In the Right Place: Less Is More

We’re now getting the more colorful winter sunsets and afterglows like this one on Saturday. They usually start with the undersides of clouds being painted pink and the horizons turning buttery:

Then, as the clouds darken, the horizon band takes on amber hues before disappearing under the descending darkness:

As I understand it, we see more of the sun’s rainbow of colors during winter sunsets primarily for two reasons. First, there’s less water (humidity) and dust in the air to obscure and distort views. Second, the angle of the sun is shallower, which allows the warmer color spectrum to be seen easier. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 2, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Complete

Yesterday was a good first Sunday in November, if you discount certain football games. The day was especially fine late in the afternoon at Naskeag Harbor, when visitors had left and the sun was in the process of doing the same.

It was brisk, but not winter-cold; what little wind there was caused a roll in the water, not a chop. Several loads of lobster traps were waiting to be taken to storage, their bright colors adding to the warm light. Also, seemingly to be alertly waiting to be called to work, were the fishing vessels.

The composition becomes incomplete when they’re not home. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 3, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Developing a Taste

Here you see three of the leaders of an all-female band (or “raft”) of wild turkeys that roam our area at this time of year. These adult hens usually number 11 or more and they do something that may be unusual for turkeys, which are known as woods and field game.

From time to time, these adventuresome birds go down to the coast at low and lowering tide to forage in the mudflats and among the intertidal plants and algae (rockweed, etc.). It’s hard to see what they’re eating; they fast-strut away or even fly off when they see me. But, I’m fairly sure some of their snacks consist of whole (in-shell) mud snails on the flats and feisty green crabs in the seaweed.

It would be seem just if our restored and seemingly overpopulated wild turkeys developed a taste for our overpopulated invasive green crabs. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 1, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Reminder

It’s time for the wearing of the orange.

Firearms deer-hunting season started today for licensed Maine residents and will open in the state Monday for licensed non-residents. Let’s all of us who love being in the woods – hunters, hikers, and all other outdoor enthusiasts – continue to be cautious and courteous as we usually are each hunting season.

As you probably know, Maine requires hunters with firearms to wear two articles of hunter orange clothing. Although not required, it’s always a good idea for others (and their dogs) to do the same in the woods and fields during hunting seasons. (Leighton Archive image taken in Brooklin, Maine.)

October Postcards From Maine

October here on the coast usually is our most colorful month and this year was no exception. However, this October was exceptionally dry and warmer than usual, which seemed to make the month’s color crescendo shorter and less intense than many in prior years. Nonetheless, the month was beautiful, as you’ll see.

We begin the Postcards, as usual, with images of the familiar scenes that we document monthly for seasonal records. In Brooklin, those are the views of Mount Desert Island from Amen Ridge and of the House on Harbor Island (which we show this month in sun and rainy fog):

In Blue Hill, we always document the iconic red boathouse in Conary Cove and Blue Hill, the almost-mountain, brooding above Blue Hill Bay:

October’s “fall foliage” this year was pleasant, sometimes subtly so, with occasional outrageous flares of color:

In the gardens and homes, the combinations of forms and fall colors were alluring, especially groupings of different varieties of plants showing glimmering colors in light rain.

Many of the ancient “wild” apple trees that produce fruit that’s never harvested lost their leaves early, but hung tightly onto their apples during the month, while a great variety of harvested apples were featured in the local supermarkets:

October (and September) is when fallow fields here are mowed to prevent their being taken over by fast-growing trees and brambles. Here are “before and after” images of an October field being mowed, as well as some of our local ponds and streams at their October best:

Among October’s variety of offerings were a few mornings of high winds that chased whitecaps in the coves, hard rains that created liquid explosions on rain chains, and a special sudden shower on a sunny day that produced an infinite rainbow:

On the fauna front, October is when the resident white-tailed deer, red squirrels, and common loons change their wardrobe and don dull gray winter coats, while winter bufflehead ducks arrive in white and black formal wear:

October also is the time when we see the last of our many migrating species, small and large, including great blue herons, monarch butterflies, greater yellowleg (and other) sandpipers, and Canada geese:

On the working waterfront, October is the last full month for “lobstering” for many fishermen (male and female). The fishing vessels come and go and some carry hauled-up lobster traps that soon will be trailered to storage as a season’s ending. Some of these boats and other seasonal working boats were pulled from the waters and put “on the hard” during the month.

