Between a Rock and a Chud Place

44° 50‘ 40.61“N, 70° 18‘ 50.90“W (Photographs by Sweetgrass for the Crash Report)

Daggett Rock in the Franklin County town of Phillips is said to be the largest glacial erratic in Maine. That’s why my rockhound of a wife Sweetgrass and I decided to visit the giant broken boulder on Sunday, our 22nd wedding anniversary. An hour drive north, it was a quick summer afternoon escape from the long to-do list for our homestead in the western foothills.

The sign says 2/10 of a mile to the geological attraction. A carved reduced fraction notation says 1/5. The Maine Trail Guide says .60 miles (round trip) and rates the trail difficulty as “easy.” Which means you’d have to be pretty friggin’ lazy to use motorized transport to get up this hill to see a big rock in the middle of the woods.

If you’re into rocks, erratics are cool. These are orphan rocks moved great distances (at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch) from their OG location by the receding glacial ice that once covered the entire state of Maine. According to geologists, when the Laurentide Continental Ice Sheet melted around 13,000 years ago, the 8,000 ton Daggett Rock was taken from its birthplace on Saddleback Mountain and dropped, erratically, into its current location 14 miles to the southeast.

Our hike was an easy and blissful uphill stroll on an old skidder trail through a quintessential western Maine forest of medium-sized mixed-growth, demarcated by the rock walls of long abandoned sheep pastures on land cleared by the colonizers who stole this place from the Wabanaki. The terrain is quite similar to the land around our homestead, where we happen to have our own cool glacial erratics, albeit smaller than Daggett Rock.

(Guests at the Camp at Brigid Spring, where the cannabis, firewood and spring water are free, are welcome to visit our erratics. Click here for cabin rental details.)

Also familiar to us, on the uphill trail, were the swarms of deerfly looking to satisfy their blood lust. Their desire for vital fluid was probably amplified exponentially by the recent farm-work related head wounds on the top of my baldish noggin.

A quick aside for those unfamiliar with the deerfly, cousin to the horsefly. In the woods of Maine, in June and July, these mini-vampires are drawn by mammalian scent and, oddly, the color blue and other darker hues. The female of the species needs mammalian blood in order to lay her eggs. Thus, their general attraction to the tops of human heads where blood is easy to access.

Bug repellent doesn’t work in this situation. Luckily there are some “mechanical” methods for dealing with the swarms of blood-drinkers. Loggers in the olden days, for instance, would smear their hardhats with rendered bear fat. The deerfly, driven mad by their thirst for blood and their primal need to propagate, would end up ensnared in the grease, then die.

My modern modification of that trick is to use an old ball cap, covered with blue painter’s tape and organic “Tanglefooot” insect glue. My hack gets the same results as the bear fat, but without requiring the senseless murder of our ursine neighbors.

One more thing: AND THIS IS NOT A PAID PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT: I highly recommend the “Zap It” brand of portable racquet style-bug zapper. This USB-rechargeable is the best of several similar models that I’ve purchased in the last decade. Much better than the racquets powered by throwaway batteries. Here in western Maine, this magic electric sword has been a very effective weapon in the battle against our blood-sucking enemies.

All this to say, our anniversary jaunt through the woods would’ve been divine, sans deerfly. Idyllic and quiet, except for occasional birdsong and my regaling Sweetgrass with my latest rant in an on-going series on how soft modern humans are compared to the rugged farmers who cleared the land and built the rock walls, long before mechanization made that sort of labor easy.

About 2o minutes into our stroll, Sweetgrass paused on the trail and gestured ahead. “There it is,” she said, pointing to something pretty damn big, slightly hidden by the deciduous foliage.

(Note to self: return in the autumn, when the leaves have dropped and the biting insects are dead, for a more dramatic first sight.)

At that moment, the woodland silence was broken by the roar and whine of internal combustion growing louder and closer by the second.

Wut? The old skidder trail was clearly for pedestrians and not intended for recreational vehicle access. And yet the revving volume grew louder as the motorized intruders sped up the hillside.

(While many Maine communities have recently begun allowed ATVs on public roads, Phillips has not yet approved an ordinance change. Also, common sense would tell even the dumbest knucklehead that this trail — owned and maintained by the Phillips Historical Society — is not intended for 4-wheelers.)

We turned and hurried towards Daggett Rock, determined to experience it’s existence before the interlopers arrived.

NICE ERRATIC!

The rock, by the way, is huge. About eighty feet long, thirty feet wide and twenty-five feet tall, the boulder is split into three giant pieces. We had just started to follow the footpath going around the broken monolith when 3.5 human males appeared in the clearing, riding two 4-wheelers and one dirt bike. I stopped and turned to give ‘em a wave to let them know other mammals were in the ‘hood.

A helmeted half-pint asked his dad, “Why are we here?”

“To see this big rock,” his 30-something dad answered, waving back at me as he dismounted his gas-steed while tugging on his “Trump 2020 ‘Fuck Your Feelings’” tee-shirt to cover his hairy and pale beer gut.

Great. Chuds! And on my day off!

Two other adult males also dismounted with grunts. The dirt-biker removed his helmet and innocuously nodded towards us. The third fella, though, was sour. The grandpa, I think, and he seemed like a real asshole. His vibe was anger and tobacco. Sallow-faced, his constant and desperate puffing on a cigarette foretold his impending death.

