Acadia, a Novel

By Douglas Kimball

Tim Collins, the head Ranger in Acadia National Park, must confront tragedy in his park. If it is not people swept from coastal rocks, it is people climbing rock faces without gear or training. This time a woman emerges from the forest, scraped and disheveled, claiming she and her husband were attacked by a large, light-colored bear in the Park. Her husband is missing.

Evidence at the scene of the “attack” is scant. Tim initiates a search for the man and orders the area near the alleged attack closed to visitors. This alerts the local political interests; it is peak summer season. Word of the attack, the closing and the search soon spreads to the media. “The Bear Scare/Search for the Missing Man” story gains traction and becomes the latest obsession of 24-hour cable news

Search volunteers encounter a massive “white” bear, but Tim discounts their story, though tufts of fur and tree markings support their account. The county sheriff holds spirited press conferences to placate the hounding press. Word of a “white” bear leaks and soon, Native American groups take interest in the story. A white bear, they say, a spirit bear, is sign of great significance. They move to protect this bear.

The search continues and discovers nothing. In the meantime, the relentless press hype has further dampened the tourist trade. Pressure comes from Washington. Tim is told that a “relocation” team will take care of the issue. At bag check in Bar Harbor airport, the only weapon checked out by the team is a sniper rife meant for only one thing: to kill.

Word of this is leaked to a known group of animal activists at the local University. The crowds at the press conferences turn from media circus to full on carnival with chanting protesters, Native American drum circles and a parking lot filled with satellite vans and reporters from around the country.

Then, the missing man emerges from the forest, crazed and dehydrated, but unharmed. He’d been treed by a massive blonde bear, a bear always on patrol, sensing his every attempt to escape. His opportunity to escape came when two animal activists walked by his tree wearing blonde fur. The man sprinted past them, leaving them between himself and the bear.

With half the mystery resolved, the tale of the bear deepens, but is guarded. Tim had initiated tests of the fur and casts of the bear’s tracks; the results reveal that this is no Maine black bear; there is a polar bear in Acadia! A retired professor from the University admits to conducting bear breeding experiments nearby years before as part of his genetic research. This explains the bear, which now is to be relocated to a vast state park in far northern Maine.

A local outfitter with a mixed reputation, Guy Mercier, known for his dogs and his prowess for putting hunters on the largest bears taken in Maine, is hired to track the bear. Tim, Mercier and a Maine Fish and Game veterinarian make up the team following the dogs. A specialized rifle will deliver the dart meant to immobilize the bear. A select group of volunteers await dispatch to come and load the sedated bear on a sling to then be transported by helicopter to the release site. The dogs locate the bear’s trail on day one and the pursuit is frantic. The day ends when Mercier’s prized lead dog is mortally injured by the bear. The bear escapes.

The second day brings dogs and men deeper into the park to an island at the ocean’s edge separated from the mainland by a narrow estuary. There is another confrontation and another of Mercier’s hounds is killed, while a third is injured. The bear is successfully darted, but seems unfazed. Mercier, crazed now and out of dart rounds, tears after the bear on foot. Tim knows the man’s intentions and races after him, hoping to stop him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Kimball
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005319250

Douglas Kimball

Sometimes writer, sometimes executive, I ride the economy barebacked. My unvested stock options have touched the multiple millions and then then crumbled, worthless. Right now I'm writing, wishing one moment that I wasn't and the next, glad that I am whatever the final outcome. Writing is for me a way to find, if not meaning, then comedy in the daily struggle. One smile is worth at least the cost of a book. Enjoy.

Book preview

Acadia

A Novel

By Douglas Kimball

Copyright 2021 Douglas Kimball

Published by Maturin Publishing on Smashwords

Also by Douglas Kimball

"Operation Free Bird

Virga Joy (or The Adventures of El Colonel De Corona)

Thicke and Thin

Note: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements:

I owe special thanks to friends Rob Long and Peter Robinson, the founders of the website Ricochet, for first publishing this novel in serial, on-line and behind the paywall, for its members. At the behest of those dedicated readers, it is now available to anyone.

Once again, for Pam and the girls…

Chapter 1

Mount Desert Island, Maine

Acadia National Park

Dawn - August 16, 2019

The bear, sprawled on the soft ground beneath a dense thicket of balsam and hemlock, wakes, shifts his bulk and snuffs at the air. The branches above shudder with the early morning movement of an offshore breeze. Sunlight breaches the dense foliage, spreading in streaks of warmth across the bear’s dirty blonde coat. The bear is hungry and knows there is a meal nearby, more specifically a moose, but he also detects a different scent, a heavy, musky odor that has settled down the hillside with the breeze. Insatiable hunger and the sharpness of the morning remind him that fall approaches. Where to go first? Gluttony overwhelms curiosity. He rises and makes his way through the thicket and down the hillside toward water, swamp, and sweet, delicious moose.

