January Postcards From Maine

January is the month of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, the god of the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. This year, January’s seasonal transition here on the Maine coast was seamless and even lovely at times. It stood in stark contrast to troubling times elsewhere.

We hope that a few postcard-quality images that share Down East Maine’s good fortune will offer a bit of relief to those who need it. As with many postcards, these are meant to carry with them the friendly message to some of you of “We wish you were here” and, to others, the message of “We’re glad you’re here.”

We begin as usual with our monthly record images of the western mountains of Mount Desert Island, as seen across Blue Hill and Jericho Bays from Brooklin’s Amen Ridge; then, there is the harbor house on Harbor Island, which protects Naskeag Harbor; followed by Blue Hill and Blue Hill Bay’s sea ice being erupted by a rising tide, and, finally, the landmark red boat house in Conary Cove on a dramatically dark and icy winter’s day:

January here was punctuated by several polite snowstorms and freezes that caused little damage, but created visual delights that helped protect against the winter “blahs”:

As usual, the country lanes and rural roads here were beautified by January’s snowfalls and quickly plowed with little diminishment in their beauty:

Of course, the bright suns of January that follow its dusky snows allow us to see familiar landmarks and everyday objects in a different, almost purified, way:

One of the more intriguing games that can be played in January is guessing what the smaller sheds and shacks — the winter storage structures — contain; it’s not always obvious:

Winter wildlife sightings in January include shy white-tailed deer bucks that have survived the hunting season, yearlings that frolic openly, and their mothers who pose in their new, thick winter coats. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of over-wintering robins frantically invade the winterberry bushes and pick them bare during the month, while our resident take-things-as-they-come herring gulls often huddle and nap without complaint on cold days.

While our seagulls huddle, some of our more adventurous fishermen go out on the cold waters and “drag” (with a dredge) for Atlantic scallops or dive in scuba equipment to the sea bottom to hand-harvest them. Some also dive for Atlantic sea urchins. For dragging, lobster boats are equipped with masts and booms that control the dredge; they also usually are temporarily equipped with protective shelling huts behind the cabin. The smaller urchin diving boats also often are equipped with temporary shelling huts, but no masts and booms.

Finally. we come to the January skies, where the cold air has less moisture and dust to blur our vision. The sun’s lower angle in relation to us in January this year provided several spectacular “blue hours” (which often last only minutes) and many glorious sunsets. There also were some fascinating views of January’s “Wolf Moon” phases, including a good number of “morning moons” that lasted well after daybreak.

(All images in this post were taken in Down East Maine during January of 2025.)

In the Right Place: Seldom-Asked Questions Department

Where’s the best place to find baby-blue gates and baby-blue playhouses? Why, it’s the town that also has a blue hill, of course.

(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on January 23, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Soothing Touches

We had another snowstorm of a few inches yesterday, this one as mild and polite as the last – no tree-killer winds, no icy rain, no mountainous drifts, no power outages (that I know of). The harbors remained calm and receptive to being gently touched.

Here you see the Brooklin Boat Yard’s relatively new pier and gear shed enjoying the calm and soothing snow in Center Harbor:

Below, you’ll see the old Town Dock in Naskeag Harbor doing the same:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 29, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Snow Quirks, Part III

It’s snowing again as I write, with 1-3” more of the white stuff predicted for here. Nonetheless, here’s one of the quirky results of the snowstorm a few days ago:

These are displaced picnic/classroom tables whose space in the WoodenBoat School boatshed is now taken by stored boats. The tables are hidden behind the shed and are stacked like the Philadelphia Eagles’ offense on the one-yard line. They produce the kind of shadows that can be turned into mythic stories.

The waterside view of the boatshed hides the tables completely:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 27, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Red, White and Snow

Here you see an attractive structure on the Flye Point ridge that apparently was a working barn at one time, but now reportedly contains living quarters. There’s a similarly-painted red and white structure across the road that appears (from the undisturbed snow) to be a winter storage shed, perhaps for boats or farming equipment:

White-trimmed red barns and other rural “outbuildings” are traditional in New England. However, that tradition was not started because the red helps cows find their way home in a snowstorm or that the red distracts bulls from charging farmers, as some of the myths told to tourists allege.

The red-painting practice here reportedly started in the 1700s. That’s when New England farmers dug up rust-colored iron oxide and mixed it with linseed oil and lime to create a reddish varnish that protected structures against fungus. When red and white paint became commercially available later, they were used because the red had become a traditional color and red and white paints usually were the cheapest available.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 26 [storage] and 27 [“barn”], 2025.)

In the Right Place: Snow Quirks, Part II

We were jealous of all the recent sightings of snowy owls in the region – until we had this sighting in Brooklin. I venture to say that it’s the only LITERALLY snowy owl recently sighted. And it’s probably the rarest – being a one-of-a-kind.

Well, maybe I’m rationalizing. But, this owl IS one of the last completed granite sculptures by the famed Cabot Lyford (1925-2016), who titled it “Grey Mouser.” He continued wood sculpting when he got too old to handle the weight and other difficulties of sculpting in stone.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 22, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Drought Report

Here’s the WoodenBoat School campus lily pond Friday. Our ponds and streams remain full, frozen, and snow-covered. Yet, we also remain in moderate drought despite the snow and snow-mix that we’ve received recently.

