watched a few bleached-white gannets shearing along the same channel. In the woods that top the island we were accompanied by the constant whistles of young ospreys, though we could not see them. A few warblers and flycatchers gave us tantalising views as they flitted in and out of the scrub and half a dozen waders were flushed from rocky bays on the shore line.

Back at the pontoon we asked about the second building on the island, which turned out to be the caretaker's house. Actually, its probably a better building to live in for the whole year than the main house, being fully winterised and set against the hill with the bulk of the island between it and the Atlantic. The Peary family often stayed until October but spent the worst of the winter ashore, leaving the caretaker to gather driftwood for next summers fires.

Eagle Island is a charming place on a calm day, and probably quite a thrilling place to stay when the sea is rough. I'm sure Robert Peary enjoyed whatever the weather threw at him because he spent a great deal of his life away in the frozen north where he conducted all kinds of surveys for the US Government. He would probably have approved of  using aircraft and satellites to make surveys and even the use of nuclear submarines to study the ice from underneath, but I'm sure he would have been dismayed to see the shrinking of the polar ice and the disappearance of the wildlife that he studied almost a hundred years ago.