JOURNAL
Here you see a peregrine falcon that has been trained to catch and kill on command by the master falconer on whose glove the bird sits:
The image appears with my monthly column in the current print edition of the Ellsworth American (and in the March 6, 2025, digital edition). Click on the image to enlarge it. To read the column about Maine’s restored peregrines – the cheetahs of the sky – use this link: https://www.5backroad.com/montly-column
1. Some Down Easters know that spring is coming when the first sailboat comes out of hibernation and causes a traffic jam in front of the Post Office:
2. For others, it’s when the Holey Ritual of the Healing of the Driveways starts with the Laying on of the Sands:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine on March 4 [boat] and 11 [potholes], 2025.)
“Traditional” red Maine barns are popular with photographers who enjoy historic sites, including yours truly. However, many, if not most, barns here are more likely to shelter cars and trucks than cows and goats, or contain summer apartments and party rooms rather than grain and hay:
A sobering story is told in the 2024 Maine Census of Agriculture (based on the most recent [2022] data). The number of farms in the state has been decreasing over the years. As in many states, Maine farms are mostly (82%) individual- or family-run operations.
A remarkable 57% of Maine farmers have a primary occupation other than farming. And, most of our farmers are old. About 12.5% of Maine farmers are over 75 years old, about 26% are in the 64-to-75-years-old category, and about 23% are in the 55-to-64 category.
Maine’s principal agricultural products are potatoes, milk and other dairy products, chicken eggs, blueberries, and (somewhat surprisingly) floricultural items (flowers and ornamental plants). (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8, 2025.)
There’s no question that, at the center of this image, that is a “dock” and not a “pier.” It’s officially the Brooklin Town Dock. I’ve heard that some think it’s squat and ugly. In isolation, maybe so. However, within its chosen place, it’s a valuable feature of a picturesque Maine working harbor.
When a Maine lobster boat is tied up to that Dock, a very pleasing composition is completed. The Dock is bordered by a small recreational and picnic area, a beach that provides good summer sunning and bracing swimming in very clear water, and a parking lot with a portable restroom facility. There also is a float docking system that is launched beside the Dock in the summer for small boats to tie up.
Note that, unlike many piers, this hard-surfaced Dock is wide enough and strong enough to accommodate trucks for loading and unloading lobster-trapping and scallop fishing equipment. It also can support heavy, mechanized grapple trucks that can install and remove booms, masts and chain-net “drags” (dredges) on fishing vessels.
The Dock is at Naskeag Point, the end of a beautiful peninsula that, itself, is on a beautiful peninsula named the Blue Hill Peninsula. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8, 2025.)
Above and below are images taken yesterday of what is left of the Atlantic Boat Company’s traditional pier in Herrick Bay.
The pier was destroyed by the extraordinary winter storms of January 2024. Perhaps these wooden “bones” have been left as a memorial or a reminder not to take Mother Nature for granted.
The Company replaced this old pier with a modern, retractable floating dock system that is launched when the weather warms up and stored ashore in winter. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8, 2025.)
Here’s the WoodenBoat School pier, which also is intriguing in a good Great Cove fog. It comes ashore adjacent to the School’s classic boathouse and probably is the most substantial pier in the neighborhood. It has a very long, heavy-duty wood span that rests on massive, old granite pilings. In the summer, it’s extended by a gangway and a fairly large docking float where visitors tie up boats.
Above, you see the pier from the south. On the north side of boathouse, there’s a flight of old, lichen-splattered field stone steps that lead directly to the pier:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 6, 2025.)
Is it a “pier” or a “dock” or either or both? Some people insist that stationary passageways that protrude over the water on piers of wood, stone, or other supporting material should be called “piers.” Only structures that are designed to allow a floating vessel to tie up to them should be called “docks,” they say.
Above, you see the Brooklin Boat Yard’s pier yesterday as a reported 16.5-foot tide rolls into Center Harbor and a dense fog drifts out. Its relatively new and large home-like shed hasn’t weathered yet, but it’s certainly a distinctive feature. It looks a bit surreal (René Magritte-ish?) hanging over moving water:
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 6, 2025.)
It’s foggy, windy, rainy, and cozy-warm for early March (45°F) as I write this morning. It has been that way since yesterday, when the images posted here were taken. We seem to be in the first major battle of seasons between the occupying forces of winter and the invading forces of spring. The sea ice has been unable to maintain its line of defense in many areas and the accumulated ground snow is in full retreat
Above, you see the ice in Patten Bay separating and drifting out yesterday. Below, you’ll see that most of the snow on Harbor Island was disappearing fast in the rain and warmth yesterday and probably is virtually all gone as I write here:
Of course, we dare not get optimistic. Local history shows that there always is a possibility of a spring blizzard or ice storm after a March thaw. (Images taken in Surry and Brooklin, Maine, on March 5, 2025.)