That heightens wildfire danger. Frozen ground does not absorb moisture well; much of our precipitation runs off into streams that feed the ponds or that empty into the ocean. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 24, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Snow Quirks, Part I

We have discovered where the Abominable Snowman sleeps and where he eats his breakfast of a dozen cold, raw eggs with shell.

Don’t tell anybody. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine on January 22 [ hammock] and 24 [eggs], 2025.)

In the Right Place: Deep Winter

Here you see a deep-winter view of the near-mountain called Blue Hill as it rose above Blue Hill Bay yesterday. Snow flurries had just ended and the sea ice in the Bay was breaking up under the strain of a fast-rising tide:

(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on January 23, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Fixer-Upper Department

It’s good to see this old house being fixed up, albeit slowly and perhaps mostly by only one talented person in his spare time. See the new clapboards on the old addition:

The house has good Maine character and very nice dormers have been added lately. It also is visible from the road, which makes a fix-up more important. The tree shadows on the snow in the foreground seem to be pointing at it and saying, “Look at this place!” (Images taken in Brooklin. Maine, on January 22, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Things to Do While Stuck

The intense, low light of sunny January afternoons enters our screened porch at an oblique angle that can create intriguing shadows and contrasts. This sometimes proves to be an irresistible metering and framing challenge for a student of photography who is stuck mostly in the house due to the cold and snow.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 15, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Stay-at-Homes

Here you see a desperate American robin devouring the last of our winterberry fruits – among the bird’s least-preferred foods – as the barometer sinks. This was the day before the “Inaugural Storm” that laid down 3-4 inches of snow and made our cold spell colder.

More robins (and some other species) reportedly have been overwintering in Maine in the past few years as the winters get milder. This may be beginning to strain the availability of suitable foods for all our feathered friends during the cold months.

Robins seem to like crabapples, holly, juniper, and hawthorn best in winter when earthworms and insects are not available, but will eat low-energy foods such as winterberry and burning bush (euonymus), if those are all that’s available.

Unlike in the spring and summer, when robins are very territorial, they often feed in flocks in the winter when they’re more visible to hawks – the herd defense of more eyes and ears and a mathematically less likelihood they’ll be singled out when the predator dives. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 19, 2025.)

In the Right Place: A Polite Storm

The snow storm and freezing temperatures that intruded boorishly into yesterday’s NFL Divisional Playoffs in Philadelphia and Buffalo arrived here last night in a better mood and displayed better manners. The storm gently deposited a little more than three inches of pure snow without disrupting our power or toppling any trees. After a little early morning encore, it left us alone and allowed the sun to showcase the purified landscape.

Here’s the gray end of the storm early this morning before the sun showed up with any strength:

Sunlight, tentative at first, eventually crept though the woods and illuminated fields:

Some private lanes were plowed early, some plowed after I arrived, but all town streets were well plowed early in the morning:

Residences and other structures seem to be refreshed by a snow like this:

Snowstorms are especially capable of cleaning up working harbors, even at low tide:

One of the joys of a gentle storm is getting up in the morning and walking through the house in your pajamas, looking at the different views of peaceful scenes, while being contentedly warm:

Outside artworks adopt new personalities in gentle snow storms, including one-of-a-kind handrails by blacksmith Doug Wilson of Little Deer Isle and urns and a birdbath by Lunaform’s artisans in Hancock:

Finally, the day ended with a fitting sunset:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 20, 2025.)

In the Right Place: A Reluctant Admission

As you see, there still are many burning bush berries available. However, the birds are finally starting to eat them because virtually all the native winterberry and choice native fruits and their seeds have been consumed by wildlife during these cold days.

That’s a sign of the problem with one of the most popular fall-color plants, a problem that has to be reluctantly admitted: burning bush plants (Euonymus alatus) are bad actors. Burning bush plants, non-natives, are extraordinarily invasive. Not so much in well-attended back yards, but in the woods where birds deposit their berries’ seeds, complete with bird fertilizer.

Dense thickets of burning bush crowd out native plants that produce more nutritious foods that wildlife prefer and need – if they can get it. With climate warming encouraging migrating birds to stay here longer, the availability of good food for them and for the overwintering wildlife is becoming an issue.

For long flights or for enduring cold weather, energy-producing (especially fat-containing) foods are life savers. Burning bush reportedly contains very little compared to the fruits of many native plants that it is replacing. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 17, 2025.)

In the Right Place: A Morning Moon

Waking up to the moon sneaking away in a blue sky and above sunlit fields and woods has been an inspiration for many artists. Here you see yesterday’s morning moon: egg-shaped, low, and about 245,075 miles to our northwest, but still visible until it “set” (disappeared over the horizon) at 9:12 a.m. My amateur understanding of the phenomenon, for what its worth, follows.

Morning moons often occur on clear days shortly after the full moon. That’s when the moon is setting later and later and becomes “high” enough to be visible in daylight. This month, for example, the moon here rose full (fully illuminated) on January 13 and set at 7:21 the following morning, but it wasn’t high enough in our view to see after daylight.