****

Beads of moisture sparkle in the new daylight on the fly above their tent, perhaps a residual from their exertion. Newlyweds Julie and Hank Campbell begin their day; he works silently while her staccato huffs are interrupted with an occasional high pitched Oh! Julie emerges first from their tent and looks up as if to scold the invisible birds and squirrels all gossiping in the trees. She is hungry and knows that Hank has orange juice, bagels and cream cheese in his backpack, ready for a nice picnic brunch. The short bike ride down from their hilltop campsite to their picnic spot in the meadow is now a regular part of their morning schedule. Julie is even unsure of this day, is it Thursday or Friday? Her smart phone sits useless in their car, battery spent and without bars; Acadia is so protective of its precious views that there are no cell towers anywhere. She counts back on her fingers. It is only Wednesday and it will be a beautiful midsummer day to be sure.

Acadia National Park was not Julie’s first choice for a vacation this year. Her father, a structural engineer, was assigned to a project in Maui and she had hoped to spend their first vacation visiting her parents there. But Hank, ever the pragmatist, was quick to remind her that they were saving for a first home and that a Hawaii trip would be too much to spend even if her parents could provide them with a place to stay. The two fought over this issue, their first contentious fight, but in the end, Julie realized that Hank’s was the better argument. Hawaii’s tropical breezes would have to wait for another year.

In this mid-August in Maine, the nights had been surprisingly chilly, portending a hint of autumn. It even rained once in this first week of their ten-day visit and on that day, it was downright cold. Today though, a muggy haze lingered like a warm blanket over the forest and magnified the northern sun’s early intensity. There's an ever so slight southwestern movement of air and though their campsite is a good mile or more from the coastal Cliff Trail, Julie can still detect the sharp, salty tang of the sea intermingled with the otherwise strong scents of decaying leaves and last night’s burned cedar still smoldering in the campsite’s permanent concrete fireplace. Julie’s sense of smell is unusually acute. Unknown to her, she is two weeks pregnant.

The bike trail leads them down a steep grade through the woods. The way is treacherous, dark, narrow and bumpy, taking sharp turns around slippery, lichen-covered granite boulders and over the exposed arthritic ankles and knees supporting a cover of ancient fir, beech and oak. The path serves as a temporary wash as well as a trail, a trail that was originally designed and cut for hikers and not bikers. Hank leads the way of course and enters a thick curtain of balsam that is so heavy it nearly blots out the sun. The path turns tunnel, burrows through this stand, and then crosses a vast meadow that eventually becomes a beaver pond. Julie tries to stay close, but Hank is the more confident biker and is far more reckless in her mind. She yells to him: Slow up. There is no telling where Bullwinkle (the silly, unoriginal name that they had given an old male moose who had taken up permanent residence in the beaver pond) will be. It would be just like Hank to venture too close and find himself in trouble with Maine’s animal version of a one-ton truck with antlers.

As she emerges from the Balsam tangle and before her eyes can adjust to the approaching light, she calls out a blind warning to Hank: Don’t get too close! In a sickening rush, a heavy, musty odor assaults her nostrils and causes the hairs on the back of her neck to stand erect. She feels immediately out of breath and nauseous. She stops, standing astride her bike, and can now see that Hank is some fifty yards away approaching some high blueberry brush where the trail turns onto a raised wooden deck allowing passage across the spongy marsh. Bullwinkle the moose is nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, in a flash, a large animal, it could be the moose, but seems larger, heavier, a great mound of blonde fur and quivering flesh, comes hurtling through the muddy marsh, plowing through milkweed, cattails and brush, toward Hank. Hank turns his bicycle around and begins a furious retreat up the trail toward Julie. He screams at her, Go; Move!, but she responds sluggishly, as if stuck in mud. She edges her bicycle around as Hank quickly closes. It is then that she recognizes the charging, snorting attacker; it is a huge blonde bear with a long, black snout. Its ears are pulled back. Its teeth are exposed in its awful, pointed muzzle. She drops her bicycle and flees to the Balsam stand on foot. She is far too frightened to scream.

