{"id":2797,"date":"2021-02-27T17:13:51","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T22:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/?p=2797"},"modified":"2021-04-07T11:52:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T15:52:59","slug":"bernier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/2021\/02\/27\/bernier\/","title":{"rendered":"A Collection of Poems: Isleboro by Ice, Last Ride of the Icebreakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matt Bernier<\/strong><\/p>\n

Isleboro by Ice<\/h3>\n

1835, Feb.8.\u00a0 Bay frozen to the outermost islands.\u00a0 Sleighs passed and repassed across the bay until March.\u00a0 J.Y. McClintock was the first to venture by this mode of conveyance to Islesboro\u2019, after which many others followed his example.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine (1877)<\/i><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He opens the barn door on another<\/span><\/p>\n

cold morning and discovers they\u2019re<\/span><\/p>\n

both restless, his horse\u2019s eyelashes<\/span><\/p>\n

fluttering at the sunrise across frozen<\/span><\/p>\n

Belfast Bay, James worrying that<\/span><\/p>\n

the ice\u2019s thickness portends another<\/span><\/p>\n

1816, another year without a summer,<\/span><\/p>\n

when the crops failed and his father<\/span><\/p>\n

crunched across a July hoar frost and<\/span><\/p>\n

starved his youth of his family\u2019s mare;<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

James never thought of the eruption of<\/span><\/p>\n

Mount Tambora in the Dutch Indies as<\/span><\/p>\n

the volcanic anger of a wrathful God,<\/span><\/p>\n

more like a shot heard across a field,<\/span><\/p>\n

and then another field, and another,<\/span><\/p>\n

until the cold echoed around the world;<\/span><\/p>\n

he tried to think of this year, 1835, as<\/span><\/p>\n

just another year, but the ice reminded<\/span><\/p>\n

the old timers of the winter of 1787,<\/span><\/p>\n

ice so thick on the bay the king tide<\/span><\/p>\n

lifted boulders from their sea beds<\/span><\/p>\n

and moved them around like troops;<\/span><\/p>\n

hay is already getting scarce, from<\/span><\/p>\n

fifteen to twenty dollars per ton,<\/span><\/p>\n

but James is surprised, when he finally<\/span><\/p>\n

looks into his horse\u2019s eyes, at the<\/span><\/p>\n

defiance, a snort and emphatic kick<\/span><\/p>\n

cracking a hemlock board on its stall;<\/span><\/p>\n

an expression, staring out the open door,<\/span><\/p>\n

that James later describes in terms of<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

revolution, his horse leaning into the<\/span><\/p>\n

February cold with the shiny steel bit,<\/span><\/p>\n

leather harness as stiff as tree bark,<\/span><\/p>\n

as James marches horse and sleigh<\/span><\/p>\n

to Board Landing and climbs onto the<\/span><\/p>\n

wooden seat, wrapping himself in a<\/span><\/p>\n

thick bearskin that once rolled in ripe<\/span><\/p>\n

blueberries on the east-facing slope of<\/span><\/p>\n

Frye Mountain, gliding out onto the<\/span><\/p>\n

heaving frozen harbor, free of freight,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

so that when the ice rings out like<\/span><\/p>\n

a cracking whip the horse thinks<\/span><\/p>\n

the race is on, something out of the<\/span><\/p>\n

mythology James used to teach students,<\/span><\/p>\n

the winged story of Pegasus, perhaps,<\/span><\/p>\n

quickly becoming the tale of Icarus<\/span><\/p>\n

as the horse follows the sun, gliding<\/span><\/p>\n

southeasterly across Penobscot Bay;<\/span><\/p>\n

later James cannot explain why he<\/span><\/p>\n

didn\u2019t turn the horse back towards<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a quick jaunt to Searsport, even when<\/span><\/p>\n

