In the Right Place: Faltering

We’ve had a spate of cold weather that is refreezing local ponds, as you can see from this image taken yesterday. The ponds here seemingly are being driven crazy – wet to solid/solid to wet – by December’s faltering attempts to get cold and remain cold in our sick climate.

The ice in Down East Maine ponds and lakes is nowhere near the four inches that experts say is necessary for safe skating. Research indicates that a deep pond or lake won’t freeze thick enough for skating unless it is subject to certain conditions, including about two weeks of overnight temperatures near zero degrees (F).

Wind is another one of those conditions; it can ripple freezing water and create weak spots. Even swimming fish can do that. Variation in lake or pond water temperatures also affect the rate of freezing. Please note that I’m only talking about fresh, relatively still water here – not iced-in rivers or tidal sea waters that are more unstable. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December27, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Coming Thither

Here you see the Fishing Vessel Dear Abbie: and some of her groupies out and about last week despite the rain. The birds appear to be Herring Seagulls with a few Lesser Black-Backed Seagulls mixed in.

Fairly recently, research has found that seagulls and gannets can distinguish the design of a fishing trawler from that of vessels that are nonbeneficial to them. And, they often do so from as far away as seven miles and come thither.

While some optimistic seagulls will follow a fishing vessel that is not fishing, most are realistic and will not bother until the fishing starts. Nonetheless, the birds benefit from more than a boat’s discarded bait, scallop innards, and other gull gourmet items.

The churning wake of a vessel often roils small fish to the surface where they are easy picking for the birds. And, relatively fast moving vessels create a vacuum behind them in which seagulls can fly with greater ease and speed:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 22, 2021.)

In the Right Place:

In the Right Place: Winter, Finally

This is a good winter’s day moment from yesterday. It was almost noon, sunny and cold and windy.

The waters of Great Cove and Eggemoggin Reach are turning into thick strokes of that indescribable non-colored sea color – a sliding mixture of dark blue, brown, gray, and green. The wind, gusting above 35 miles an hour, is catching the tops of many swells and forcing them to bubble into frothy peaks that the sun is turning white. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 23, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Trappings

Lobster traps mostly hibernate in herds around here, although there still are the occasional loners who have yet to find their way home.

Under Maine law, a licensed commercial lobsterman (male or female) may run as many as 800 traps (or “pots”) at a time, although running that many traps apparently would be unusual. Given that each trap reportedly costs about $100.00, you can see that this gear can be a significant investment for a seasonal family business.

Today’s plastic-coated wire traps are bigger and more complicated than those quaint wooden ones painted by Winslow Homer. Among other things, they come equipped with open vents for the lobsters to escape if the buoy line to the trap is broken by a whale or other cause and the trap becomes inaccessible. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 21 [many traps] and 19 [2 traps], 2021.)

In the Right Place: U-Turn

Here you see yesterday’s winter solstice sunset over Great Cove and Eggemoggin Reach. The word “solstice” is derived from Latin and broadly means “the sun standing still.”

Thus, yesterday the sun stopped what to our eyes was its southerly journey and now will appear to turn around and slowly head north. (Of course, our sun doesn’t move like that; our planet is doing that kind of moving in relation to our star.)

Practically, this means that our daylight will start to increase slowly each day until the summer solstice. Days reportedly now are getting longer by an average of 2 minutes and 7 seconds; by January 18 we’ll be having an extra hour of daylight. After that, we’ll accumulate about an hour every four weeks. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 21, 2021)

In the Right Place: Imagination

The poet Mary Oliver said that she walked in the woods alone so that she could become invisible, hear the almost unhearable sound of flowers singing, and pray in her own way.

Yesterday, it was easy to imagine Mary’s invisible presence in our woods, as she listened to the almost unhearable sound of snow murmuring.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 20, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Gutsy

Here you see the Fishing Vessel Long Set dredging for Atlantic sea scallops in Blue Hill Bay on a sunny day last week.

Below, you see FV Tarrfish, entering Naskeag Harbor with a load of scallops on the same day:

The next day, in the rain, FV Dear Abbie: came home to her mooring in the Harbor with a load of scallops:

The halos of seagulls over the fishing vessels indicate that they still have some shucked scallop shells on their decks.

Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten magellanicus) have complicated bodies inside their shells. Among other things, they have stomachs embedded in digestive glands, nerves, gills, ganglia, gonads, and – most important to gourmands – an abductor muscle that opens and closes their shells.

The fishermen remove those abductor muscles and store them in containers on the vessel to take ashore and refrigerate. Those muscles are the “scallops” that we eat. The rest of the mollusk’s body parts (or, as fishermen say, “the guts”) are thrown overboard with their attached shells. Opportunistic seagulls usually can catch them before they sink too far and become fish food. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 15 and 16, 2021.)

In the Right Place: More Snows of December 19, 2021

The following are additional views of Brooklin, Maine, taken after our first measurable snowfall of the winter. All images, except the last two, were taken on December 19, when it snowed occasionally and the sun shone a bit. The last two images were taken December 20, a clear day that was enhanced by the snow.

December 20, 2021

December 20, 2021

In the Right Place: Just About Right

We’ve been having kind of a Goldilocks snow fall since last night – not too little; not too much; just about right. So far. It looks like we have about two inches of powder, which is not enough to plow driveways, but the roads have been kept clear with chemicals and a little plowing. Here are a few images:

Although small, this snowfall has been our largest this winter. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 19, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Cool

Here we see last night’s virtually full moon moving northeast. To our eyes, it will be identical to tonight’s actual full moon, which we’ll likely not see due to inclement weather. December’s full moon is known for its high trajectory, which makes it visible longer than other moons when the sky is clear, but also smaller. It is 251,726 miles away today.

