In the Right Place: The Long & Short of It

Around here, some residential driveways are long and some are short. Some are used daily in the winter by full-time residents and some are used occasionally by owners who make winter visits. And, of course, some are not used until summer by some owners. But, seemingly. most residential driveways are plowed no matter what.

Plowing not only facilitates the delivery of fuel for heating systems and packages from UPS and FedEx trucks, it is a safeguard for emergencies. It allows fire trucks or other emergency vehicles better access to a residence in case of fire or other danger (such as medical emergencies or burst pipes in non-drained structures).

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 7, 2025.

In the Right Place: Another Sun & Snow Snap

I’ll arbitrarily name these sculptures “Snowmom and Child.” They got me thinking about the popularity of art that shows a mother and child, a subject that I looked into for an article a while back.

History is replete with masterpiece sculptures depicting a mother and her child. One realistic ancient example is Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virgin and Laughing Child” (1472). It depicts his idea of a Virgin Mary looking down with a warm smile at a playfully laughing baby Jesus – an unusually human moment that can make a sacred subject lovable.

On the other, more obtuse and modern end of the spectrum, there’s Henry Moore’s “Mother and Child: Hood” (1983). It’s an abstraction of a woman conceiving, gestating, and tenderly holding her child – all in one marble piece without realistic anatomical details. You have to let your imagination loosen its grip a little before you realize the work’s ambitious magnificence.

But, back to our less ambitious snow art, “Snowmom and Child”: We have a fairly abstract mom beside a somewhat realistic (albeit not laughing) child. I like to think that mom is taking her child out to the road to put her on the Brooklin School bus, after which mom will finally relax with a cup of coffee. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 15, 2025.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: With Ice, Please

These images of Conary Cove were taken yesterday for our February 2025 record. There was bright sun, but an unfriendly ambient temperature of 20° F keeping company with downright vicious wind gusts that seemed to penetrate to the brain core.

Nonetheless, if you’re going to shiver, you can’t go too wrong shivering while trying to make a memory of a quintessential Maine coast scene. I suspect that these images will bring a smile when I review them in August. (Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on February 18, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Sun & Snow Snaps

Sun on snow can be transformative. A rusted anchor and its ever-faithful shadow seem to take up yoga. A fenced-in picnic area seems to become a water-color composition on graph paper:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 7 [umbrella] and 10 [anchor], 2025.)

In the Right Place: Motherly

This month, so far, has been one of our more wintry Februarys in terms of wind, cold, snow, ice, and that old favorite “wintry mix.”. But, so far, we’ve gotten no killer blizzards or treacherous ice storms that can make life almost unbearable until they subside and their damage is repaired.

Above, you see the sea ice in Blue Hill Bay on Saturday, just after being seriously stressed by a fast-rising 10.4-foot-high tide. Below, you’ll see Blue Hill, herself, watching motherly over her icy Bay and little Town:

(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on February 15, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Diligence vs. Rollicking

It’s snowing again as I write. The same band of non-threatening pygmy flakes has returned and is slowly and silently, but diligently, filling up our much-plowed driveway. This has become boring.

Our sunny Valentine’s Day weather was more unusual and threatening, as you can see here:

Those are the island-protected and usually placid waters off Naskeag Point being tormented by gusts of winds in the mid-30s and higher. That’s miles-per-hour. The temperature was in the 20s. That’s Fahrenheit degrees.  The powers that be issued a small boat advisory and should have issued a small person advisory. Some gusts almost knocked me down.

On the other hand, white caps (also known as white horses) and rollicking waters are much more interesting in action than pygmy snowflakes at work.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 14, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Snows, Storms, and Hunger

Here you see the February full moon rising over Blue Hill Bay on Wednesday, when it was at its fullest. A snowstorm was brewing as it rose, and we awoke the next day to a mix of tiny snowflakes and sleet. 

The Farmers' Almanac, which has been publishing continuously in Lewiston, Maine, since 1818, began reporting on translations of Native American names for full moons in the 1930s, and these names still are the most frequently used.

