JOURNAL
Yesterday dawned sunny, crisp, and breathtakingly clear – until about Noon. Then, the clouds decided to huddle and the sun became just a round brightness behind layers of a silvery gray canopy – until about 4 p.m. That’s when, from our perspective, the sun escaped under the clouded canopy to set in the west. For a very few moments, we felt as if we were standing in one of the dark areas of a J.M.W. Turner nightscape.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Well, we got very little snow and bother from yesterday’s storm -- an inch of snow at most, with virtually no drifts.
There wasn’t enough accumulation to plow the driveways and wooded lanes, although the main roads were plowed and chemicalized for safety.
As we speak, it’s clear, cold (31 F), and kind of quaint. (Brooklin, Maine) See also the image in the first Comment space.
If Mr. Rogers lived around here, he would come back from his morning walk singing “It’s a miserable day in the neighborhood ….” As we speak, we’re under a Hancock County Winter Storm Warning, but we don’t need a warning; we need a stimulant.
As we speak, we’re watching one of those boring, wimpy weather bouts. We have almost-real snow slowly wrestling with almost-real rain as almost-real wind (23 MPH gusts) and almost-real cold (29F that “feels like 15”) try to encourage some action. We’ll see what round three turns into. (Brooklin, Maine)
Today is the opening of scallop dredging season in our zone.
For those lucky enough to live on the Down East coast of Maine, it’s time to make sure that you’ve placed your order with your favorite scallop fisherman. There’s nothing better for dinner than very fresh scallops, except perhaps very fresh lobster. But, we now will have both here! Time to get out the recipe for lobster-scallop bouillabaisse.
(Brooklin, Maine) Prior year images.
November in Down East Maine is for weather lovers — good and bad and in between weather that seems to enjoy being fickle. This November was no exception. There were crisp, clear days to make us think that we could see forever; hard and soft rainy days to transform the woods into green dreams; fog to do its now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t magic, and weak snows that lightly frosted the fields and then disappeared.
This year, November was warmer and wetter than usual here. The result was fast-running small streams meandering through still-vital mosses and robust larger streams pouring tons of clear, fresh water into the salty sea.
Maine is a place where hunting is a cultural imperative for many; it’s especially a coming-of-age time for youths in our many hunting families. And, November is a special time for those hunters. It’s the peak and last month for hunting white-tailed deer with firearms and the end of the general hunting seasons for wild turkey and black bear. (It’s also the end of moose season, but we see very few moose here on the coast.)
November also is a transformational time here on the Atlantic coast. Many of our fishermen pull up their lobster traps, trailer them to storage, and “hardscape” their vessels until June.
But not all fishermen get off the water during winter. Late November is when some fishing vessels are converted from lobster boats into trawlers to participate in the Atlantic scallop dredging season, which begins during the first week of December. The vessels sprout masts and booms to drag and maneuver the heavy metal and rope dredges and “shelling houses” are constructed aft of the cabins to protect shell schuckers from the sharp winter sea winds. Toward the end of November, the dredges appear like colorful fungi on piers, awaiting transfer to vessels.
By the end of November, most of the leaves have taken their fatal flight and the woods are transformed into largely gray areas pillared with dark green spruce, fir, and pine trees above and populated with clusters of colorful berries and grass heads below. The native winterberry along the roads has been the best in decades this November, as has (unfortunately) the invasive Asian Bittersweet. Silver grass tossing in the wind and red-on-gray Barberry tangles also are uplifting monthly sights.
However, it’s usually our old wild apple trees that are most memorable after their leaves desert them. Some hold onto their rotting fruit until December; others become gnarled residents of the landscape that flaunt their age and defy the elements.
Speaking of trees, this November had one of the best cone cycles in recent years for our spruce trees. Exceptionally large clusters appeared. which old-timers say means a hard winter.
As you have already seen, we have much to be thankful for here and November is the time to express it, as was done by a member of Brooklin’s Fuller family this year with one of the road banners of the late and beloved Judith Fuller:
Finally, November here on the coast is when the breathtaking winter sunsets and their afterglows start. Some of the month’s days may be gray, but many of its nights begin with a spectacular visual overture that becomes a brightly-starred night.
