As a kid I loved playing checkers. It was, of course, a contest, and I sought those out everywhere as a way of getting ahead in life. But it also had the possibility of beginning the game (life) as a rank and file plebe, and, through luck and occasional skill, arriving one fine move at the moment where you could say, “King Me!”  

I still play checkers occasionally with my nephew, who seems just as enamored as I was with becoming Royal, but my aim has migrated from wielding power and toward the sublime. To find that sublime, you often have to leave the board behind entirely; instead you have to get out of the daily grid and into the unruly world. For me (and for many Mainers) that unruly world is the sea we hold in common. 

So I went the other day, beneath a gray, light-split September sky and through the fall-cool air. Flat water at the outset, and I figured, why not go Harpswell’s public Elm Islands via Ragged, rounding my day into a rough circle route?  

As always happens, once launched from Orr’s Island and over the first mile beyond the Pond Island ledges, the “out there” feeling washed in. Ragged Island, which had seemed to draw closer, seemed then to recede; the crossing of another mile+ looked longer, and even with the day’s gentle, one-foot swell, exposed.  

From my habit of chart-study, I know there are some 100’-deep “valleys” below these waters (along with a mid-passage ridge), and that depth summoned also big-fish thoughts. There, my habit of checking Sharktivity, a site dedicated to Great White Shark sightings and our figuring out ways to live harmoniously with said sharks visited. That two of these apex predators had been sighted way up to our northeast off Halifax earlier this summer, complemented my contemplation of our water. 

But no fin cut the water. Only the pleasant mutter of distant working boats and the tinkle of water dripping from my paddle accented the day. 

After circling private Ragged, I turned to cross the two miles to the public Elms, two scruffy knuckles of rock, with one eponymous tree. The lone elm is another story for another time, but it surely distinguishes its isle from all the other ledgy lurkers in eastern Casco Bay. 

What drew me to the Elms this time is the way they serve migrating monarchs. Rife with goldenrod and purple asters, in early fall, the Elms can seem like a flutter-by truck-stop on a busy interstate. 

Every so often on my 5-mile way there, a monarch had floated by. Invariably, each was headed southwest, and the light breeze from the north boosted each a little, offering a few seconds of rest from flapping. Each monarch seemed a promise. Writ small, that promise was of more kin on the Elms; writ large, it was continuation of the monarchs’ amazing annual migration that aims primarily at Mexico, and that takes generations to achieve. 

I got to the Elms at low tide, when they are one island. The eastern isle holds the elm, and it has also the most flowers. I beached my boat on the sand spit in between and went ashore. Here and there, a monarch fed on the abundant goldenrod. Once hunkered to that feeding, they will often ignore a nosy paddler and his camera. Taking on fuel for crossing the waters asks for focus. 

But on this day, I didn’t find the little flowered dip just behind the high-water mark packed with monarchs, as has happened before. A check of the purple asters suggested answer: most of the aster buds were still tight with promise; it would be another week or so before their purple supplanted the fading goldenrods’ yellow. Whatever triggers the monarch migration, this favored fall flower fuels our section of it. 

Part of the monarch miracle centers on this late summer generation. Unlike their parents and grandparents, who arrive in our area for the temperate season, breed and then die, these fall-gen monarchs will fly all the way to Mexico, winter there in a few special groves of oyamel trees, and then set out north again before breeding and finally dying. They are the specie’s long flyers, and they must bulk up measurably to make that flight. 

So, I loitered with one of the few forerunners. Every so often, the monarch would lift into the air to switch flowers. I recalled seeing dozens of them do just the same, orange flashing everywhere in my field of vision. Nearly dizzying. Today, just the two of us, another sort of miracle.  

I went then to the isles’ north end ledge and sat there looking out to sea and across toward Cape Elizabeth where this king would go on his way home.  

“King you,” I thought. 

Coda: If you would read the monarchs’ story, a fine and lyrical place to begin is Sue Halpern’s book Four Wings and a Prayer 

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident and chair of the town’s Conservation Commission. He writes for a variety of publications. His recent book, Critical Hours — Search and Rescue in the White Mountains, was published by University Press of New England in April, 2018; Tantor Media released an audio version of the book in February, 2019. He may be reached at [email protected]