Thus, this February moon is known widely as the Snow Moon or Storm Moon, the most frequent names given to it by the northeastern native nations. February’s heavy snowstorms and other bad weather made hunting difficult, so this moon also was called the Hunger Moon by some of the indigenous peoples, according to the Almanac. (Images taken from Brooklin, Maine, on February 12, 2025.)

In the Right Place: The Joy of Courtship

This is Valentine’s Day, so my monthly column in the current Ellsworth American is about passionate courtships that are occurring here and now – but by owls and what their love life can teach us.

(This image is a merger of two photographs; the owl shown is a captive, injured bird.) To read the column, use this link: https://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Frozen History

It’s snowing again, as I write – another of those polite, itsy-bitsy-flaked snow showers that slowly and diligently fills the much-plowed driveway and tops-off the rest of the snow build-up elsewhere. These snow “storms” are getting boring. I’m almost ready for a good old-fashioned, tree-toppling blizzard. Almost.

Instead, let’s just look at two historically important buildings that look better after the snow stops. Eden Chapel in the foreground was dedicated in 1900 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. This late Victorian church contains distinctive wooden design features, including a decorative diamond on the second stage of the tower and wave-cut shingles on the third.

To the left of the Chapel, you’ll see what once was Naskeag Schoolhouse No. 1. When Brooklin was incorporated in 1849, that was one of nine one-room schools to which local children walked. The school was closed in 1937 and the building reportedly was reconfigured as a an automobile repair garage that was run by Arthur and Arlene Smith, a husband-wife team of mechanics. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 7, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Prayer’s End

This Brooklin house and, especially, its barn are local icons. The original structures on the property were built about 1850 and owned by the Bowden family who farmed the land for many years and later even operated a long-gone roadside gas station here.

By 1958, the property reportedly was run down. And then Joseph “Roy” Barrette and his wife Helen came along looking for a fixer-upper retirement place. They bought the property and constantly worked on improving it. They named it Amen Farm, perhaps because they had found their dream and/or because of its breath-taking view across Blue Hill and Jericho Bays.  (Yes, Roy was the legendary author-horticulturist-gourmand and wine expert who kept writing during his “retirement” in Brooklin. He died in1995.)

Subsequent owners have kept up and improved the property, especially the completely renovated barn. As with many barns in New England, it no longer houses farm animals. It reportedly has a modern great room with fireplace and large windows overlooking the back pasture, as well as a separate exercise area. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine. on February 7, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Fantasia Revisited

Our outrageous hibiscus is peaking now during the coldest, snowiest part of the new year, as it always does. Its short-lived mission is to make us remember summer Italian ices – especially scoops of lemon and watermelon – on a hot, bee-buzzing day, and to imagine a phantasmagoric volcano erupting in impossible colors:

Hibiscuses are the result of continuing cultivation into new colors and forms, starting from ancient Polynesian experimenters. (One form is the state flower of Hawaii.) Each hibiscus flower has male and female parts. The most prominent is in the middle of the flower; it’s the “style,” which looks a bit like the Seattle Space Needle. It’s a long tube through which pollen travels to the ovary that’s hidden in the bottom of the flower.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 9, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Real Cool

The Super Bowl wasn’t the only cool thing to see yesterday. During the early morning snowstorm, the seven adults shown below took a “cold dip” in the waters off Brooklin’s Naskeag Point to raise funds for Finding Our Voices:

FOV, headquartered in Camden, is dedicated to breaking the silence surrounding domestic abuse in Maine. The event was organized by Sarah Havener of Brooklin and reportedly would have had more “dippers” if the weather had not made driving to Brooklin so difficult. These wet seven seemed to enjoy themselves, however:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 9, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Seeing the (Darkened) Light

It’s snowing seriously here as I write, but yesterday was a fine day to see this Light that is no longer on. It’s the Pumpkin Island Lighthouse, which is a stone’s throw off the northern tip of Little Deer Isle. The station was created in 1854 and was decommissioned in 1933. The Island and lighthouse have been privately owned since then.

