“We were determined to hike as much of the park as possible despite the rising temperatures. In a flat, sandy area surrounded by tall trees, we began to unload our gear. Sweat poured down our faces and backs as we pitched our tent and rolled out our sleeping bags, which stuck to our skin in the heat. A hundred meters from camp, we found a water pump and used it to fill our glass bottles. By mid-afternoon, we had set out on a steep 1.5-mile trail to Beech Cliff, an edifice that looms over Echo Lake. The sun singed our skin, but ferns and birches and pines danced in a light breeze all around us. Everywhere was beauty.

“As we climbed, I listened for the birds. I knew from our guidebooks that many of Maine’s forest birds stop singing in late summer, but this was a peak migration period for shorebirds, and Acadia—a slip of land surrounded by ocean—falls directly in their path. The books brimmed with photos of gulls and loons filling the sky and dotting the shoreline. But on the trail, I heard nothing. I squinted toward Somes Sound in the distance, hoping to see the gulls as tiny white specks in the fjard, but saw only water.

“Where were the birds? The rodents? Even the bugs? As a child, I was terrified by loud noises. But here, with two hands on a boulder and my feet sinking into hot, dark peat, it was the profound silence that filled me with dread…

[…]

“An hour into the hike, the trail grew more vertical and less distinct from the rest of the forest floor. Vines and thick roots crossed the path, making it difficult to find our footing. The air was dense with heat; I could feel it pulsing in rhythm with my heart.

“At the trail’s halfway point, we paused to catch our breaths and drink from our water bottles. The trees were still quiet—so quiet that we could hear human voices traveling up the cliff from the lake below. Then, suddenly, a bird call. A single gull appeared overhead, its belly a white flame against the blue sky. It circled above as if watching us, before disappearing from view. We waited for others to follow, but none came. Instead, more silence; more stillness. There would be no “snowstorm” of gulls that day…”

Text: Amy Brady, Encountering Beauty and the Effects of Climate Change in Acadia National Park, Catapult.

Pic: Max Ernst, page from “Oedipus (Oedipe), Volume IV,” from A Week of Kindness or the Seven Capital Elements (“Une Semaine de bonté ou les sept éléments capitaux,” 1933–34)