Anyways, Sweetgrass and I started along on the path encircling the boulder, at a brisk pace, trying to get a head-start so we had the time to marvel at the geological wonder in front of us.

Wow.

Btw: Daggett Rock is named for some long-dead white dude, killed by the Christian god, called Daggett. According to a paper authored by Thomas K. Weddle for the Maine Geological Survey, “The story goes that two hundred years ago a woodsman named Daggett came upon the rock during a wild thunderstorm. Daggett, inebriated and upset at the storm, climbed onto the rock. Cursing, he took the Lord's name in vain and raged that he could not be struck down. A gigantic lightning bolt flashed from the sky followed by a boom of thunder. Daggett was instantly killed and the rock was cracked into the three fragments found today.”

Of course, like so much history, that tale is a lie. The indigenous locals had seen the giant split rock long before the white drunkard’s name-in-vain had caused his God to reportedly take action. I’m sure they had their own magical tale of what caused the split rock. But, due to genocide, that story has been forgotten.

On the lighter side, the funniest ladder I’ve seen in a long time was propped onto the rock about midway around. Check out the photos below to see the “ladder,” crafted from dried spruce poles, lashed with an old sweatshirt to a broken wooden ladder missing all the rungs but one.

This “ladder” is probably not safe.

I wanted to give the ladder a chance to prove itself. However, disapproving glances and discouraging words from my beloved bride were convincing enough to abandon my plan to scale the boulder. Reluctantly, I moved on. Soon, though, I admitted to Sweetgrass that while I probably could have made it up the ladder and onto a higher spot on the enormous rock, getting down, without injury, would likely have been impossible.

Besides, we didn’t have time for parkour. The chatter from the 3.5 males making their way along the narrow path grew louder.We needed to keep moving in order to stay ahead of the cig-smoke wafting around the granodiorite walls, which, btw, are known as “Redington Pluton” which is the geological proof that Daggett Rock came from Saddleback Mountain.

Soon, we were back at the start of the path, which now doubled as parking lot for the trio of gas-toys used to ferry the chuds up to the big rock. Sweetgrass snapped a couple more photos and I murdered deerflies with the aforementioned Zap It.

We dawdled for just a minute before leaving, eager to avoid an internal combustion encounter on the old skidder trail. About halfway down the hill, though, we heard the “vroom, vroom vroom” as the chuds started and revved their engines.

By this point, we were on a very narrow section of trail. Just ahead, though, was a wider spot that would give the moto-chuds enough room to pass. So there we stood, awaiting the convoy, which, despite their moto-noise, seemed to be taking forever. Finally, after several minutes, they appeared, driving real slowly. Their descent, apparently, was tougher than the ascent, due to the real possibility of pitchpoling their rigs on the downward slope.

Leading the parade was the Trumpist dad who gave us a smile and wave while passing. The helmeted half-pint flashed me a peace sign. (Or perhaps “v” for victory?) The moto-crosser nodded, gripping his handlebars tight to prevent his stallion from capsizing.

Me giving the finger to the backs of the moto-chuds.

The old man, though, ignored us. His unblinking eyes stared a thousand miles straight-ahead. Cig dangling from the corner of his mouth, his 4-wheeler advanced slightly faster than a crawling baby. Holding on to his ride with the death-grip of a man who knew his end is near, this gray-man reeked of sin. I could almost hear his born-again wife reminding him almost every single day, that soon, he’s gonna spend eternity in the Lake of Fire.

At least that’s how he appeared to me.

(My lens, however, may be slightly clouded because of all the chuddish research and writing about religious zealots that I’ve doing for the last year in preparation of my upcoming mega-series of Crash Reports entitled “Hot, Wet Christian-Nationalist Summer.” Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our extensive and close look at the coalition of right-wing End Times elected officials who want to rule Maine. Learn how their twisted fantasies and bizarre religious beliefs can influence public policy, including triggering the apocalypse, bringing death and destruction to humankind.)

Anyways, Sweetgrass and I continued our descent. About five minutes after encountering the motor-chuds, we discovered detritus, right there in the middle of the friggin’ skidder trail.

This bottle of “Berry” flavored zero-sugar Gatoraid “contains no fruit juice” hadn’t been present during our ascent. Since bears don’t drink such elixirs, the trio of chud-wheelers were obviously to blame. I carefully picked up the bottle, not wanting to get any chuddish germs on my hands. Then, we resumed our descent.

In the distance, we could hear the chortle and groan of the engines, still crawling slowly due to the pitch of the declivity. Perhaps we’d catch up with them on the bottom on the hill and I could give ‘em back their bottle of magic potion. Alas, they were gone by the time we reached the trailhead. We could, however, follow their tracks on the Wheeler Hill Road, until they turned off onto a side road.

The rest of our anniversary getaway continued without incident or more chuds. We went for a nice dip and wade in the rock-strewn Sandy River, followed by a roundabout ride south to a delicious dinner at the Farmington Diner (fried haddock for her, clam dinner for me) and capped off with a leisurely swim in our local lake. All-in-all, a fabulous day with a smart beautiful woman who is into rocks.

One item of note: during our approximately 150 miles of meandering, we saw, in total, 3 yard signs for Robert Kennedy Jr., two tattered Trump flags and one large Biden/Harris dooryard banner. However, we also spotted about three dozen “Be Kind” signs (courtesy of Lions Club International) throughout our journey which definitely cancelled out the singular “Fuck Your Feelings” tee-shirt.