WINTER HARBOR, MAINE - At daybreak here on Friday, the sky and the horizon were completely obscured in all directions.
A strong wind had pushed snow all night from the northeast, and now the lobster boats in the tiny anchorage not far from this village strained mightily at their buoy lines.
We were hunting sea ducks, six of us from the Twin Cities area. This was our second day, and down a steep, slippery ramp we backed two 18-foot Lunds that would take us to Bill Pidgeon's larger boat.
"She'll be rough out there this mornin'," said Pidgeon, a retired Maine state game warden turned lobsterman and outfitter.
The outboards were soon started and we angled the smaller boats through the slanting snow, white caps splashing over the gunwales in the semi-dark.
The bigger boat, the Sea Pidgeon, appeared in the near distance as if through gauze, half-concealed by the wintry blow.
"Climb aboard now, be careful, be careful," Pidgeon urged as he and fellow guide Keith Martin bumped the two smaller boats against the Sea Pidgeon.
Soon the lobster boat's big diesel was started and the two Lunds were tied behind. Whatever heading and speed we would steam was a matter left to Pidgeon. The rest of us could only brace ourselves behind the boat's small cabin and stay out of the wind and snow and sea spray as much as possible.
Gradually becoming ever whiter, yet still pale, the morning sky never could shake its cold gray patina. Finally we were enveloped by most of the light the day would muster, which wasn't much.
"There!" Doug Lassey said.
Lassey, of Hastings; Joel Bennett, of Sunfish Lake; and Brian Dobie, of St. Paul, along with his sons, Brian and Sean, also of St. Paul, were on the trip.
Lassey had seen a raft of common eiders take wing, startled by our approaching boat.
Drake, or male, eiders can weigh as much as 8 pounds, and their takeoffs don't suggest ease of flight so much as hope against seeming impossibility.
Running first on the water's surface, eiders appear initially to use their wings as paddles as much as aerial propellants.
Spectacularly plumed, the males are a contrast between the whitest whites and the blackest blacks, while hens, though drabber, are upon close inspection hued richly auburn through the neck, head and crown.
Also in these waters are other sea ducks, including longtails, or oldsquaws as they were formally known, and some species of scoters.
"But longtails are difficult to hunt because they stay out in the middle, away from shorelines," Pidgeon said. "When the weather is right, we use layout boats to get them."
To hunt eiders, we lie low and still on granite outcroppings, or tiny islands, hunkered against the cold and wet in camouflage parkas and waders.
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