JOURNAL
In the Right Place: A Sign of the Times
This image of a pair of Common Eiders landing at Blue Hill Falls appeared yesterday in my monthly column in the Ellsworth American:
To read the column about disappearing Eiders, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column
Sunsets come in many styles during January. Last night’s, shown below, was cloud-swept and predictive of this morning’s overcast:
Monday’s sunset, shown below, was piercingly clear, but we still had overcast the following morning:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 9 and 11, 2023.)
There has been a very recent fatality and several near-fatalities this month in Maine due to walking, skating, and/or driving on ice: DO NOT DO IT unless you are SURE that you are walking or skating on at least 4 inches of ice; snowmobiling on at least 5; driving an average-size passenger car on 8-12, or driving a truck on 12-to-15 inches. Those are government numbers, not mine.
In fact, Maine officials do not recommend driving passenger cars or trucks onto frozen ponds or lakes, period! They say that, if you must drive a vehicle on that ice, be prepared to leave the vehicle in a hurry through its windows, which should be kept open when driving on such ice. Also, unbuckle your seat belt, pack flotation gear, and have an emergency plan discussed with your passengers before driving onto frozen bodies of water.
I’ll add this: Don’t take your dog when driving on pond or lake ice. If things go sideways, an excited dog can make your escape difficult and, of course, you’ll be seriously tempted to stay in the freezing water longer than necessary to save a thrashing, beloved pet. Also, ponds can be deceivingly deep; don’t assume that you or your vehicle won’t sink entirely below water. For example, the field pond shown here is 14 feet deep in most of the middle area. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 10, 2023.)
There are at least 16 mushroom species reported as growing in the winter woods of New England. Perhaps the easiest one to recognize is the Red-Belted Polypore (or Red-Belted Conk), shown here. There’s a debate as to whether these are edible, which means to me don’t take a bite.
Red-Belts (Fomitopsis pinicola) are good tinder for fire-starting. They also reportedly were used by Native Americans for medicinal purposes, especially as a styptic to clot blood in wounds. Other reported medicinal uses include as an antihistamine and digestive tonic.
Notwithstanding their history and some questionable recommended recipes on the Internet, leaving these fungi alone to digest dead wood seems to me to be our best option. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 9, 2023.)
Most of Saturday’s snowfall was nothing but a pleasant memory in the cold woods yesterday, but hard-to-see ice patches remained a danger. Nonetheless, walking alone in the sun-dappled woods is, for me, a good way to let go of troubling thoughts about what’s going on elsewhere.
Walking on wooded paths seems to emancipate me from life’s slavery to time. I don’t worry about such things as “wasting” a full five minutes just watching a diligent downy woodpecker work a birch tree the way an IRS agent would examine the return of a known tax evader.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 7, 2023.)
Yesterday was the last day of the hunting season for sea ducks and other migratory birds in our coastal zone. And, it looks like the owner of this truck at Naskeag Harbor literally has “bagged” a pair of common eiders, Maine’s largest native duck species.
Of course, these are well-crafted duck decoys that duck hunters use to lure eiders into range. Seeing them brought to mind the seeming strangeness of the word “decoy,” so I looked into its origin. It turns out that the word derives from the Latin for “cage” (cavea), the Middle Dutch for “the cage” (de kouw), and the fact that tamed ducks in cages or otherwise restrained were used in days of yore to lure wild ducks. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 6, 2023.)
We had a nice and easy snowfall last night, the kind where you wake up in the morning to pleasing sights: the trees filigreed, the ground carpeted, and the snow on the driveway too slight to require plowing.
The sun briefly broke through the overcast once or twice in the early morning, but then gave up.
In the woods, it was profoundly silent at first, the kind of silence that seems to be opening and closing as you walk through it. Then, I got to a spring-fed stream and the silence eased into rippling glissandos.
The trees overhanging local lanes captured most of the snow, leaving interesting patterns on the crushed rock surfaces. The snow also held on to the tall grasses that lined driveways.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 7, 2023.)
The woods remain alive with wildlife food, especially winterberry and wild rose hips The continuing availability of these easy-to-find foods would seem to indicate that other, preferable natural foods still are abundant in the wild, perhaps due to the relatively mild and wet winter that we’ve been having.
Winterberry fruit, shown above, is a favorite last-resort food of birds, including American robins, catbirds, eastern bluebirds, hermit thrushes, wood thrushes, northern mockingbirds, brown thrashers, cedar waxwings, and white-tailed sparrows. However, raccoons and mice also are reported to feed on the berries in winter as well.
