SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER: DIspatch #106. Sprague River from Morse Mountain -

This is a preview of (Volume Three) Sketchbook Traveler: New England. Schiffer Publishing. Publication date: Fall 2022

Sprague River from Morse Mountain, Phippsburg, Maine. August 1, 2019. Looking south from 43.7376 x -69.8260.

Looking at a map of the Maine coast north of Portland, one finds fewer coves and headlands. Crumpled upward by tectonic plates and sculpted by glaciation, a labyrinth of islands among narrow fingers of land reaches southward into the Gulf of Maine. Early settlements sprang up along this fringe in the shelter of intervening waterways. Prior to automobiles and the two-lane blacktop, getting from place to place in the region was accomplished by water. Travel time by land between some of these villages could exceed three or four times that of going by water at the same speed. Scouting motifs with a roadmap on the passenger seat, I have firsthand experience with a maxim of humorist Marshall Dodge, “You can’t get there from here.” It must have been equally vexing to early explorers, sailing up what seemed like a river only to find a rocky cul-de-sac. Divided by long ridges interspersed by marshes, the land on either side of the Kennebec River rises from the coast into rolling terrain once blanketed by forests. Located south of Phippsburg, the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area was established by a local family and today is managed through a partnership between its nonprofit corporation, the Nature Conservancy, and Bates College, which uses the site as an outdoor classroom and summer residency. Viewed from the western slope of Morse Mountain, the marshy Sprague River meanders beside Small Point. Serpentine loops meander through verdant wetlands spill into a channel behind an alluvial sandbar known as Seawall Beach before mingling its waters with the sea.

Looking upstream on the Sprague River from the causeway, Morse Mountain Road. Photo by the author. August 1, 2019