they sailed over the place where<\/span><\/p>\n

the two hundred seventy-seven pound<\/span><\/p>\n

halibut was caught years before, where<\/span><\/p>\n

they would later harpoon bluefin tuna;<\/span><\/p>\n

something about the vast, glittering<\/span><\/p>\n

whiteness of it all suggested a divine<\/span><\/p>\n

destination, a place you were supposed to<\/span><\/p>\n

reach for when gunshots and volcanos<\/span><\/p>\n

exploded, even when you were thirty-four,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

not knowing it was the end of an era,<\/span><\/p>\n

the Little Ice Age, it would be christened,<\/span><\/p>\n

and the manufactories and coal fires<\/span><\/p>\n

and locomotives would eventually ensure<\/span><\/p>\n

that the bay would never freeze, and the<\/span><\/p>\n

untrammeled sea ice and steam from your<\/span><\/p>\n

horse\u2019s nostrils kept you stoking the fire<\/span><\/p>\n

until you saw land, Turtles Head, the horse<\/span><\/p>\n

not daring to stop, ruffled Atlantic beyond,<\/span><\/p>\n

Islesboro by ice by the grace of winter.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/h3>\n

Last Ride of the Icebreakers<\/h3>\n

The end to Maine winters was prophesied<\/span><\/p>\n

by one last ride of three icebreakers,<\/span><\/p>\n

65-foot Coast Guard cutters, harbor tugs,<\/span><\/p>\n

converging on a frozen Penobscot River,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

black hulls reinforced for a denial of ice\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Bridle<\/span><\/i> slipping out of Southwest Harbor<\/span><\/p>\n

before dawn, <\/span>Tackle<\/span><\/i> from Rockland already<\/span><\/p>\n

looming in the darkness, awaiting <\/span>Shackle<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to slip its bonds in South Portland<\/span><\/p>\n

and storm northward past Vinalhaven\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

new moon wrestling tides, an existential<\/span><\/p>\n

struggle with sea level rise, nature defeated<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a year earlier in Antarctica, Twaites glacier<\/span><\/p>\n

retreating, collapsing, the news finally reaching<\/span><\/p>\n

the shores of North America, yet one last<\/span><\/p>\n

winter for Maine\u2014a cold snap and frazil ice<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

piling up in Winterport until the ice was<\/span><\/p>\n

compressed into diamonds sparkling in<\/span><\/p>\n

a fiery sunrise, day breaking on an epic<\/span><\/p>\n

battle, one last chance to move fast and<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

smash things, <\/span>Bridle<\/span><\/i> cleaving the ice floes<\/span><\/p>\n

in two, <\/span>Tackle<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Shackle<\/span><\/i> sending smaller<\/span><\/p>\n

pieces spinning into coves\u2014unlike the<\/span><\/p>\n

old days when the ice was a solid foot thick<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and the coastal mountains echoed with<\/span><\/p>\n

shrieks and crunching armor, eiders cloaked<\/span><\/p>\n

in black-and-white certainty nodding<\/span><\/p>\n

on the bay, icebreakers stopped cold\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ice surrendering freely, \u201ccocktail ice\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

the Coast Guardsmen later recalled,<\/span><\/p>\n

toasting a heritage of freeing the river<\/span><\/p>\n

for oil tankers that warmed the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matt Bernier Isleboro by Ice 1835, Feb.8.\u00a0 Bay frozen to the outermost islands.\u00a0 Sleighs passed and repassed across the bay until March.\u00a0 J.Y. McClintock was the first to venture by this mode of conveyance to Islesboro\u2019, after which many others followed his example. History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spire-2021-issue"],"yoast_head":"\nA Collection of Poems: Isleboro by Ice, Last Ride of the Icebreakers - The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability - University of Maine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/2021\/02\/27\/bernier\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Collection of Poems: Isleboro by Ice, Last Ride of the Icebreakers - The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability - University of Maine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Matt Bernier Isleboro by Ice 1835, Feb.8.\u00a0 Bay frozen to the outermost islands.\u00a0 Sleighs passed and repassed across the bay until March.\u00a0 J.Y. 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