On the sailing side, we saw our last windjammer in October, the “Angelique,” hosting a beach party early in the month before ending her season.

Other sailboats were being hauled out of the water and power-washed, drying in the sun, and causing traffic jams when being driven to their winter storage facilities:

Skiffs and other small boats were plentiful in the harbor waters during the first half of October, but also were being taken to their winter sheds during the second half of the month:

October, of course, is the Halloween month. It’s when we get some very strange tourists who dance in the woods, wear strange clothes or no clothes at all, and captain boats that sail day and night on grass; it’s also when pumpkins of varying types, some ghost-like, go on sale in supermarkets.

Finally, we consider the October sky. As our view of the setting sun moves south, the afterglows become more colorful, often a thick stroke of burnt orange:

The October Hunters’ Moon this year was a slowly developing supermoon that became — literally — fantastic:

(All images in this post were taken in Down East Maine during October 2024.)

In the Right Place: Golden Rain Time

Here you see a furtive tree in yesterday’s rain. It has decided to reveal its hiding place among spruce and balsam fir trees by turning yellow and losing its needles.

As many of you know, it’s a tamarack tree, named after the Algonquin Tribe’s word for “snowshoe wood.” You might also know the tree by its Abanaki Tribe name (“hackmatack”) or its Latin and German-derived name (“larch”).

The tamaracks seem to be late coming out this year. If I remember correctly, in prior years, many more were in full incandescence or devoid of needles by this time. Perhaps our fall drought is delaying the process.

Tamaracks are green-needled in the spring and summer, and often are impossible to distinguish at a distance when they arise among spruce and fir trees. Those other trees are coniferous and so are tamaracks; that is, they all produce and drop cones for propagation of their species.

However, tamarack branches are thinner and more wiry than those of their cousins and – most important – they’re not evergreen. They’re deciduous and, in the fall, their true nature as imposters is disclosed when they turn yellow and drop their needles like golden rain.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 30, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Tee Time

Here’s an October view of the iconic red boathouse in Conary Cove. As many of you know, this is one of the local scenes that we monitor in all seasons for our records. Strange as it may seem, we can thank a mid-western family and a golf ball for originating the sight, according to online documents (especially research by Steele Hays in “MaineBoats.com”).

For those interested, the story begins with Gertrude and Coburn Haskell of Cleveland, Ohio. They were wealthy summer residents of Blue Hill in the 1920s, having made their fortune through Coburn’s invention of the first golf ball with a rubber core and rubber band filling.

Coburn died at an early age in 1922 and Gertrude and their son Melville (I’m not making up these names) kept coming to their Blue Hill house in summer. A year or two after Coburn’s death, Gertrude and Melville decided to buy a 52-foot, Alden-designed, Maine-built sailboat. But they needed a safe place to moor this expensive beauty.

Gertrude rented property in Conary Cove from Harry Conary or another member of the Conary family that had owned Cove property for many years. She soon bought the property that she was leasing. Gertrude made Harry captain of her sailboat and had the now-red boathouse built in 1924.

Originally and for many years, the boathouse was painted white and had a pier protruding into the Cove. The property was sold to several subsequent owners, all of whom maintained the boathouse at least for the view. It was painted red in the 1950s and has remained so since.(Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on October 28, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Last and Least, But Good

Many winterberry shrubs here still contain swarms of red fruit within the graying roadsides, as you see from these images taken yesterday. These plants are unlike other fruiting trees and shrubs that ripen when it’s warm and get eaten then. These provide brilliant color well into winter.

Winterberry shrubs (Ilex verticillata), as do other American hollies, produce fruits that ripen late, are not as nutritious as many other fruits, and contain bad-tasting compounds that don’t dissipate until the winter months. They apparently are designed to avoid competition with many plants that produce seed and fruit for migrating birds.

The winterberry theory apparently is that, by delaying fruit ripening until many birds are gone and the remaining resident birds are less particular about what they eat, the plant is avoiding competition and maximizing its chances to have its seeds dispersed nearby, where the soil has proved compatible. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 28, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Maine Gothic

Today’s post shows changes to our view of the summer residence on Harbor Island, the house with the gothic upper window.

