The patterns were beautiful and far more complex than I’d expected. This is what I noticed while flying over Brunswick last week with my nephew who is training to be a pilot with the Navy. While I’ve been in and out of our town’s coast’s nooks and crannies by boat and explored other shores on foot, this perspective was completely different. We took off from the Brunswick Executive Airport on the former Naval base and headed out over the center of town. On on a hot day you can feel so far from the ocean on Maine Street, but from the air I noticed how neatly nestled downtown is up against the border of the Androscoggin River with myriad peninsulas stretching out like fingers from the palm of its more interior lands outstretched. The image was clear – that there was more water than land everywhere I looked.  

Back in 2014, Brunswick’s Rivers and Coastal Waters Commission (RCWC) created a Harbor Management Plan that roughly divided the town’s nearly 4,000 acres of water into six areas: Maquoit Bay, Mere Point Bay, Middle Bay, Harpswell Sound, the New Meadows River, and the tidal and non-tidal parts of the Androscoggin River. I got to see all of these in one brief flight.  

After leaving town, we headed down Maquoit Road past the High School to Wharton Point. We were out just past low tide and the extent of the intertidal zone in Maquoit Bay was impressive. Tiny canoes dotted the mud and we could see diggers at work turning it over to harvest clams. Over 40% of the town’s water is intertidal which was not hard to believe when looking out at this stretch of soft bottom. You can see a map of the town boundary at https://www.axisgis.com/brunswickme/ if you’re interested.  

The patterns of water drainage visible on the surface were beautiful – like someone had been finger-knitting lace over the mud in curly-cues leading out from the many creeks and streams that feed into the bay. Further out, we could see the eelgrass waving in the shallow water and then beneath the surface as dark speckles. And a bit further out, there were schools of pogies like clouds moving under the water. 

Following the recent algal bloom in Middle Bay, I was curious to see what things looked like there. There were still bright green stretches of algae along the shore, but the vast extent of the coverage out into the bay had shrunk back a bit. One of the most interesting things I noticed here were smooth white round rocks emerging from the mud like the backs of diving whales.  

I wasn’t surprised to see many ledges revealed at low tide that pose hazards to boaters unfamiliar with their hidden existence. But, these white rocks were shallow and round – reminders of the glacial history of our coast when ice sheets scoured out the jagged cliffs of peninsulas and shaped our many islands. These rocks known as “glacial erratics” are the rolled-around smooth leftovers of all of that movement. 

From there, we crossed over Harpswell Sound and flew up along the New Meadows River. The New Meadows is an unusually complex connector between land and sea with its many inlets and shallow areas, some of which looks like southern marshland from the air. The watery areas that surround it seem to go on and on in both directions with many places only reachable by boat. Then, we flew out to the Kennebec to see the rushing waters of that powerful river flowing along the town of Bath, getting peeks of the wider sandier beaches further on.  

Finally, we circled back around to head back to the airport and things appeared larger and busier as we started to descend. In addition to the complexity of the waterfront and the connectivity of it all, one other striking observation I made was the amount of undeveloped land there is in such a stunning place. It made me appreciate the value that we place on our coast not just for its functionality but also for its scenic beauty. I also appreciate how much work has been done to help protect that through town management and planning and local land trusts and conservation organizations. Sometimes getting the bigger picture is essential to understanding the value of what is more often right in front of you.