JOURNAL
Here you see Flye Island and all of Blue Hill Bay about to disappear in the morning fog on Monday, as we looked east from Amen Ridge on Naskeag Peninsula:
The sun soon burned the fog off and, three hours later, we got a view of eternity through the southern entrance to Great Cove on the other side of our Peninsula:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 20, 2023.)
As the sun was descending yesterday afternoon, it briefly revealed a sleeping beauty in her winter shelter near Great Cove.
(Images taken at the WoodenBoat School boatshed in Brooklin, Maine, on February 20, 2023.)
We had a blustery snowstorm on Friday night that made driving to the Inn for dinner a little tricky. However, the storm had a very short lifespan. After a frantic convulsion, it died with a whimper, and we were bequeathed about an inch of powdery snow. That’s too little to plow off of our lanes and drives. Yet, as you can see, this powder still was decorating our byways yesterday morning, even though we had above-freezing temperatures.
We have a number of beautiful private country lanes that enter the woods from principal roads and serve internal driveways to houses hidden in the trees. The driveways feed into the country lanes like river tributaries. This is a sensible way to avoid numerous single-home driveways that cut into principal roads and become potential safety hazards and/or eyesore gaps in green roadsides.
Although the lanes are private and privately maintained, the tradition here is to allow the public to walk or even drive along their picturesque, wooded curves. However, many (if not most) of these lanes are posted with No Hunting signs. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 19, 2023.)
A thought while seeing this recent sunset over Great Cove: February’s sunsets along the coast are more fantastical than the obviously beautiful winter sunsets of the rest of the winter months.
The sunset lights of November through January often seemingly are in bold, delineated strokes of oil paint, easy to humanize. Those in February often seemingly are in emerging, luminescent sweeps and dabs of watercolor or, sometimes, a strange combination of oil and watercolor, that tell a more complicated story. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 16, 2023.)
The gnarly, twisting trunks and limbs that create the dense canopy of old crabapple trees are exposed in winter. It seems almost indecent to peek through what were once thickly flowered summer robes and see the arthritic-looking parts of aged bodies. But, it’s intriguing.
Some researchers say that the name “crabapple” may be derived from the density of the tree’s crown, which is “crabbed” with branches and small apples in the summer. Crabapples, which usually are too sour to eat without processing, are one of the ancestors of the cultivated apples that we eat off the limb.
Today, there apparently are few truly wild crabapple trees. Most are cultivated for special purposes, often for the decorative appearance of their flowers and the pollination of the bees that they attract to their areas. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 12, 2023.)
The winter water gear apparatus at the WoodenBoat School is both functional and (in a uniquely maritime way) artistically expressionistic when operational.
It also apparently can be dangerous to view closely, as this image from yesterday shows.
High winds, ice, and repetitious freeze/thaw cycles apparently weakened one of the base boughs of the old spruce tree that anchors the exhibition. And then, a big circling wind apparently came in from nearby Great Cove and twisted off about a 50-foot portion of the bough.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 12 [closeups] and 16 [wide-angle]. 2023.)
Here you see a saucy white-tailed deer posing on Valentine’s Day. She appears to be in beautiful shape, as do all of “our” white-tails, which seem to be thriving this year, despite some very nasty weather.
I suspect that their highly-insulated and water-resistant winter coats are the primary reason for their good health. Another reason may have been that our summer and fall grass crops seemed to have been particularly good this season for the deer to binge on and build up the fat that they need to store for winter. More Valentine’s Day visitors are shown below.
Their activity also diminished in winter, as usual. During the worst of our recent weather, the 15 or 20 does that are “regulars” did not make their rounds across our property for about two days. They apparently bedded down deeply within the woods and didn’t move.
On sunny days this month, we’ve also seen members of the local white-tail sorority keeping their metabolic rate low by bedding down in groups of up to five in fields and basking, sometimes for more than an hour. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 14, 2023.)
I tend to think of February as a gray month, even though I know, historically, it has been a one of the most variable of our months in terms of weather – sun, cloud, rain, snow, ice, killer colds, sweaty thaws, fog, sea fog, sea ice, and combinations of these.