The above image shows the house enjoying the warmth of Saturday’s sunshine. Its windows are shuttered closed, indicating that its season is over. Seemingly standing guard in Naskeag Harbor is the Fishing Vessel “Tarrfish.” It apparently had recently hauled up some of its traps for storage, indicating that its lobster season is almost over.

Below, you’ll see that house in early October, hunkered down in a periodic fog. Its windows were unprotected, indicating that it was still operational then. At that time, Fishing Vessel “Dear Abbie:” and a skiff seemingly were standing guard, unconcerned about the fog.

Change is our one constant. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 4 [fog] and 26, 2024.)

In the Right Place: High Spirits

Two events happened yesterday that are worthy of sharing.

First, a raincloud suddenly appeared in the afternoon, shook its aspergillum, and blessed us with a few holy sprinkles while the sun shone. The celestial gods then decided to mark the special occasion with a colorful bow that disappeared when the rain ceased in minutes.

Then, in the evening as the sun sank away in the west, the train of its burnt orange cloak was dragged across our horizon with darkness following behind.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 26, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Final Flights

Recent cooler days have given the signal to deciduous trees that the time has come: They must discard their many jewels now and become inconspicuous as the potentially ravaging winter approaches looking for victims. I suspect that, by next weekend, most of our deciduous trees will have become gray and will have faded into the backgrounds of our awareness.

More specifically, as I understand the process, cooler temperatures and shorter days reduce the trees’ production of the hormone auxcin. This weakens spring’s bonding layers of cells that join the leaves to the branches (the “abscission layers”). In a short time, the depleted joint for the leaf stem is too weak to withstand blowing wind or rain and the leaves take their only and final flights to the ground.

The fall process of leaf coloration and liberation apparently is a defensive survival measure: Winter’s cold and sometimes severe winds can now blow through the trees’ branches with far less strain on those limbs; moisture is conserved within the trunk to prevent its drying out and weakening, and energy that was needed to keep leaves alive is saved.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 24 and 25, 2024.)

In the Right Place: The Usual Blues

Here’s an October view of that timbered mound known as Blue Hill across the Bay named after it. As many of you know, this is one of the local scenes that we monitor in all seasons for our record.

If that mound were 60 feet higher than it’s 940 feet, it would have been named Blue Mountain in 1788, when it and the Town there were named Blue Hill. At that time, mountains needed to be at least 1000 feet high for cartographic recognition. (The mountain-sizing criteria have been loosened.) In some sunlight, especially with a haze, the Hill can take on a blue cast.

(Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on October 18, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Buoy, Oh Buoy

Our autumns are marked by the disappearance of leaves and sailboats and the appearance of Vulcan. Not Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and forges, but the moorings vessel Vulcan owned by Brooklin Marine, LLC. Here you see Vulcan on Tuesday morning removing mooring buoys/balls in Great Cove that were used in the summer and early fall by WoodenBoat School's fleet and visiting boats:

You may have noticed that Vulcan is not exactly your graceful, slick-profiled Luders or Herreshoff racing boat. She’s not a racer; she’s built for slow, tough jobs and apparently does them well. I’m told that she has a drum winch that is rated for hoisting 10,000 pounds. Mooring anchors/bases need to be heavy to be secure.

The basic parts of a mooring setup start with an anchor or anchor-block weighing up to thousands of pounds, depending on the boat and water conditions. Where the sea bottom is soft and the boat is not huge, a mushroom anchor usually will do the job, but many boat owners prefer more permanent anchors in the form of a block of granite or concrete with a galvanized (rust-proof) eyebolt on top for the chain.

Galvanized chains run from the anchors to the mooring buoys. Unless the boat is large, a nylon rope-like pennant usually is attached to the buoy to be hooked up to the boat via shackles and swivels. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 22, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Personalities

It’s time for a few “portraits” of fishing vessels in Naskeag Harbor. These were taken of the boats at rest at the end of the day, as the sun was going down, when the growing shadows seem to reveal differing human-like personalities in the vessels.

