03/01/2022
"Screw Auger Falls", Grafton Township, Maine. I came across this site on one of my early motorcycle excursions years ago . . . I was still navigating with paper maps and fumbling with early GPS technology that I relied on more for getting lost. It was late October and I was running so close tot he Vermont-New Hampshire-Canadian Border that if I had cell service at all I would find my phone roaming on Canadian service. I was headed to Augusta, Maine and had turned south towards Bethel so I could get eastbound again toward the coast. Screw Auger Falls sits back behind a lonely parking lot . . . there's an unmanned locked wooden box that you tuck your dollar and off you go down a narrow path that opens into large swaths of granite cut by the Bear River. Swirling pools, tumbling rapids, and then plummeting ledges that the river leaps off of only to pool again on the granite floor. I've been back a few times in my wanderings . . . this scene was from a late summer visit a few years ago and it's memory still cascades over my senses: the deep richness of the Maine woods, the rhythmic Bear River, and the warmth of the sun contrasting the coolness of the granite and forest pines.