****

The Commodore Pub is tucked between two massive, nineteenth century, brick foundry buildings near the harbor and past the northern fringe of trendy downtown Bar Harbor. One of the foundry buildings now houses a sail loft where its occupants make no sails at all, but rather, they sew simple kites and decorative flags for sale in the shops downtown. The adjacent identical building is home to a local automotive supply wholesaler. The Pub is older still, a three-hundred-year old, single story, post and beam building with a stone façade. It was first a customs house, then liquor store, then drug store, complete with ice cream soda bar, then breakfast joint and now, for the last thirty years, the Commodore Pub. It is noted for its prominent double door entrance, two huge thick oak doors made from ancient ship hatch covers drilled with six-inch brass and glass portholes. The doors are flanked by two fake, ten-foot lighthouses. The white lighthouses are made of crumbling stucco, obviously a poor material for Maine maritime weather. Still, the slowly spinning lights atop them work perfectly. Only locals frequent the Pub. Locals say that the Pub’s crumbling portico looks like a man, eyes wide and arms raised, being robbed. Rumor has it that this scares away the tourists. This is deemed a good thing for the locals, but not necessarily good for the owner. Still, he is too cheap to pay for any renovation.

In his customary seat, avoiding the summer crowds and prices, head Acadia National Park Ranger Tim Collins is having lunch. It is his only day off. He’s on his second draft beer, a local brew great with the local fried cod and chips, and he is ready to order a third when he sees Kelly Rainville enter the shadowy bar. She is looking for him, he knows, among the patrons of the dimly lit Pub. It should not be hard to find him, with the glow of his sun-bleached red hair set against thick blond eyebrows.

Yo. Kelly. I’m over here, Tim says.

Kelly looks in his direction, but doesn’t recognize him. Then, as her eyes adjust to the light, Kelly recognizes him and smiles. He smiles back and motions for her to sit in the seat opposite him in his booth.

What’s up? Tim can see that Kelly is agitated. She keeps crossing and uncrossing her legs.

We’ve been, like, looking all over for you. She is still slightly out of breath. Did you get my texts? I left a bunch of messages.

Tim shrugs. He left his phone back at the lodge.

Kelly looks at him, squints and tilts her head slightly. Well, there’s been like…, well maybe, I mean, like a bear attack, alleged, below the south shoulder of Cadillac Mountain, on the Whitman Trail.

A bear attack? Tim asks. This is not good news. Not good at all. The Park is in peak season, hosting an average of seventy-five-hundred visitors each day, more, maybe twice that on weekends.

Kelly points to the full water-glass in front of Tim and motions as if to ask, May I?

Tim nods his OK and Kelly downs the glass’ contents, hesitates and says, A man and a woman; the woman got away. She’s like, in shock, and can barely speak. Looks like she ran down the mountain. She says it was her husband who… The Sheriff has people going in.

McInnis should’ve waited ‘till I... Tim realizes that all of the sorry mid-day occupants of the bar are staring in his direction. He throws down a twenty for the bill and tip, rises, stretches to his full six-foot-two, two-hundred-fifteen-pound frame (six three, two-twenty, fully dressed with his boots) and escorts Kelly out of the bar.

OK, Tim says when he knows that he and Kelly are out of earshot of the bar’s occupants. Try again.

I’d say this woman’s telling the truth, Kelly says. She thinks the bear mauled her husband

Is she hurt?

She says she ran. From the look of her, it looks like she bushwhacked through the woods all the way to Bar Harbor.

Kelly is an attractive (in that upscale, Kennebunkport, LL Bean, moneyed way) but sweaty young woman approaching, but not yet 30, of average height, weight and athletic build, with sun bleached, dirty blond hair, clear green eyes and the remnants of freckles marching across the bridge of her nose. She is from an upper middle-class Portland suburb, a young woman who is smart and conscientious, looking this year to complete her doctoral studies in Forestry Management at Orono. She does not exaggerate or make things up. Tim knows that he really has a problem.

You want to see the girl or head into the Park? Kelly motions to Tim’s beige Jeep parked at the curb. "

You said that the husband…

Maybe, Kelly interrupts Tim’s sentence. She does not want to believe that there has been a bear mauling in Acadia National Park. She does not want Tim to even say it. Outside the Pub, Mark Kandutch waits in the driver’s seat of the Park’s Service’s massive one-ton. Kelly tosses the Jeep keys to Tim and takes the shotgun seat as navigator. Tim waves Kandutch on and the two vehicles slog their way through the crowded maze of former cow paths called streets in Bar Harbor, headed south toward the nearest entrance to Acadia National Park.

