In the Right Place: Jealousy

Yesterday, while at Naskeag Harbor, I noticed a slow-moving reflection on the clear horizon. At first, it seemed to be a school of big fish or perhaps a whale or two, but the movement proved to be too slow and the water was not being disturbed much.

As it came closer, I wondered “Is that a man paddling a silver canoe in open water in the middle of winter?” The movement got closer and entered deeper into the Harbor: It definitely was a man. He was wearing a bulky winter jacket under a bulkier life vest and paddling slowly. He seemed to be enjoying the clear, 28-degree weather and the quiet ride.

However, what he was paddling wasn’t your traditional canoe. Let’s call it a canoe-like object. It had a translucent plastic hull that appeared to have been put together mostly with vertical strips of tape that gave the vessel the appearance of a floating fence. On the other hand, the vessel probably was very light and easy to swing up into a truck or onto a car top.

This winter apparition continued slowly on, over the Harbor Bar, and around the shrub-lined bend until it was gone from my sight. It left me with a strange feeling – mostly jealousy, I think. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Rooms with a View

Here, we catch two local thieves in Barbara’s garden on Thursday (February 18); they’re eating the “deer-resistant” enkianthus.

Banging on the office window doesn’t make “our” White-Tails run anymore; we have to go downstairs, run outside, and ring our loud goat bell before they’ll bolt. As to these two, I just let them browse; it was cold (28F) and I was lazy. (Don’t tell Barbara.)

Here, we also see three local delinquents yesterday outside our kitchen:

They’re, planning who goes first in their game of waiting to run across our driveway just in time to make me brake and swerve and slide on the ice. It’s hilarious fun for bored Wild Turkeys. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Swans

In the Right Place: Swans

It seems like “New England connected houses” look even better with a little snow around them on a sharp-winded day. That’s probably because it is then that they’re in their element, having been designed to make farms more livable during harsh New England winters. (The swans-look-better-in-water theory.)

In any case, here are two of the many Brooklin connected houses in their winter coats for our summer resident friends. They only see them when the grass is green and the leaves are stirring.

(Brooklin, Maine; images taken February 15, 2021)

In the Right Place: Making Memories

The ice crust on much of our snow has added sledding speed to our sloping fields. And, with that speed, came squeals of uncontrollable joy from two children yesterday. Here, you see a girl sliding and spinning and screaming on her descending disc:

IBelow, you see a boy (her brother?) shouting while taking a straighter course in a plastic sled. A smiling young woman (their mother?) joined them in her own larger plastic sled.

It looked like one of those moments of pure fun that will be remembered by the children when they are middle-aged or older and they tell stories about the “winter of 2021 in Maine.” (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Before and After

Here, we see the tide hurtling out of Salt Pond at Blue Hill Falls, as the fringes of this week’s arctic storm arrived on Monday (February 15). Common Eiders patrolled the edges of the whitewater while Herring Gulls sallied above.

Below, we see today’s bright sun beaming down on our North Field, Great Cove, and Eggemoggin Reach:

When this image was taken (about 9:45 a.m.), the temperature was 20 degrees (F) with a wind chill of 6; the wind was 15 miles per hour, with gusts of 27 kicking up the Cove. Most of the snow had turned to ice that was hard enough for a man with a camera and a cane to walk on. (Blue Hill and Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Payback

The dreadful winter storm that swept up from south Texas arrived here last night with a wet whimper. Mixtures of rain, sleet, and snow prevailed today, as you can see from this image here of a rain chain and precipitation around it.

The storm is leaving a dangerous combination of ice and slush on the roads and driveways, even after plowing and spreading anti-freeze compounds, as you can see from this image at Naskeag Point today:

Tomorrow is forecast to return to below freezing temperatures, which may mean plenty of black ice on the roads. This weather apparently is a payback for our mild January. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Warnings

It probably won’t surprise you to know that, locally, this place is named “The Point.” It is the end of Naskeag Point Road, which stops at Naskeag Harbor.

More specifically, this is The Point as it was at 11:20 a.m. today. It’s always changing, due to tides, weather, and any fishing vessel or sightseer activity. The gravelly beach and nearby Town Dock often get the brunt of bad weather and we’re due for some this evening.

We’ve been receiving “urgent winter warnings” all morning that the historic winter storm that has been sweeping all the way up from south Texas will reach here about 11 p.m., bringing 5 to 9 inches of snow, one half an inch of ice, bitter cold, and high speed winds. Power outages are expected.

It’s best not to think about that now. Why not remember The Point as it was on August 9, 2020 for the couple who weren’t worried about plague, politics, or climate change?

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Vibrance

It’s Valentine’s Day and we offer our female friends a handsome male that will say “Pretty-Pretty-Pretty” when they walk by. He’s red, the color most associated with passion, love, and joy, and he’s starting to pose for a potential spouse to whom he’ll be faithful this year.