(All images above were taken in Down East Maine. With the exception of the three hunting section images, which were taken here at prior times, all images were taken in November 2019.)
The scallop dredging season begins next week in our zone. Many fishing vessels in Naskeag Harbor have brought their lobster traps ashore and are now sprouting masts and booms to become scallop trawlers. “Shelling houses” have been erected behind their cabins to help protect the shuckers from winter sea winds.
Metal and rope scalloping dredge gear was decorating the Town Pier yesterday, soon to be transferred to a vessel.
(Brooklin, Maine)
It’s snowing half-seriously as we speak on this Thanksgiving Day, yet yesterday was clear, almost balmy, and ended with the dramatic sunset that you see here.
We’re able to enjoy it all, and we’re very thankful for that. But, there seems to be a selfishness in giving thanks for such things while our generation’s environmental neglect is increasingly jeopardizing the joy and health of future generations. They will not be thankful for our legacy unless we become less self-centered and change our ways soon. (Brooklin, Maine)
It looks like about 100 Common Eiders already have flown in from the sea to their annual winter home just outside Blue Hills Reversing Falls. They’ve been accumulating there this year since their scouts started to arrive in October.
We’ve taken rough counts of as many as 400 there within the past decade, but in the last two years that number seems to have been dwindling. Perhaps that’s because one of their favorite foods, Blue Mussels, is declining along our coast. Nonetheless, their return always is a welcome and reassuring (canary-in-the-mine-like) sight.
Common Eiders are our largest native ducks, growing up to 28 inches in body length. The can fly up to 70 miles per hour, but we see them mostly floating about 100 yards offshore in large white-and-black (male) and brown (female) “paddlings.”
When the tide is changing, these ducks will stream into the Falls’ fast water and dive for crustaceans and mollusks. The swiftness of the water there prevents it’s freezing and provides a winter-long feast. (Blue Hill, Maine)
It was clear and warm for November yesterday when we went down to Great Cove to hear and feel the ocean’s mysterious call.
It was one of those seas “whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath ….” Herman Melville’s Ishmael in Moby Dick at Chapter CXL.
(Brooklin, Maine)
“When despair for the world grows in me *** I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. *** I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. *** For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.”
Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things. (Brooklin, Maine)
Here, we’re looking at Cadillac Mountain on a crisp November 4 day. It’s about 18 miles east-north-east of us, across Blue Hill Bay in Acadia National Park.
During the 17th Century, this area and much of North America’s northeast (including what is now much of Canada’s east coast) was the French Colony of L’Acadie. (“Acadia” is a transliteration of Native American words for “Land of Plenty.”) The mountain was named in honor of French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Sieur de Cadillac to whom, in 1688, France gave ownership of vast tracks of land that included what became the National Park.
Most of the year, the summit of Cadillac Mountain wins the contest for the place where the first sun rays reach the United States, according to a study by Yankee Magazine. Lubec and Eastport, Maine, are sometimes first, however. (Brooklin, Maine)
ITRP will be a little spotty in the next few days while I recuperate from an eye operation. Nonetheless, I am doing a one-eyed review of recent images and, from time to time, will share a few that you haven't seen. Here’s last Sunday’s (November 17th’s) red sunset afterglow reflected in Great Cove.
(Brooklin, Maine)
The wide spectrum of N.C. Wyeth’s artistic talents is on display through January 12, 2020, in this fascinating exhibit at the Portland [Maine] Museum of Art. It seems that most people today, if they know anything about Newell Convers Wyeth, recognize him as the father of Andrew and grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, two renowned artists of more recent times.
Some people also may remember N.C., who died in a tragic accident in 1945, as the foremost illustrator of books and other publications during the first half of the 20th Century. A representative portion of the PMA exhibit is of those illustrations and it includes (among others) the following:
Bucking Bronco (1903), Saturday Evening Post Cover
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1911)
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1919)
But, what may be of most interest to today’s art lovers and potential art lovers are the exhibit’s many examples of N.C.’s extraordinary explorations of other forms of so-called “noncommercial” or “fine” art.