As with the weather, this iconic scene shown here never stays the same; there’s always something to ponder. The tide is rising fast, yet Fishing Vessel Tarrfish is slack at her mooring; the main windows in the house on Harbor Island are shuttered tightly, yet the attic Gothic window isn’t; Tarrfish’s scallop-dredging mast and boom are in place, yet I don’t see her “drag” (a form of New Bedford bottom dredge) on deck.
Perhaps the solution to one of those minor mysteries can be found on the nearby dock: a scallop drag lies there, rolled up in its own weighty chain and mesh “bag.” Apparently, it has been repaired or is in need of repair.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 10 [house and boat] and 13 [dock and drag], 2023.)
It began as a holy and sad day to celebrate the death of an obscure priest named Valentine who was martyred on February 14th many centuries ago and later canonized as a saint. It is now a commercial but happy day to celebrate romance and love.
The modern Valentine’s Day celebration comes with a profusion of “hearts” being delivered on cards; in notes; as candies, cakes and helium balloons, and displayed in supermarkets and many other public places.
Yet, the “heart” is a man-made symmetrical symbol that has become a computer emoji and looks nothing like a human blood pump. But, as they say, it’s the thought that counts and thoughts of love are good any way that you can get them.
The image that you see above is a neighbor’s roadside banner that lightens our ride down to the harbor. In the image below, you’ll see what may be a romantic on the way to his girlfriend’s cave.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 11 [banner] and 13 [candy man], 2023.)
Here you see yesterday’s early morning moon on the rise over Great Cove. When the conditions are right, we can see the moon during the day for the same reason that we can see it on many nights: it’s nearby and reflecting sunlight, which makes it brighter than the surrounding sky, hence visible to us. Although the moon does not create any light of its own, the reflected sunlight makes it our second-brightest celestial object after the sun.
When this image was taken Sunday, the moon was in a waning gibbous phase and about 236 thousand miles away from the camera lens. As you probably know, the moon is “waning” when its lighted area is in the monthly process of getting smaller; it is “gibbous” when it is more than half lighted, but not full. Gibbous is from the Latin for hunch-backed. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 12, 2023.)
Here you see what appears to be a nonbreeding adult American Herring Gull, acting the part of a tailored gray and white bird on a clouded gray and white day last week.
This Gull (Larus [argentatus] smithsonianus) is commonly called a Herring Gull because herring are one of its favorite foods. However, the bird is not a very good fisherman, and often needs more calories than it can catch swimming in water. It then relies on scavenging and stealing to survive. It seems that it will eat just about anything dead or alive that looks edible, can be caught, and can fit into a beak whole or in bites.
While not an expert fishing in water, the Herring Gull is one of the deftest sea birds in the sky. It “is a master of the air,” according to the late Edward Howe Forbush, who continued: “It can fly forward or backward, veer gracefully in any direction, soar with stiffened pinions or shoot downward like an arrow, sail on steady wing against the wind and perform numberless evolutions with grace and ease.”
(Images taken in Surry, Maine, on February 9, 2023.)
February, with its wild weather swings, is a month to be careful of ice of all kinds. The sea ice in Patten Bay is breaking up again, as you see in this image taken Thursday:
The bog ice in Brooklin is shrinking again:
Because of its salt content, the water in ocean and brackish areas freezes at lower temperatures than fresh water in bogs. That sea ice can be very thick and seem to be safe to walk on, but temperature swings and tidal action can cause hidden faults that crack open suddenly when you walk on it.
Bog ice in cold weather also can shatter from your weight and make you stumble into freezing wet goo with disastrous results. Last month, a man in Cutler who was in the woods alone reportedly fell through bog ice. He got soaked, became extremely cold and disoriented, lost his way, and started to get hypothermia. A Maine Warden Service rescue team found him in time to save his life. (Images of sea ice taken in Surry, Maine, on February 9; image of bog ice taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 10, 2023.)
With Valentine’s Day soon to come, you might wonder about Doves, one of the ancient symbols of love. This image of a Mourning Dove appeared yesterday in my monthly column in the Ellsworth American:
To read the column about doves and the problems they have being symbols of love and peace, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column
We awoke yesterday in one of those big sky days. About an inch of new snow was covering the ground and billowing layers of blue-gray clouds enclosed us. Soon, a crack of sunlight appeared over the Atlantic on our southwestern horizon.
It was as if a lid was being lifted from our boxed day. As the lid lifted higher, the sun spread to the snow, melting it slowly. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 8, 2023.)
