My longing for adventure has been building as the winter here drags on into March. As a salve for cabin fever and to satisfy my wanderlust I’ve been taking micro-excursions venturing out of the studio. This past Sunday, Laura and I headed off-island and eastward toward the Canadian border in search of new scenery and any hint of spring Maine could offer.

We’d traveled to Great Wass Island many years prior - with much younger boys in tow - to hike the 1700-acre preserve just south of Jonesport. Preserved by the Nature Conservancy in 1978, this hike traverses one of the forty-three islands that make up the Great Wass archipelago. And, it felt every bit as wild and unexplored as I’d remembered.

Nearly six miles of trail passes through coastal peat bogs, sedges, stands of jack pine and black spruce and the wooded first leg opens to the Atlantic and a series of broad granite ledges. A churning, frothy sea bordered the next two legs as the broken trail headed east roughly following the shore for several miles, weaving in and out of hidden coves strewn with perfect pearled cobbles of pink and gray granite. The trail moving from protected inlet to open ocean in short spans. A few of the cleaved granite spires rumbling as air trapped in pockets below clapped out on the rising tide.

As impressive as the natural scenery was, it was impossible to ignore the volume of human trash strewn amongst the flotsam at the shore washed in on storm surges. Trap lines and travelers, fathoms of rope, plastic bottles, hydraulic fluid, gloves and impossible lengths of black pipe, troubling artifacts in such a remote, seemingly-pristine place.

Leaving the studio is as much a part of my creative practice as drawing and building models; an intentional act. And yet, it’s not a choice easily made when deadlines loom or the pressure of publishing weighs heavily. I never regret it though. And, making it a point to document the trip is permission to become something I’m not: an artist, a photographer, an editor and a documentarian. It’s difficult to describe exactly why that is but somehow it makes me appreciate it all the more.

A special thanks to Finn Beales, whose book, The Photography Storytelling Workshop, is never far from reach. It’s a new acquisition in my library, I’m starting to wonder if it’ll ever see the shelf.