Paddling (Way) Down East by Terence Monmaney

SOMEWHERE OUT IN THE vastness of Malpeque Bay, the thought of mutiny was unfolding its black wings. We had been paddling off the north shore of Prince Edward Island for five hours - against an outgoing tide, through a drizzle - and still had covered only half of the 20-something miles my guide, Bryon Howard, had buoyantly charted for the day's course. A wiry 27 year-old paddling in the stern of our two-person sea kayak, Howard had a devilish goatee and mustache that made it easier to think of him as the evil Captain Bry.

At last, the captain called for a halt. As we glided to a stop, Bryon undid his spray skirt, donned a mask and snorkel, wriggled out of the cockpit, and tumbled overboard. The water being only about four feet deep, I could see crabs scurrying along the grassy bottom and, here and there, the Malpeque Oysters that are a point of island pride.

Bryon gathered a few oysters and climbed back into his cockpit, he knifed one open and handed it forward on a half shell. No cloying cocktail sauce, no lemon or comfy bed of shaved ice. Slurp. Warm, smooth, briny, unpurged, hinted of some indefinable ocean spice. Alive. Wasn't this what I'd come for? A taste of the undomesticated? The raw truth? When I gulped that salty jewel, my fatigue was rewarded, my scheming subsided, and a tragic maritime incident was averted.

Growing up in Maine, I knew a certain kind of man - he sported a crewcut and tied his own trout flies long before either became fashionable - who found the summers in that bucolic state hectic and overcrowded. Come July, he fled to Prince Edward Island. In some way, P.E.I. is like Maine, only more so. It's even farther east than Down East - in the Atlantic time zone, where the clock is set an hour later - and, being farther north, it is blessed with longer summer days and a more glowing light. The mystery is that so many Canadians vacation in Maine.

You could pick Prince Edward out of a lineup of islands: the red earth would give it away. A roughly banana-shaped, 140-mile-long plateau in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the island was formed from ancient river sediment loaded with iron oxide - rust. Today, the island's fabled cliffs tend toward brick red, while the beaches range from ocher to pale conch pink.

The red sand where we put in, near Kildare, looked as cool as wet clay. Yet on this afternoon it was hotter than a Cabo sidewalk. Also unexpectedly, the water was warmish - not the cryo-preservation bath you often find in the northern Atlantic. "All around the island for some distance, the bay is pretty shallow," Bryon had said as we climbed into one of his company's 19-foot Seawards. "Sun heats it right up."

Our 45-mile trip along the northern shore showed Prince Edward Island at its most remote, with miles of virtually empty beach, wild-looking dunes, fields as green as billiard felt, broad estuaries, and brackish ponds - bays long ago captured by the shifting sands.

Primitive Outcroppings

Of our somewhat damp and grueling second day I will say, first, that in 11 hours on the water we sighted not a single craft and only a few beach-walkers and, second, that it was worth the pain. A feat accomplished. The third day was a dream of clear skies and glass-smooth water. Bryon had cleverly saved the towering red cliffs of Cape Tryon, with their primitive outcroppings and clamorous cormorant colony, for the finale. We had a leisurely paddle, then lunch on the finest beach yet, next to a meadow of grass and bayberry and Indian paintbrushes.

Part of the beach was a protected habitat of the piping plover, of which only 16 families still exist on the island. Bryon belongs to a group that watches over the plovers. "They like to nest on these points, right in the sand out in the open," he explained. "But sometimes with a high tide and a big wind, the nests are wiped out. No wonder they're endangered. Not a very smart bird, eh?"

Good news for the plovers is that provincial law all but forbids new ocean-front development here. Another happy policy is that the beaches are public, even if some dairy king owns the adjacent property. Of course, not all beaches are accessible by public road, an not all dairy kings let you cross their property. Ergo, the best way to get around the coastline is by kayak.

The original Mi'Kmaq Indian name for the island, Abegweit, translated as "out in the water," will soon become less apt, however. A bridge connecting the island to the mainland is scheduled to be completed in 1997. The new traffic should give the local economy a boost, but will also endanger the island's splendid seclusion.

For the time being, at least, a refreshingly large percentage of P.E.I.'s 2,000 square miles remain quiet and green - potato farming is the No. 1 industry. You can, if you must, find motorboats and goony golf and a wax museum, but the bulk of the tourist onslaught is mercifully concentrated around the town of Cavendish, the setting of Lucy Maud Montgomery's coming-of-age novel Anne of Green Gables - sort of a Huck Finn in pigtails. Anne is apparently P.E.I.'s No 2 industry. The essence of her appeal is her contrariness, which is something of a local trait.

The historic meeting that gave birth to the nation of Canada took place on Prince Edward Island in 1864, but the host territory standoffishly declined to join the resulting federation for several more years. "We love a few visitors in the summer, eh," said one bearded contrarian as he downed a C.C. in a Charlottetown bar. "But then we want you to get the hell off our island."