As they climb out of the town toward the Park, Tim can see a line of thunderstorms forming a black wall of cloud to the southwest. The air is still, thick and heavy with moisture, yet above the clouds seem to be racing across the sky. When they enter the Park and approach the sea, the wind abruptly rises. The red flag surf warning is pegged at Sand Beach, pointing northeast in the stiff breeze indicating that the beaches were closed and small craft advisories are in effect. The temperature immediately drops twenty degrees.

I hope to hell we miss this storm, says Tim, but before Kelly can respond, the Jeep’s windshield is assaulted with a grapeshot of large raindrops. Tim must pull to the side of the road so he and Kelly quickly affix the canvas top, zip on the back and side curtains and install the canvas and plastic doors. The Jeep is now something close to watertight, but lacking air conditioning, it also grows stifling even with the vents open and the fan on full. Tim can also now smell the citrus scent of Kelly’s shampoo, released with the wetness of her hair. He unzips his plastic window a crack despite the rain and blames the beer for this unintended intrusion of desire. It is a five-mile drive around Cadillac Mountain to the Blackwoods camping area and the more secluded tent sites there, near the entrance to the Whitman trail. The rain grows steadily heavier. The wipers can now provide less than a second of visibility before the view is again opaque. Tim can feel a steady stream of sweat rolling down his back as he leans forward to gain a better view through the windshield. Within the drumming of the rain, he can now hear the occasional tick of hail. The wind is gusting, perhaps to thirty or forty knots, gale force. Thunder and lightning are constant, but somewhat distant companions. Before long, Tim must turn on the headlamps. They are soon engulfed entirely by the storm. Lightning flashes are quickly followed by the violent salutes of thunder whose concussions cause the little vehicle to tremble. Tim slows to twenty or so, wary of an unseen fallen limb or tree in the road, or a stopped vehicle. When they finally approach the Whitman trailhead, the several cars parked there are dwarfed by two huge white GMC SUVs, their flash bars rolling in an easy cadence. The county Sheriff has indeed arrived on scene.

Tim and the Sheriff Earl McInnis have a similar and parallel history. Tim went to the Naval Academy and spent six years on a fast attack submarine, leaving as a lieutenant commander. Earl went to Norwich Military University in Vermont and upon graduation, joined the Marines and spent six years in Marine Intelligence as an officer, rising to captain. Tim was transferred to Acadia the same year that Earl left the Marines and joined the Hancock County Sheriff’s office as a Deputy. Earl was elected Hancock County Sheriff in the same year that Tim was promoted to Head Ranger. Now they were law enforcement contemporaries whose overlapping jurisdictions required that they share large portions of Hancock County.

Tim waits several minutes for the rain to let up before he opens the door of the Jeep. He walks to the newer of the SUV’s and taps on the window with his Navy ring. The window rolls down to provide a frame for the large, sanguine face of Earl McInnis, Sheriff of Hancock County. Got a problem here, don’t we, Tim, the barrel of a man says with his usual laconic understatement and thick Maine accent. He leans into the cab to expel the juice from his chaw into a ubiquitous Styrofoam cup.

I hope not, Earl, says Tim. He grimaces but otherwise tries not to show his irritation.

The Sheriff, as folks were known to address McInnis, has a tendency, in fact seems to gain a gleeful joy in his ability, to antagonize Acadia Rangers. McInnis knows it. First and foremost, there’s the Sheriff’s blind tolerance of poaching on Park property. It’s common knowledge that many local folk, and not just the poor ones, nearly live on game. Most will take their fill of licensed tags (folks joke that even the newborns get tags in Maine – that Mainers come out shooting) in the season, but this is never enough and many families continue to poach all year. Tim doesn’t care much one way or another about what happens off island (as Acadia National Park is a series of islands), that’s Maine Fish & Game’s problem, but he does care when the poachers intrude on federal park land. There are campers and hikers Tim must watch out for, and besides, it’s a felony to discharge firearms on Park property. McInnis refuses to be of much help in these matters. Every time a Ranger drives through the Park and hears that not too distant report of a rifle, the Service grows more and more frustrated with the Sheriff’s lack of cooperation. It is rumored that the Sheriff’s Deputies were the ones who had so riddled the Park’s road signs with bullet-holes. Tim believes that there’s a lot of truth in that rumor. They’re marking territory. Everone knows the deer’r fattah on the island, Timmy. If I ‘rested everyone who shot an island deer, I wouldn’t have any constituents at all. ‘Sides, it’s not my jurisdiction. State Game Warden’s the man for poachers, isn’t that right? This is the oft repeated, oft corrected, response to Tim’s requests for help. Each time, Tim reminds McInnis that State Game Wardens have no jurisdiction on Federal land. The Sheriff and his Deputies, however, had been fully deputized by the Department of Interior with the complete authority of Rangers (a ploy meant to save money and manpower.) Why else would the Sheriff’s office receive its large annual Parks Service Grant but for their cooperation in Park matters? Nonetheless, the Sheriff chooses to use his authority selectively.