Yes, he’s a Northern Cardinal, a bird that usually starts breeding in March, but already is fighting over a territory that he has picked. That’s where his control ends. He has to be chosen by a dusky female Cardinal to mate and they are very picky and clever birds.

Female Cardinals are one of the few female birds that will sing back to males during courtship. Research also shows that the females try to pick the reddest male Cardinal available for a mate, since vibrance is an indicator of good health and lineage. (Brooklin, Maine; Leighton Archive images shown)

In the Right Place: Magnified

It’s been very cold this week here on the coast of Maine. But, it’s also been squintingly bright on many days, with full sun being magnified by snow-covered fields that have turned to ice in many areas. Wooded lanes and driveways to occupied houses have been plowed, but many of these also are still icy in spots.

Nonetheless, many of the country lanes are especially picturesque when the sun streams through the woods onto the snow. Here, you see images of a local lane that we photograph regularly for a historical record of our area.

(Brooklin, Maine; images taken on February 11, 2021)

In the Right Place: Say It With Flowers

This image appeared yesterday in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American. Click on the image to enlarge it.

To read the column, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Only In Maine

This place likely will not appear on the cover of “Architectural Digest” soon, but I look forward to seeing it every time I take the back roads shortcut to Bangor.

Maybe it was John Wayne’s birthplace, which he successfully defended against a dozen bandits when he was six years old. (Near Dedham, Maine, on February 8, 2021)

In the Right Place: Somewhere After the Rainbow

Take one more look at the historic Blue Hill Falls Rainbow Bridge in Blue Hill, Maine. It soon will be only a memory.

Leighton Archive Image

Technically, it’s a “Concrete-Tied Rainbow Through Arch Fixed Bridge” that started to deteriorate slowly the day that it was built in 1926. It’s now at the point where patching and shoring won’t help; it needs to be restored at great expense or replaced, and it looks like replacement with a modern girder bridge is the leading option.

Leighton Archive Image

The Blue Hill concrete rainbow is one of only two such bridges remaining in the State and it is the more beautiful one. The other rainbow is in Lewiston and was built in 1927.

Leighton Archive Image

(Blue Hill, Maine)

In the Right Place: Looking Around

Last week, I saw a mature Bald Eagle apparently fishing. It was a dank day and she was circling high in a gray sky over gray swells in Eggemoggin Reach. (Sex assumed from her large size.) She was flying at a height of at least four football fields (1200 feet). My big lens did not reveal any ducks or other surface swimmers below her. What could she see under the moving water from such heights? A lot.

I recalled a fascinating lecture on Golden and Bald Eagle eyesight that I had attended years ago at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Chesapeake Bay. I got out my notes and found the images I had taken there of two of the Refuge’s patients: a Bald Eagle and a Golden Eagle, both of which were recuperating from wounds. (Two of those images are shown here.)

Bald Eagle (Leighton Archive Image)e)

Notice the large eyes of these birds relative to the rest of their bodies. Those eyes are about the same size as the eyes of adult humans and are reportedly larger than the birds’ brains. They can see up to eight times better than humans, researchers say.

 An Eagle’s eye sockets are angled to give the birds an amazing 340-degree field of vision, which is both binocular (when its two eyes are focusing on a rabbit or fish two miles away, for example) and peripheral (when it’s focusing each eye differently and scanning the surrounding sky to avoid other eagles or crows, for example).

Golden Eagle (Leighton Archive Image)

However, Eagles’ eyes are so tightly fit into their sockets that they usually have to move their heads slightly to focus both eyes on single targets. Thus, their large heads are seemingly always moving when they’re focusing both eyes on their surroundings. When perched, this sometimes looks like they’re shaking their heads to music, but it’s only their way of “looking around.” (Brooklin, Maine).

In the Right Place: Calmness

Yesterday’s snowstorm that continued into last night was the kind of weather that we like while watching the Superbowl in a state of “snugginess.” (The Superbowl playing, itself, was the kind of massacre that goes well in this Patriots territory, especially with pizza, beer, indigestion, and an occasional Brady-to-Gronk touchdown.)

This morning, by contrast, we awakened to a pure white calmness: the quiet beginning of another kind of perfection: a cold, clear winter’s day when you think that you can see forever. Above, you see the early sun arriving on the North Field, which slopes down to Great Cove.

Below, you see the early sun rising over the trees on the ridge above the field.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Reminders

After a morning of dispirited snow flurries yesterday, the afternoon northwest winds whipped the overcast into cumulous cream pastries, giving the sun enough space to create a bright winter’s day.

Here, we’re looking southwest from Great Cove Ridge, down a fallow field, over a small firepond, and through the south entrance to the Cove. We can imagine that we see infinity beyond. It’s a place that attracts many sailboats during a normal summer and many shore and water birds now.