Wild rose hips, shown above, have been reported as vital to the survival of many birds, especially American robins, cedar waxwings, grouse, and wild turkeys. They also are eaten by white-tailed deer, coyotes, beavers, opossums, snowshoe hares, skunks, chipmunks, and mice. The rose hips shown above may be multiflora rose hips, but I’m not sure of their identification. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 2, 2023.)
Here you see the house with the Gothic upper window on Harbor Island at half tide on Tuesday. It was one of those silvery-gray winter days in Naskeag Harbor when the sun is away, the wind is resting, and the shadowless light is exquisite.
That’s when tidal currents become glistenings and reflections create a sense of great three-dimensional depth:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 3, 2023.)
On clear days in January, the sun sets to the southwest of us (about 240 compass degrees) and appears to be at eyelevel. It briefly becomes a huge spotlight aimed directly at us, and often is so powerful that we have to close our blinds.
Yet, just as often, a chance to see the golden light on Great Cove and our North Field cannot be resisted, even though they have to be viewed through wincing eyes. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 2, 2023.)
Last year was Maine’s wettest year ever during the 128 years of recorded precipitation, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. And, as you see here in images from yesterday, our streamflows are at or above normal as they have been all winter. Soil moisture also appears to have been replenished fully after having gone through a moderate drought during the summer.
This, of course, is good news. However, it has to be tempered by the fact that much of the precipitation came from violent storms that carried with them their own, different problems, including flooding, property damage, and loss of power. Climate Change brings instability and extremes.
When it comes to Climate Change, the practical philosophy of “Saturday Night Live’s” Roseanne Roseannadanna seems to apply: “It just goes to show you, it’s always something! If it’s not one thing, it’s another!” Sorry, you have to be of a certain age to remember Roseanne, as played wonderfully by Gilda Radner. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 2, 2023.)
Naskeag Harbor was a bit choppy yesterday (New Year’s Day), making these scallop-fishing vessels pull at their moorings like tethered colts.
Let’s hope that the winter won’t be too harsh for our fishermen (male and female) and that 2023 will be a better year than 2022 for them. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 1, 2023.)
The request for this image and post came from Liam English, a friend. Here you see an important cluster of gravestones in the Brooklin Cemetery as they appeared today, New Year’s Day:
The most recent of these markers is for Roger Angell, one of the significant Americans who died last year. He died at the age of 101 and was buried next to his second wife, Carol Rogge Angel, and in front of his mother, stepfather, and half-brother, all three of whom also are famous, as many of you know.
Roger was an essayist who was a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine. His mother, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, was the first fiction editor of that magazine. His stepfather, the renowned E.B. White, also was an essayist and book author who often wrote about Maine life. His half-brother, Joel McCoun White (son of Katherine and E.B.), was a famed naval architect who founded the renowned Brooklin Boat Yard, now run by Joel’s son, Steve. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine on January 1, 2023.)
This December in Down East Maine was both beautiful and beastly.
Take Christmastime, for example. It’s a time of paramount religious importance for many and of winter festivity and glad tidings for all. This year, at first, December lived up to its festive expectations, with Mainers hanging a profusion of Christmas/Holiday wreaths, buying seasonal flowers, attending concerts of traditional music, and even making fun of Santa Claus:
But, then came the Christmastime Surprise, a mega-storm that eliminated power with near-hurricane-force winds on December 23 here and evolved into lashing rains that kept the power off for days in our coastal area. (We got our power back on December 26, but some were less fortunate.)
Nonetheless, we can’t let a difficult week characterize all of December. It had its very good days, as well:
Of course, there were gray, wintery days and a little light snow, which disappeared fast in December’s above-average temperatures, but even these had a seasonal attraction:
One exceptionally fortunate event for us happened this December: We beheld the rare sight of a male bobcat pacing around and guarding the carcass of a deer that he may have killed. (Bobcats have been known to take down sick or crippled deer bigger than they are and then cover them with leaves or grass as a food stash.)
On the working waterfront, the scallop fishing season began in December as usual. Some fishermen dredge for the tasty mollusks, some dive to hand-harvest them, and some do both.