Yesterday, the moon was “waning” (less and less of it was being illuminated by the sun as time was going by). It was a “gibbous” moon (“GIB-us,” not “JIB-us,” from the Latin word for “hump”). That is, the moon is gibbous when the area visible to us is more than 50 percent and in the process of decreasing or increasing.

At 50 percent illumination, the moon reaches one fourth of its cycle (“first quarter moon”) or three fourths of its cycle (“third quarter moon”). At other times, as the moon’s surface is becoming more and more visible to us, it is said to be a “waxing” moon (from the Old English for “to grow”). Whether waxing or waning, the moon’s illuminated part will eventually be crescent-shaped due to the angle of sun rays; the crescent and other moon phases are not caused by the earth’s shadow (except in a relatively rare lunar eclipse).

(Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 17, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Winter Visions

Take a cold and bright January day that makes you zip up all the way; spread untrammeled snow that makes you squint; drop in naked trees that hallelujah into blue-glazed skies, and add a familiar old structure that seems to have been there forever – and let your eyes feast.

Here you see the Friend Memorial Public Library in the shadows of two immense sugar maples whose leaves shade the lawn in summer and bejewel the area in fall. The main structure (approximately the front half) of the Library was built in 1912, when the trees apparently were planted as ten-foot teenagers. The building has been extended and there are plans to further enlarge the Library.

In the first Comment space you’ll see a snow-covered lawn and a workshop amidst a crowd of wild paper birch trees: white-on-white-on-white. The shop was built in the early 1900s and reportedly was used to make wooden decoys for duck hunting, among other things.

According to the literature, sugar maples can live 300-400 years and wild paper birches can live 80-140 years. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 13 [shed] and 14 [Library], 2025.)

In the Right Place: Local Boat Sheds, V

Here’s a January – very wintery – view of the classic red boat shed (boat house) at Conary Cove that travelers on Rt. 175 look forward to seeing as they approach the Cove. As many of you know, we monitor this site (and sight) regularly. Below is a slightly sunny image from the same day:

There’s an irony here – this probably is the most beloved boat shed in the area and it apparently hasn’t housed a boat for many years. I guess you don’t have to work when you’re a popular landmark.

This boat shed reportedly was built in 1924 and was painted white for many years. Old photographs reveal that It also had a pier protruding into the Cove from its north (left end) side. The property was sold to several subsequent owners, all of whom maintained the boathouse at least for the public view, according to reports. It was painted red in the 1950s and has remained so since. (Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on January 12, 2025.)

In the Right Place: January MDI View

Here’s yesterday’s view of the western mountains on Mount Desert Island making their own weather again. As usual, this regularly-monitored view is from Brooklin’s Amen Ridge across Blue Hill and Jericho Bays.

MDI, as many of you know, is Maine’s largest island and it is accessible by bridge. About half of MDI is occupied by the very popular Acadia National Park, where Mt. Cadillac, the tallest mountain on the east coast of the U.S, rises as a landmark and seamark.

Acadia National Park is not limited to MDI. It also includes the spectacular rockbound point of Schoodic Peninsula on the nearby coast of Maine, where often-wild surf crashes onto beautiful, huge ledges of pink granite that have been cut through with black basalt dikes. In addition, the Park includes a good part of Isle au Haut out in the Atlantic Ocean, and parts of 16 smaller outlying islands. (Image taken from Brooklin, Maine, on January 14, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Local Boat Sheds, IV

We continue exploring the variability of local boat sheds (boat houses). Here you see a classically spare boat shed tucked into a stand of spruce. It’s a relatively recent construction by a neighbor to enclose a special vessel.

When the door is swung open, you see the trimaran SYZYGY sitting there contentedly like a huddled ptarmigan with her “wings” tucked in:

There’s a lot to say about this boat, so please bear with me. First, there is her name. As the star-gazers know, syzygy (““SIZZ-uh-jee“) is an English language word derived from the Greek. It means the alignment of three or more celestial bodies, such as a syzygy of the sun, moon, and earth that sometimes leads to our seeing an eclipse.

Second, as the sailors know, a trimaran is a three-hulled vessel that differs from a catamaran by having one more hull, but both names are derived from the ancient South Asian Tamil language. In that area, the south Pacific islands and landmasses were in large part first populated by exploring Polynesian sailors who came in multi-hull vessels (usually two-hulled outriggers, some huge).

Third, many (if not most) multi-hull boat owners still refer to the major parts of their vessels by using the Polynesian terms for them: The “vaka” is the main hull, an “ama” is an outrigger hull, and an “aka” is the support connecting an outrigger hull to the main hull, according to the literature.

Finally, back to the petite SYZYGY (her on-the-hull name is in all capital letters). She’s 21’ long by 16’ wide when the amas are fully spread. She was designed and built by the famed multi-hull pioneer John Marples, who now resides in Penobscot, Maine.

(Images taken in Brookin, Maine on January 9 [open door] and 12, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Snowmophilia

We had a gentle snowstorm over the weekend, which left a legacy of Maine coast winter scenes. Here are a few for our snowmophiles:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 13, 2025.)