I came out of the dentist’s office Monday morning and got into the car where Barbara was waiting for me. She said, “There’s something moving around in that holly bush that you just passed.” The bush was about 30 feet away from our parking space. We stared at it and saw nothing. I dragged up the camera with a 200-500mm lens that I always travel with. As the focusing blur cleared, this little masked beauty appeared, apparently waiting motionless for us to leave so that he could finish breakfast:
It was a single, stationary Ceder Waxwing, which was unusual; they usually travel and dine in a fluttering flock. He did eventually hop around a little in the bush, which allowed us to see why he is called a “waxwing”: There’s a little daub of red on his wingtips that looks like a dripping of red sealing wax, the kind used to seal important letters in days of yore. You’ll see it slightly better in this image:
(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on March 3, 2025.)
Above, you see the dappled light and racing shadows in a stand of softwood trees (balsam firs and spruces). Below, you’ll see the full light in a stand of hardwood trees (American white [“paper”] birches):
The images were taken Sunday within five minutes of each other.
Softwoods have evergreen needles that create a shaded canopy all year. My understanding is that the softwoods come from “gymnosperm” trees: trees that have “revealed seed” that is not hidden in a fruit, nut, or other ovule. Hardwoods come from “angiosperm” trees: trees that have “enclosed seed” in an ovule and usually are deciduous, with leaves that fall each year.
Softwood trees can spread their seeds more easily and grow faster than hardwoods can. The faster growth, however, makes their cellular structure much less dense, hence softer than hardwoods. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 2, 2025.)
Here you see the heavy ice in Blue Hill Bay breaking up and melting yesterday, despite the day’s temperatures in the teens and low 20s (F):
Just four days ago, there was much more heavy ice there:
Apparently, March 1’s rain and above-freezing temperatures got the melt going and its inertia was too much to reverse the process for saltwater ice. It’s cold today; re-icing has started; spring is being patient. (Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on March 2 and February 26, 2025.)
Here you see yesterday afternoon, March 1, a miserable, raw day of rain and occasional small hail that melted several inches of snow and revealed that we still have some sorry-looking grass:
Yet, the day provided hope for those optimists who believe in that famous 18th Century proverb: “If March comes in like a lion” (meaning bad weather), “it goes out like a lamb” (meaning good weather). Most Mainers seem to believe in that even older proverb: “We’ll see.” (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 1, 2025.)
February, our shortest month, generally is considered to be the last month of winter. But, up here, you never know. Nonetheless, February is named after the Roman festival of Februa, which was a time of cleansing. In that sense, this February lived up to its name.
It was filled with polite, purifying snows followed by bright sunlight, with a few gray. rainy, and bitter cold days tossed in so that we don’t get spoiled. Although a short month, there were plenty of sights worthy of sending “Wish You Were Here” postcards about.
As usual, we begin with our four iconic sights on the Blue Hill Peninsula, which includes the towns of Brooklin and Blue Hill: The mountains of Mount Desert Island, as seen from Brooklin: the summer house on Harbor Island in Brooklin’s Naskeag Harbor; the near-mountain called Blue Hill, as seen from across Blue Hill Bay in the Town of Blue Hill, and the red boathouse in Blue Hill Bay’s Conary Cove:
February’s plentiful snow flurries often were visitations by the tiniest of flakes that floated this way and that before collecting in crowds on trees and on the ground. When followed by bright sunlight, the effect could be dazzling and tempting for those who like to be creative.
The month’s freezes and thaws and occasional high winds had a dynamic effect on our many bays, ponds, and streams.
For the ducks that depend on those waters, the calms were wonderful, but the freezes caused fruitless treks across ice looking for a swimmable space to dive for food. Ducks weren’t the only swimmers this month; a group in Brooklin took a “cold dip” in Naskeag Harbor to promote donations to Finding Our Voices, an organization that aids survivors of domestic abuse.
We did a lot more driving than swimming this February, thanks to our tradition of fast and frequent plowing. Country roads and lanes can be very attractive framed in snow.
On the waterfront, February is a time for fishing for scallops for some vessels and for resting until summer for others. The scallopers are lobster boats that are fitted out with masts, booms, and shelling huts. Many of the summer vessels are fitted out as mummies in shrink-wrap. Hardy lobster traps don’t need to be fitted out in anything while they wait for summer.
February’s purifications were well applied to rural structures, from sheds to barns and to dwellings, lighthouses, and chapels.
If you go into some of those dwellings, you’ll find tropical flowers in full bloom during February, including hibiscus flowers that seem to be sherbet volcanoes.
Finally, we come to February’s moon. Some Native Americans called it the Snow Moon for obvious reasons; others called it the Hunger Moon because snow made it difficult to hunt. We’ll just call it magnificent this year because it rose full during and above a snow-storm-in-the-making and was fascinating as it passed through its other phases.