This December had its special poignancy in our area. The beloved 1926 rainbow bridge over Blue Hill Falls was demolished and cleared away during the month and a detour over a temporary bridge was installed until a new, mundane flat bridge is finished next year:
The weakening old bridge was an iconic cement rainbow-arched rarity. Only one now remains in Maine. Here are two images of it from our archive:
Leighton Archive Image
Leighton Archive Image
Finally, we look to the December skies, which usually are dramatic and this year was no exception. The partially-full moon appeared during the day early in the month; yet, it was fogged-in when it rose full. Nonetheless, it’s the sun that is special in the winter. December is the beginning of three months of our most spectacular sunsets, and the one below met the test.
(Except as noted on two images, all other images here were taken in Down East Maine during December of 2022.)
Last night’s sunset afterglow was one of those pinkish pastel affairs over a calm sea that briefly makes Great Cove appear to be silkscreened in soft, peaceful colors.
I’ll accept it as an apology from the weather gods who threw a tantrum a few days ago. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 30, 2022.)
Marketing 101. If a visitor stands where this image was taken Tuesday, she’ll see to the north the Blue Hill Country Club; to the east, the Blue Hill Yacht Club; to the northeast, Blue Hill Bay and Blue Hill Harbor; and, above them, she’ll see – you guessed it – Blue Hill, which looms over the town of – you guessed it again – Blue Hill. Oh, and if she looks to the west, she’ll see the Blue Hill Salt Pond (shown below). The odds are that she’ll remember the name of that lovely little town in Down East Maine.
Geology 101. Blue Hill, the actual trees-and-rock hill, reportedly rises to 940 feet. It was designated a “hill” apparently because it was less than 1,000 feet high. That was the minimal summit height to be a mountain, as defined by the geographic societies of the United States and United Kingdom until the 1970s, when both countries abandoned the distinction. Nonetheless, I’m told that many geologists still use the 1,000-foot criterion. (Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on December 27, 2022.)
It was sunny Tuesday when we went out to assess the damage done by the near-hurricane-force winds of the our Christmastime Surprise. Among the good news was that the little red-hulled fishing vessel in Conary Cove was alive and smirking the way that seasoned boats do.
(Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on December 27, 2022.)
Here you see a detour to a temporary bridge that takes us on a poignant ride over the Blue Hill Falls. The last remnants of the beloved original bridge were swept away yesterday, when this image was taken. In its place, you see that wooden-staked construction platform from which a new bridge will start to be constructed next year.
The original bridge was officially named Stevens Bridge, but usually was called The Falls Bridge, Reversing Falls Bridge, or some variation of those. It was historic, one of two bridges in the State technically designated as “Concrete-Tied Rainbow Through Arch Fixed Bridges.” (The Rainbow reference was to the shape of their two arches.)
The Falls Bridge was a delightful combination of rough, weather-beaten material and graceful design that spanned a beautifully turbulent stretch of water. It’s arches cast wonderful shadows and reflections. Here, in her memory, are some images from my Archives, including some taken from a helicopter for an article:
The Falls Bridge started to deteriorate slowly the day that it was finished in 1926 and recently got to the point where patching and shoring were not helping. It was decided that restoration to its original form would be too expensive and that replacement with a contemporary-style flat (arch-less) bridge was the prudent thing to do. (First image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on December 27, 2022.)
Here you see clear, blue ice – “skaters’ ice” – forming on the WoodenBoat School’s lily pond yesterday. Watching ice form day by day in ponds and streams is a little more interesting than watching paint dry.
For example, there is the fact that ice can float. Most liquid substances get heavier as they change into solids. Yet, if I correctly understand the process, water molecules get lighter by spreading out (becoming less dense) as water freezes. If this didn’t happen in our ponds and lakes, the water would freeze from the bottom up, not the top down, and ponds and lakes could become solid, which would not be good for fish and other living things.
In our faster-moving streams, generally, the running water apparently gets colder by mixing with itself and the cold air, which leads to the formation of ice, including a form of early ice called frazil. Frazil ice is made of small, randomly-shaped ice crystals that easily stick to each other, to the edges of streams and rocks, and to other objects within the water:
If the temperatures remain low, the frazil ice (and perhaps other ices) will grow out and eventually could form an ice tunnel that encases the stream. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 26, 2022.)
Here you see a cold and dreary Christmas morning view of Acadia National Park on the other side of Blue Hill Bay yesterday.
It was made even drearier by the fact that the area was still without external power, which was lost with the arrival of the mega-storm three days ago. In fact, power still has not been restored as I type this morning. For those without generators, it has been especially challenging.
Yet, there always is hope for us optimists and I took yesterday’s sunny afternoon and brilliant sunset over Great Cove as good omens:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 25, 2022.)