FV Dear Abbie:

FV Judith Ann

FV Meghan Dee

FV Tarrfish

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 18 and 20, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Exceptional

The Brooklin Cemetery contains many interesting sights, two of which are exceptional in the fall and have fascinating backgrounds.

First, the centerpiece of the Cemetery is the above Camperdown elm, one of the few Camperdowns in this country. Each Camperdown is a grafted cultivar that can be traced to a unique tree that reportedly still exists. As it loses leaves in the fall, its highly-articulated underlying architecture becomes more apparent.

The original tree was created in 1837 in Scotland by David Taylor, the head forester for the Earl of Camperdown. Taylor grafted an unusual-looking and apparent elm tree to a Wych elm to create the twisting new species. Each successor tree has to be started with a cutting that can be traced back to the original.

The second exceptional sight in the Brooklin Cemetery is the majestic oak tree below, now turning gold. Although oaks are not rare, this tree is a one-of-kind.

It was planted in 1977 as a spindly sapling by the renowned author E.B. (“call me Andy”) White to protect the new grave of his beloved wife, Katharine. She was a senior editor at The New Yorker and a trail-blazer for women executives and writers, among other accomplishments.  In 1985, Andy was buried beside Katharine under the fast-growing oak:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 20, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Strangers

We’re getting an influx of strange tourists lately. These October visitors tend to be painfully thin and don’t talk much; but, they do smile a lot. My chance meeting with one of them went like this:

Me: Welcome, where do you come from?

A: From the world below.

Me: You’re Australian?

A: [Smile]

(Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on October 18, 2024; bike stand removed.)  

In the Right Place: Copse Killer

Multitudes of Asian Bittersweet fruits are emerging from their yellow husks and forming beautiful red galaxies. This is good for birds and disastrous for trees and bushes.

The birds act as angels of death when they eat the fruits and excrete millions of their seeds that will propagate the plant over large areas. The non-native plant (Celastrus orbiculatus) extends sinuous vines that are python-like, squeezing to death the trees and bushes that are their hosts. It’s all about competing for sun and soil nutrients.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 17, 2024.)

In the Right Place: 3rd Foliage Report

Down East’s fall foliage is now at its peak autumnal color, according to the final foliage report of the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry:

Down East: Zone 2

The report notes that some trees have not turned yet, but provide good contrast to those that have. You might want to do some exploring along the coast before it all blows away, as is happening to some maples:

Mother Nature’s warm brush strokes this year are nice, but not nearly as numerous and thick as in some past mid-October peaks. The color now is best in the blueberry field areas where the berry leaves are turning crimson:

Some individual trees are standouts:

Just a touch of fall color to water views always is an annual treat in coastal towns:

(Images taken in Blue Hill, Brooklin, and N. Sedgwick, Maine, on October 16, 17, and 18, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Full

Last night’s full moon will be the year’s largest. Here you see it rising above Mount Desert Island as night arrived:

At that time, it had to be viewed totally through earth’s dirty atmosphere, which distorts and warmly gilds the orb from our perspective. Once the moon rises above our atmosphere, its appearance returns to cool, silvery cragginess:

This moon reportedly was 220,055 miles from our planet, the closest a full moon will get this year; the average moon proximity to us is about 240,000 miles. Thus, this moon was a supermoon, which usually is defined as a full moon that is within 90 percent of the average lunar distance away from the Earth.

This October full moon is known as the Hunter’s Moon, which is what many northeastern Native Americans reportedly considered it to be: It rises as the days are getting colder and game must be gotten and stored before it gets very difficult to hunt. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 17, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Practice, Practice, Practice

You have to approach this clearing in the woods silently, moving from behind one tree to another. It’s a special place where young ghosts practice the dances that they’ll do on Halloween night. If they catch a glimpse of you, they disappear. POOF!

On the other hand, there’s one ghost in the area who doesn’t care who sees him taking trial runs in his ghost boat, in preparation for a night sail on Halloween. The boat’s built to sail in water or anything else, including grass and we assume air. The only problem: It attracts large, hairy spiders to its sail.

(Images taken in Maine at Blue Hill [dancing at Mainescape Nursery; ghost-supporting stakes deleted] on October 11 and at Brooklin [sailing] on October 15, 2024.)