Below, we’re at the other side of Naskeag Peninsula on Amen Ridge. We’re gazing northeastish over another fallow field, across Blue Hill Bay and some of its islands, to the face of Cadillac Mountain. Cadillac is in Acadia National Park, which breaches out of Mount Desert Island like a dark whale.

These are everyday sights for some of us lucky people. But, we have to remind ourselves constantly how precious they are. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Cheap Thrill

Today’s morning weather was strange here on the Maine coast. It started off February-gray; then, snowed a little; then, the sun poked through the overcast while it was snowing; then it stopped snowing, and now, from time to time, the sun leaks through thin spots in the clouds as they sweep by. If it gets stronger, it will melt all the snow we have covering the ground.

And, oh yes: we have daffodils blooming. Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, the flowers are “mini-daffodils” that sell for $3.99 a pot at the supermarket. You should also know that they’re misleadingly labeled “From America,” which probably indicates Central or South America. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Purity

Here, we’re looking at sea ice during low tide in Blue Hill Bay. As the tide rises, the ice will rise on top of it like a tattered silk robe. Then, most of its tears will heal themselves and there will be a layer of fairly (but not completely) uniform white ice atop the water.

For the past decade, it seems, we’ve been getting less and less sea ice, which corresponds to the increases in our ambient and water temperatures. This winter, so far, the sea ice seems to have appeared only in nooks and crannies in the coves and harbors, if it appeared at all. Oldtimers will tell you about the miles of thick sea ice that used to appear on open water and support carriages and trucks driving to the islands.

Due to its salt content, sea water doesn’t freeze until the temperature drops to 28.4 degrees (F) and stays there or below for some time. During the process, the ice is purified and can be melted into drinkable water. (Blue Hill; image taken January 25, 2021)

In the Right Place: Now You See it, Now You Don't

Funny thing about Snowy Owls: When I get out a big heavy lens on its big heavy tripod and put on my big fluffy winter clothes with my big-treaded climbing boots and go huffing up some small trail on a big windy mountain where several Snowies have been reported … I hardly ever see one.

However, I can be in my car at Trenton (Maine) airport; notice a deformed power line pole; then, notice that the pole really isn’t deformed; then, nearly kill myself getting camera equipment out of the back of the car and put together, while audibly praying that the big white bird atop the pole will act the way it should and not fly away.

That’s what happened here – several years ago in February – when this apparent female or juvenile Owl went back to sleep after determining I was going to stay at a safe distance. I’m still trying for a 2021 Snowy.

Snowies usually hunt at night and rest during the day. When resting, they don’t move much to avoid being noticed, especially by a Bald Eagle, which probably won’t stay at a safe distance.

They come from Arctic areas where there often are no trees to perch on, so they tend not to differentiate a power pole, roof, or large rock, so long as it gives them a panoramic view. Many of the young ones probably have never seen a human until they get to the right latitudes; so, they may let people get too close for the Owls’ own good. Give them plenty of room. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: All's Well That Ends Well

POSTED FEBRUARY 3, 2021

We drove around a bit today to see if yesterday’s well-hyped Nor’Easter snowstorm did any damage on Naskeag Peninsula. It didn’t, as far as we could see. It did leave a little snow on this mobile Christmas (aka Holiday) wreath that is still expressing good cheer.

It also left a bit on the immobile sailboat that apparently is a dormant garden now:

But, there weren’t any toppled trees or power lines down, as far as we could see. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: To Pull or to Push?

The much- trumpeted Nor’Easter that swept into New England last night and this morning was an ugly storm at its strongest and still remains an ugly dribbler of rain, sleet, and soft snow. Here, we see Jerry Gray’s truck plowing our driveway this morning.

Did you ever wonder what snow-swept Mainers did before snowplows? It turns out that Maine was a leader in developing ways to get rid of snow. Initially, communities recruited armies of shovelers.

This was followed by two contradictory methods. One was to pack the snow down so that traffic could travel on it. Teams of horses or oxen (and tractors later) would pull heavy logs or heavy wooden rollers over the snow to make it as hard as rock.

The other was for the animals or tractors to pull a “snowplane,” a contraption that looked like a huge carpenter’s plane made of wood and a blade with side funnels; it would shave the snow off roads and dump it onto the roadsides.

As trucks with strong engines developed in the 1900s, a conceptual breakthrough happened: Why not push a plow rather than pull it? The credit for inventing, patenting, and building large truck and tractor plows with internal controls goes to Don A. Sargent of Bangor, Maine.

In 1948, Dean Fisher of Rockland, Maine, began making smaller plows that could be attached to jeeps and, later, pickup trucks. They were operated by more sophisticated hydraulic lift controls. These became the model for improvements that continue to this day in Fisher and other plows (Brooklin, Maine)