The most common name for this month’s moon is the Cold Full Moon, reportedly based upon the Mohawk Native Americans’ name for their coldest period of the year. Apropos of that name, the weather tellers are predicting that we’ll be snowed upon this afternoon and evening. It might even be our first plowable snow. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 17, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Mexican Merriment

Holiday Poinsettia plants seem to be selling well at Mainescape, a nursery in nearby Blue Hill. These plants are native to Mexico, where they have long been used to decorate nativity scenes.

They’re named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States Minister to Mexico, who shipped the original specimens to this country.

The red “flowers” are not flowers; they’re a form of the plant’s leaf known as bracts. (Images taken in Blue Hill [in store] and Brooklin [in vase], Maine on December 13, 2021.)

In the Right Place: 'Tis the Season

At this time of year, when we see armed people dressed in camouflage charging toward the shore in an inflatable boat, we know that it’s not an act of war by militant Canadians.  It’s duck hunters returning from a cold morning among the islands in Eggemoggin Reach.

Migratory game bird hunting here is extensively regulated by both State and Federal requirements. The hunting may only be with an appropriate shotgun, hand-held bow and arrow, crossbow, or by falconry.

Among many other requirements, the shotguns may be no larger than 10 gauge and cannot be capable of holding more than three shells at a time. The shot in the shells must be steel or otherwise approved as nontoxic to the birds, because they may later find and eat expended shot.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 15, 2012.)

In the Right Place: Double Whammy

Yesterday, we watched the sun go down and leave an orange afterglow above Deer Isle, while a brilliant moon hung over our shoulders like a rough gemstone.

Technically, the moon was in a waxing gibbous phase and at 81 percent illumination. It is waxing (getting more luminous) daily now and will be full on December 18.

While waxing, the moon is gibbous because it is more than half illuminated and distorted to our eyes. The word “gibbous” is derived from the Latin for “hump” and “hump-backed”; the word “waxing” is from the Old English word for “growing.” (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 14, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Winter Wonder

The temperature here is 41 degrees (F) and rising as we speak. The snow in the woods has melted. Winter has slipped away again:

Last week, we had a light snow and a few days of temperatures in the 20s, which frosted the trails nicely.:

It looks like we may have another winter of freezing and thawing, which can’t be good for the trees and hibernating creatures. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 12 [no snow] and 9 [snow], 2021.)

In the Right Place: Pleasurable

Cemeteries seem to be at their most spiritual in falling snow. Here we see the iconic Camperdown Elm Tree in the Brooklin Cemetery last week seemingly extending her muscular arms to protect her assigned plots.

The Brooklin Cemetery has a number of specimen trees and plants that may have been put there under the influence of the American Garden Cemetery Movement, which reportedly started in New England. The first garden cemetery was opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831; the second in Bangor, Maine, in 1834, according to histories of the Movement.

The main idea of the Movement was to make visits to the graves of loved ones visually pleasurable with the addition of ornamental trees, bushes, and other plants, and even waterways. Prior to the 1830s, town cemeteries often were just weedy fields of overcrowded grave markers. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 10, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Love and Tradition

Visitors to Brooklin frequently are amazed when they enter this building, now decorated for the holidays.

It’s a library that provides tens of thousands of hard cover books, e-books, CDs, videos, free computer stations, usually an exhibit of local art, streamed music access, frequent lectures, conference facilities, and more. Yet, this treasure trove is in a rural Maine town that has only 812 permanent residents, according to the last official count. How can this be?

Well, one part of the answer is that Brooklinites love it, use it, and have supported it for years. It’s the Friend Memorial Public Library. It originated in 1896 and moved to its present location on land donated by Brooklin’s Friend family in 1912.

Another part of the answer is that providing rural libraries is a tradition in New England, where the Free Public Library Movement is said to have begun in 1849. That year, New Hampshire’s legislature authorized rural towns to levy taxes to create and fund free public libraries. Massachusetts followed suit in 1851, as did Maine in 1854. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 9, 2021.

In the Right Place: The Light at the End

After traveling dark country roads to get to Brooklin in December’s early evenings, residents suddenly see the welcoming holiday lights of the Brooklin General Store:

On some nights they also see the lights of the Leaf & Anna gift shop around the bend and the quarter moon above:

General stores, the first American convenience stores, were common in small rural communities until about 1910. That’s when automobiles and the first trucks liberated farmers. Prior to that, farmers often would take their butter, eggs, and other commodities, to the general store and barter them for packaged staples. The storekeeper would then resell the fresh foods. Prices often were not marked on items because many customers wanted to negotiate a price.

A surprising number of old general stores still operate in New England, where tourists seem to love them in summer and wine, beer, and staples sales keep the enterprises alive in winter. Our General Store is the latest in a line of general stores that have served the community well since at least 1872, with only a few relatively short lapses. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 9, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Morning Light

Yesterday was sunny and cold and the thin covering of snow from the day before remained white and untrammeled by humans.

It was a fine day for going into the woods early to see snow-banked streams zigging and zagging through the soft morning light and to try to follow the hurried tracks of fellow mammals who commute to their night jobs on the trails there.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 9, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Pepita's Gift

This image of a poinsettia plant appears today in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American.

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