(All images in this post were taken in Down East Maine during February 2025.)
Yesterday we had another damn beautiful snow flurry! And, there may be more on the way.
Just as our driveway was emerging yesterday from the ice coating left from its last snowplowing, pretty white sprinkles began descending from heaven, covering us again with several hours’ worth of flakery. Here’s the beginning:
This most recent burst wasn’t that much, and it wasn’t furious, and it wasn’t harmful, and it eventually turned slushy in cleansing rain at mid-afternoon. BUT … there’s just so much beauty you can take before it gets boring, if not annoying who bet that, if most people were Hollywood-beautiful, it would be those we now think of as plain and ugly who would be most attractive. )
Also, these winter flurries have a particularly bad effect on compulsive-obsessive photographers like me – we’re compelled to capture the damn things for the record even though we already have many hundreds of snow images so far this year. Here are a few more from yesterday:
I do have to admit, however, that working in a many-windowed office among spruce trees while snow is flurrying around is a neat experience. (That’s Barbara, below, working on the taxes while I engage in my obsessive frivolity.)
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 27, 2025.)
It’s time for a winter maritime image to remind everyone that the right place (for me, now) is the Down East coast of Maine.
Here you see some summer vessels that have become winter mummies. They gather in the shoreside snow and, sometimes, are joined by an unwrapped sister who is for sale and needs to be accessible to potential buyers.
The concept of shrink-wrapping a boat appears simple, but the task takes skill and special equipment. Stated another way: It’s probably a job that should be left to professionals. As for the basics, from what I’ve seen and read, a backbone support (or posts) is (are) first installed atop the vessel along the centerline. A previously measured sheet of industrial-strength, shrinkable plastic is then draped over the entire boat.
Then, the plastic is secured by straps and bands, especially at the bottom. Working from that bottom up, a powerful heat gun and tension tools are used to shrink the plastic tightly over and around the boat’s contours, pulling and tucking as progress is made. Excess is trimmed away. And vents and access passages are added as needed.
(Image taken in Surry, Maine, on February 25, 2025.)
Here’s another iced-in bay being melted at low tide by our warmer weather and a freshwater feeder stream. It’s Patten Bay yesterday with Patten Stream flowing in the foreground.
Six mallards there were hopelessly waddling on webbed feet over slick ice cakes, perhaps in a quest for enough swimmable water to hold a sorority luncheon and dabble for aquatic plants. (They were all female.)
(Images taken in Surry, Maine, February 25, 2025.)
We’re having a heat wave with a reported high temperature yesterday of 34°(F) in Blue Hill and warmer weather today. It’s starting to melt the freshwater ice in driveways and the salty sea ice in the coves and bays.
Above, you’re looking (basically) north-northwest at the northern shore of Blue Hill Bay, from Blue Hill Harbor Dock. Fresh water from Mill Stream is cascading under Main Street’s Village Bridge, the granite-faced, 19th Century structure at the center of your view. (That’s Blue Hill, the near-mountain, on the right edge.)
Mill Stream enters onto the Bay’s sea ice and helps weaken the sea ice’s hold, but sometimes freezes on top of the Bay ice when arctic temperatures suddenly swirl down. (The salty sea water freezes at a lower temperature than freshwater.)
If you turn around on the Dock to look at the Bay as it opens toward the Atlantic Ocean, you’ll see that there’s a long way to go before the sea ice will be totally out of the Bay:
(Images taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on February 24, 2025.)
People who don’t live in Brooklin likely won’t be able to identify these images casting shadows on pure snow. This large blue ball is a toy for two miniature donkeys who live here:
The holiday wreath shown below is propped up against the stone bench in Naskeag Harbor (to avoid being blown away, apparently). The wreath has been there all winter and likely will continue to express its “Happy Holidays” wish until we get tired of looking at it, which may be late March or even April.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 11 [ball] and 21 [wreath], 2025.)
Here you see Blue Hill looming yesterday in a bluer sky, behind a reddish barn-stable, which is sitting in a corral filled with white, icy snow. It looks a bit like a Montana ranch, but you’d have trouble trying to gallop your horse over the horizon here. Maybe a miniature Montana ranch. Maybe a miniature Montana dude ranch. (Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on February 22, 2025.)
Our old and young apple trees seem to be bearing up stoically so far under pressure from freezing polar vortex temperatures. The trees’ cells apparently are adapting by producing arboreal “antifreeze” that allows water to freeze safely among cell walls and prevent harmful ice crystals.
The big danger, as I understand it, is that the cold can get so extreme and prolonged that the water in dormant tree sap freezes, expands, and creates a bark explosion that can wound or kill a tree. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 19, 2025.)