One of our favorites is N.C.’s 1939 painting titled Island Funeral, above, which reflects his love of Maine and his magical ability to interpret Maine’s clouds, water, and light. By the way, the island above is Teel’s Island near Port Clyde, where N.C. had his summer residence. Other sea-related works include Yes, ‘N, He’d Let a Roar Outer Him, An Mebbe He’d Sing, “Hail Columbia, Happy Land!” (1914) (aka The Roaring Skipper); Dark Harbor Fishermen (1943) and The Lobsterman (1944) (aka The Doryman):
There are several haunting portrayals in the PMA show that show a master of dark light at work, including this one:
Nightfall (1945)
Among the joys of this exhibit is seeing the fascination of people of all ages with much of it. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since one of N.C. Wyeth’s talents was to instinctively know how to illustrate classics that were read and loved by all ages.
(Portland, Maine)
This image of last night’s sunset afterglow will be our last posting for a few days. It will be our placeholder while we’re at an exhibition.
Hope to be back with you sometime next week. (Brooklin, Maine)
Unofficial data indicate that the 2019 lobster season has been disappointing, especially when compared to last year’s catch, according to the Associated Press. Many of our lobster fishermen are in transition to either winter vacations or to scallop fishing beginning in early December.
Thus, we’re seeing a lot of lobster traps being hauled out of the water and trailered to storage while we’re also receiving notices from neighboring fishermen that we should sign up now for our deliveries of fresh scallops just hours out of the water.
(Brooklin, Maine)
This image of a dumbfounded Wild Turkey appeared yesterday in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American. (Brooklin, Maine)
To read the column, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column
Our White-Tailed Deer population is entering its most difficult season in very good shape, from what we can see. Most of their darkening coats glisten with health, as this image (taken last week) shows.
This doe wasn’t quite sure what was making that clicking sound and she never figured it out. Yet, I was less than 100 yards away from her and clad in a bright red jacket and a blaze orange vest – which brings to mind a few interesting facts about sighting deer and deer sight.
As the temperatures plummet, we’ll see more deer (especially does and yearlings) browsing the remote fields in the sunny middle hours of the day, rather than just at dusk and dawn. But, they don’t have good bright-day vision, according to researchers. Their eyes contain more rods than cones, which gives them very good night vision as a trade-off. Also, orange, red, and green appear as variations of gray to these deer. The bright colors that humans should wear in the woods now are only for other humans, especially hunters. (Brooklin, Maine)
Yesterday morning and this morning provided starkly contrasting coastal experiences. Yesterday was miserable: simultaneous rain and fog, temperatures that rose from morning freezing only to the 40s, and wind gusts that were just enough to make the raw mix sting your face.
Last night, there was a very light dusting of snow and we awoke to a brilliantly clear dawn, albeit a cold one (15 degrees (F) with wind gusts up to 29 MPH at 6 a.m.).
(Brooklin, Maine)
This is one of the uncommon specimen trees in Brooklin that we keep an eye (and camera) on in all seasons. You’ll notice that is holding on tightly to almost all its leaves as of last week, when the image was taken. It usually does not let them go until December or January, if then (a phenomenon called “marcescence”).
The tree is a Weeping Beech (Fagus sylvatica, 'Pendula') and a landmark on Naskeag Road at Amen Farm. Its family name is derived from its most noticeable characteristic: pendulous branches. Here’s a closeup in a January snow flurry:
These trees can grow to more than 80 feet in height and often are wider than they are high. They were selectively bred from European Beeches in England in 1836 and were introduced into the United States in 1847.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Now that most of the deciduous trees have shed their leaves, our resident American Crows are starting to pick out roosting areas where they’ll huddle through the nights, often with cousins whom they couldn’t stand in the summer or never saw then. (Inland Crows often come to the coast in the fall, seemingly sensing that food-rich tidal areas usually don’t get covered in impenetrable snow.)
During the spring and summer, Crows aggressively maintain small atomic family territories. The extended family roosts that they form in the winter are thought to be defensive creations. These dark birds are very visible against the dusk sky at the time that their arch enemies, Great Horned Owls, are hunting. More Crow eyes, ears, and beaks lessen the odds that they’ll be surprised by a quiet-flying raptor with murderous talons.
Speaking of murder, there is the folk tale that assures us that the real reason that Crows gather is to decide whether to put one of their own family to death for violating the intricate Crow society’s norms. Thus, a group of Crows often is called a “Murder of Crows.” (Brooklin, Maine)
