As fixed as it may seem, rockbound and cliffed, the shoreline of Mount Desert Island, Maine, is ever-changing. The boundary between land and sea has varied over centuries and millennia as glaciers came and went, and climate cooled and warmed. It can be hard to imagine, now, but there was a time when the shoreline was much, much lower than it is today. What we know as islands were peninsulas and hills; our deep bays were estuaries and mudflats.
That former coast was familiar to people. Ancestors of the Wabanaki lived and worked all around Pesamkuk, “the sandy hunting and spearing place.” The shallow waters, still awakening from the departure of the ice sheet, teemed with life. These places are now under water, but they are not forgotten.
Read more in this article about sea level change and shellfish harvesting, past and present, in the 2025 volume of The Art of Nourishment, the 2025 volume of Chebacco: The Journal of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, co-authored with Bonnie Newsom and Rebecca Cole-Will. Illustration by Jennifer Steen Booher.
Catherine Schmitt 