Tim privately curses the system for electing peace officers. Have you secured and surveyed the scene? Tim is now in full law enforcement mode, one of the many roles required of him as a Ranger. The rain picks up once again.

Just got here ourselves, waiting on this rain.

Tim walks back to Kelly and the Jeep and announces, Let’s check it out. Soon, he and Kelly are making their way down the steep, dark, trail, now a small creek, toward the meadow.

Kelly catches Tim’s elbow when he slips on a particularly loose incline of mud and gravel. Watch your step, she says. Her grip is firm and as he turns to thank her, Tim brushes against her.

Sorry, he says, I didn’t mean to… Tim’s face turns pink. The soles of these boots are shot. I’ve been meaning to get ‘em fixed. He wears a ten-plus-year-old pair of original Merrill outfitters, already on their third sole. They will not take another, hence his reluctance to have them fixed. The Outfitter line was discontinued long ago.

Kelly says nothing.

From the look of the muddy, washed-out trail, Tim is hardly optimistic that they will find any evidence of a violent animal encounter or any animal sign at all. He can hear McInnis complaining behind them, chastising his deputies, as he also makes his way down the muddy trail turned wash. Tim is soon nursing a growing anxiety, a heaviness. He’s had this feeling before, when the hiker last year fell from the Coastal Cliff Trail, when that five-year-old girl slipped into Thunderhole, when the local teenager was washed from the red granite shoreline rocks by a great rogue wave. There is something nearly every year. This year will obviously be no different.

As he and Kelly approach an opening in the balsams, a fresh breeze shakes the trees and drenches them with leftover rain. Tim surveys the scene. A trail bike lies in the middle of the meadow, nearly covered with runoff. Beyond that, the handlebars of another bicycle can be seen rising above the surface of the water like shining bones amid the grass and wildflowers in the meadow. The pond extends nearly the entire length of the meadow. Except for the abandoned bicycles, there is no sign of any human incursion. He can see a large beaver dam some two hundred yards to the east and water rolls more through than over it in several spots, but it has not been completely breeched. He sends Kelly down to further inspect the dam and to look for evidence. McInnis is soon at his side, breathing heavily.

Any sign of the husband? McInnis asks, squinting at the meadow and pond.

Tim shakes his head.

Lion wouldn’t attack a full-grown man, McInnis says. I believe we might have another bear problem.

Tim nods again. Though the woman had stressed that the attacking animal was large with blond fur, a mountain lion attack seems highly unlikely. Perhaps it was a large lynx? There hadn’t been sign of a mountain lion in the Park in over fifty years, though lions are expected to return at some point within the decade as they are rumored to have re-established themselves in southern New England. If that is true, it is only a question of time before lions migrate north and rediscover the fertile hunting grounds in Acadia. Bears, on the other hand, are plentiful in Acadia and are in fact becoming more and more of a nuisance. As to the color of the fur, black bears can range in color from albino white to brown to jet black and every color in between. Maine’s black bears tend to be black, though in some rare instances, they can have white markings usually under the chin or on the chest. There is, however, the possibility that the bear had taken a mud bath, a constitutional often taken by Acadia’s bears in mid-summer to ward off Maine’s state bird, the mosquito. This may have made the bear appear light colored.

There is no question though, bears love Acadia. They are protected from hunters. With its plentiful food sources, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and grapes; tidal beds of mussels, clams and barnacles; migratory streams filled with reintroduced Atlantic salmon, steelhead, native alewives and eels; dunes populated with nesting migratory birds; rocky coastline providing nurseries for harbor, hooded, gray and ringed seals - Acadia National Park is a veritable black bear smorgasbord. In fact, some of the largest black bears known to exist in America were taken in Acadia. That was in the early twentieth century and before the current hunting ban.

Tim knows that it is only a question of time before some thinning of Acadia’s bear population will have to be considered. Outside of Acadia, Maine bears rarely grow to five feet or over 300 pounds. The estimated average age of bears taken in Maine is five to six. There are many bears in Acadia that have been known for twenty years or more and it is nothing to encounter a seven-foot male probably weighing in excess of six-hundred pounds in late fall. Several older, problem bears have had to be removed from the Park in the past for harassing campers. Though thin and sickly due to age or disease, these males were nearly always in excess of six-foot, measured base of tail to top of head.