It’s construction season here at 491 Main St. Plumbers are busy installing piping for climate control. Glaziers are busy sealing up the windows. Workers are sheet-rocking a new lunch room. Outside we’re completing a facelift. And electricians are hanging new fixtures in the newsroom guaranteed to make our geraniums grow all year ’round. We’re getting our nest rearranged.

Meanwhile, out on the waters, critters are paired off and seemingly enjoying our rainy, foggy climate. If you looked real quickly last weekend, you might have seen some ocean and maybe an island before that stubborn fog bank rolled back in with the late-morning breezes and the tide.

I got a few minutes to spend looking out over Narraguagus Bay through my binoculars at the Sunday morning stillness and was entertained by a pair of porpoises lazily cruising for their breakfast on the incoming tide.

After being grounded all weekend, come Tuesday evening I was in need of getting out on the water, any water, and exercising, blowing out the cobwebs and construction dust from my lungs, so to speak. Pushaw Lake beckoned from up the road. After work I tied on a kayak and headed out to feed a few mosquitoes and tour the least developed sections of the lake.

Gould’s Landing, at the end of Essex Street, is an easy launch site and it’s quick and easy to get to from my house in Bangor. And by early evening it’s pretty much devoid of visitors. I can usually be on the water in about 20 minutes. With the days being long of late, there’s time to get in a few miles of paddling before the sun sets.

And what a lovely one it was Tuesday evening. I paddled northeast past Ram Island and a small flock of gulls perched on a rock. They seemed amused as I glided past. From there I headed northerly to Hardwood Island and a brief respite for a drink near the shore. I headed northeasterly to the undeveloped Old Town shore.

A pair of kingfishers hopscotched from tree to tree ahead of me as I made my way southeasterly along the shore. Rustling in a small bush near shore attracted my attention and I stopped to watch a beaver chew off a small leafy branch and drag it into the lake. I was so fixated I didn’t see its companion to my left. But I heard the loud slap of its tail. It gave me (and the beaver I was watching) a start. The critter dropped the branch, slapped the water with its tail and it disappeared beneath the surface. I paddled away chuckling and thinking about President Jimmy Carter and the rabbit that threatened him years ago.

Moose Island was directly south. There’s a sandy beach on the western shore that I like to stop on when time allows (when I paddle my composite boat I always look for sandy beaches). Even when time is tight, I like to go past it. Tuesday, time was tight and the big orange sun was settling down for the evening behind a row of clouds. I headed back to Gould’s Landing and the car. A great blue heron landed in a tall white pine tree at the end of Hemlock Point to watch my progress, then departed for the northern reaches of the lake when I got closer.

My bow hit the sandy beach around 8:45 p.m. completing a loop of just under 5 miles.

As I batted away dozens of mosquitoes and packed the car, my colleague and fellow paddler Scott Haskell and his wife, Nancy, pulled up to catch the end of the sunset. Another set of hands to help hoisting the boat atop the car was gladly accepted. We chatted very briefly (thanks to the busy mosquitoes) and I headed home.

Wednesday afternoon I got a call from Dr. Robert Causey who was taking a break from his university toils. He, too, was in need of a good paddle (“everyone deserves a good paddle” we often say) so we opted to decide on a time later. We headed to Gould’s Landing and hit the water around 7 p.m. As we headed north we decided we’d paddle for an hour.

It sounded like a good plan. We’d ride the south wind up the lake and see how far it would take us. And by the time we got there we’d turn around the wind would have died and we’d wend our way back to Gould’s.

We had fun surfing north on the wind and waves and talking about what a fun evening it would have been to be sailing. A Sunfish was the only wind-powered boat we saw on the lake.

By 8 p.m. we’d blown to the Twin Islands roughly halfway up the lake. We ducked in behind the southern of the two, took a few minutes to get a drink and stow the sunglasses then nosed out into the wind – which had no intention of quitting for our return leg. Our starting point seemed a mere speck in the distance and I couldn’t help but think we’d be way longer getting back than we took getting to the Twins.

As we paddled Causey told me anecdotes from “The Longest Day,” which he’s been listening to on tape – I guess you could say I was getting the tale in condensed, condensed form.

The northern lee of Dollar Island provided a bit of a break as we closed in on the last leg of our seven-mile loop. Rounding the southern point, we were greeted again by the steady breezes. (At least the bugs would be scarce, I thought, as I pondered landing in the dusk at Gould’s).

At 9 p.m. when I popped my spray skirt I quickly learned I was wrong about the mosquitoes. They descended on us like a plague of locusts. We swatted, danced around and slathered on bug dope in an attempt to keep them at bay while we struggled to strap the boats to our vehicles. That chore accomplished, we shook hands in congratulations on another successful paddle and sought the shelter of our cars.

Some shelter! I succeeded in trapping a couple dozen of the thirsty buggers inside. I tried opening all the windows as I drove, even opened the door to suck them out. I thought I got them all out until I hopped back into the car Thursday to go to work and was attacked at least six of them. At work I opened all the doors and invited ’em out. At lunchtime there was still a contingent flying around inside the car, hungrier than ever. Maybe they’re breeding in the back seat…

And here’s something I’d like to leave you with before I head out on vacation for a couple of weeks. I’ll share with you correspondence I received from two of my Maine Island Trail Association friends, Jon and Charlotte Lawton. They have been stalwart volunteers with the organization and you may glean from the following, they’re a bit frustrated with at least one island user’s utter ignorance of Leave No Trace ethics and island use.

“For the past three weeks, Jon and I have been busy monitoring the islands for MITA. Twice when we have been checking on the health of the islands in the Deer Isle/Merchant area we have cleaned up human waste that was left on two different islands and would guess it was left by the same person. Not the nice part of an otherwise wonderful job.

“Would you be so kind as to mention how simple it is to take a gallon Ziploc plastic bag, place a few folded sheets of newspaper in it (the Bangor Daily works great) add three or four quart-sized Ziploc freezer bags and a small roll of toilet tissue.

“After each session, roll up newspaper and place it in quart size bag and then you can put all back into the gallon bag to take with you and dispose of after you get home.

“Other than these two incidents, the islands in the Stonington, MDI, and Down East areas look great. So far not many campers nor visitors, but we know that will be changing soon as the weather gets nicer and more people are on vacation and enjoying our beautiful islands.”

There, we’ve said it again, Charlotte. Let’s hope others catch on and stop fouling our natural beauty.

Jeff Strout can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangordailynews.net.