To be sure, this building is plain. But, its beauty lies within, as is true for so many plain things.
Yes, I sneaked into the WoodenBoat School Boatshed yesterday to make sure that the floating jewels inside survived our nasty Arctic weather recently. They did, as you can see from this image:
The Boatshed is unheated, but is nicely utilitarian, even in winter. It’s a post-and-panel structure that keeps most wind and precipitation out and allows warming sunshine in through skylights on the roof and windows at the building ends. A gravel floor warms up a bit when bathed in sunlight and retains some heat. There are no water pipes to freeze and burst.
During the summer, the Boatshed’s side panels are removed, and classes and other get-togethers are held under the roof, while salty breezes come wafting through from nearby Great Cove, which is about 100 feet behind the camera. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 6, 2025.)
Here you see last night’s sunset afterglow wrought in pinkish pastels:
Just before it disappeared and darkness descended, it flared into fiery red acrylics:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 6, 2023.)
The temperatures here yesterday afternoon shot up to 35 degrees with a wind chill in the high 20s. That feverish turn-around from the mind-piercing Arctic blast the day before was all the excuse that I needed to pull on the old boots and see what the icy invasion did to our woods.
The streams were frozen-over, as you see above, but not frozen-through; you could hear the water chortling below the ice. The floor of some parts of the woods looked like it needed a good sweeping:
There were conifer seed cones and needled branch tips, dead branches and dead treetops, and flecks of bark and twigs littered everywhere. Apparently, the ice weight and high winds were too much for vulnerable areas.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 5, 2023.)
It’s over. I think. Friday and Saturday’s record-breaking Arctic blast has moved out to sea and we are experiencing a torrid temperature of 23 degrees (F) with wind gusts of 9 miles per hour from the west-southwest as I write at 7:15 this morning.
Although records are not kept on sea smoke, it appeared to me that we had a record-breaker in that department, as well; the blast produced the most dramatic sea smoke and freezing sea spray display that I’ve ever experienced.
Yesterday morning, when I went down to Naskeag Harbor to take the images here, the recorded ambient temperature was minus 12, with a wind chill of minus 37 and wind gusts of up to 39 miles per hour from the Northwest. The Harbor was other-worldly:
The sea smoke hid our fishing vessels and the freezing sea spray covered them and the shoreline area with ice. Sea ice also started forming in the shallower waters along the shore. Here you see the ice-encrusted fishing vessels Tarrfish (shown twice, once a closeup) and Dear Abbey in the Harbor:
On the way back, I stopped off at Amen Ridge and watched the sea smoke sweep across Blue Hill Bay up to Acadia National Park in the distance, with its Mt. Cadillac arising and unphased:
When I got home, the patch of sea ice forming near the shore of Great Cove had grown:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 4, 2023.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is not always true here in coastal Maine. Below you’ll see sea smoke in Great Cove and Eggemoggin Reach at sunset last night, looking like the beginning of hell freezing over.
The smoke was wafting up from the water and being swept south by gusts of over 30 miles per hour from the North. The ambient temperature then was minus 7 (F) degrees with a wind chill to humans of minus 27, and the water temperature was about 40. Here’ how it looked in Naskeag Harbor at dusk yesterday:
Sea smoke is an atmospheric reaction between very cold winds flowing over significantly warmer (albeit not warm) water surfaces that evaporate into crystals during the process. If there were no significant wind, some of the water surface probably would start to freeze into pancake ice.
It got colder here overnight. As I write at 7 a.m. today, the recorded ambient temperature is minus 12, with a wind chill of minus 37, and wind gusts of up to 39 miles per hour from the Northwest. It’s not going to be a day for a walk along the coast. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 3, 2026.)
In light of the Arctic air now beginning to sweep down over us, I thought I’d show you Santa’s regional workshop across the road from us. Well, that’s what we like to think of it as, anyway. I’m told that the picturesque little building actually was a workshop and is about 100 years old, although it has had a new roof installed, among other restorations.
We’re bracing for Santa-like weather here with steady declines in temperature and high winds today through tomorrow. The 8 a.m. report today from the Brooklin School station was 12 degrees (F) (wind chill of -06) and gusts of 35 miles per hour from the west. Great Cove already is full of whitecaps. It’s supposed to get much colder, but at least its crystal clear. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 2, 2023.)