Captain John Chester of nearby Brooklin reportedly sold the Island to the federal Government and was appointed first lighthouse keeper there at an annual salary of $350. In 1870, Charles Leroy Babson, also of Brooklin, reportedly took over as a one-legged lightkeeper. (He lost his left leg fighting for the Union in the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg.)

When and why the less-than-two-acre Island was named Pumpkin seems to be a mystery; it’s not shaped like a pumpkin, nor can I find any history of pumpkin-raising there. (Images taken from Little Deer Isle, Maine, on February 8, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Weird Oldies Department

Here’s one of the centenarian apple trees on the WoodenBoat campus that we monitor monthly; it’s basking in yesterday’s bright sun like an octopus standing on its head.

Down the road at Amen Farm, another old tree that we monitor, a weeping beech, was having its usual bad hair day:

The beech dates from before 1958, based on old photographs. Both of these iconic trees are a reminder of the value of loving care. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 7, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Baby Flakes

Here you see yesterday’s snowstorm in action. We received not quite two inches of snow, despite some predictions of six inches or more. It was an insistent, but very polite, storm of millions of baby snowflakes, so small that they created a snow fog at times. But, the storm did not disturb our power, blow down trees, or make road plowing difficult, as far as I can tell.

The forecast for today is an optimistic “mostly sunny” with a high of 34-5° F. Dawn’s first light this morning seemed to confirm that prediction:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 6 and 7, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Canadian Imports

Here you see “Christopher-Devin III” anchored in Center Harbor in yesterday’s cold weather. She’s the only Novi (“NO-vee”) in our local fleet of lobster boats that are fitted out as scallop draggers in the winter. That is, her Novi nickname reflects the fact that her basic design originated in Nova Scotia, where you’ll apparently find more Novies than New England-style lobster boats.

Usually, these Canadian vessels have stepped up hulls, utilitarian cabins with banked windows, and rounded hull bottoms. They’re angular compared to the more swept-back New England boats such as “Captain Morgan,” shown below with a temporary shelling hut behind the cabin:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 2 [CM] and 6 [C-D III], 2025.)

In the Right Place: High-Low

Here’s a peaceful, winter-darkened scene complete with mallard duck. It shows high tide at the mouth of Patten Stream, where it empties into the Bay of the same name. At low tide, the rocky shore makes it virtually duck-proof there:

(Images taken in Surry, Maine, on February 1 [high] and 4 [low], 2025.)

In the Right Place: Maine Gothic I and II

In this post, you’ll see two Maine coast scenes that have interesting parallels in the sense that they both show a boat and a distinctive house, but under different circumstances.

In this case, the house is the only summer residence on Harbor Island and the boat is a working vessel that fishes for scallops:

In this case, you’ll see an abandoned shack and a now-dormant skiff that collects snow:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 2, 2025.)

In the Right Place: With Ice

Here you see sea ice scattering in shards across Conary Cove on Saturday afternoon as a 11.7-foot tide crests over the foundations of the boathouse.  It’s been cold here:

Sea ice forms, of course, when seawater freezes, but that water needs a lower temperature to freeze than fresh water due to the seawater’s salt content. Sea ice floats because it is less dense than the surrounding water.

The reflective nature of sea ice in the polar oceans is an important coolant for planet Earth. The increasing losses of that ice there and elsewhere should be a matter of concern for those who care about future generations. (Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on February 1, 2025.)

In the Right Place: A Hill Called Blue

Here you see our region’s answer to Mt. Fugi, as seen yesterday. It’s not exactly a mountain, no less a volcano like Fugi, but it’s our looming natural presence. It’s a very high hill called Blue, as in Blue Hill. It presides above the Town of Blue Hill and Blue Hill Bay.

The Bay is choked with saltwater ice now that has trouble staying intact due to the fast rising and lowering tides there.:

(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on February 1, 2025.)