In the Right Place, Wild Streak Category

Yesterday was like a beautiful child with a wild streak. As you see here, the morning was about as good as a November morning can get – blinkingly clear and sunny, with bright blue skies and mind-clearing (but not painful) wintry breezes.

In the afternoon, however, we got our first snow of the year, albeit only a turbulent, tree bending tantrum that was over before we could discover what provoked it:

After that, the sunlight and clouds fought back and forth to command our visibility until nightfall. Today, at least as I write, it’s beautiful again. So it goes. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 20, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Light Shows Category

Dusk and Dawn, the beginning and ending of Night’s fearful darkness, often have inspired awe and spirituality in those who have experienced them under primal conditions. Although perhaps no longer primal, dusk and dawn on the Maine coast still can be inspirational.

Above, you see yesterday’s last light leaving Great Cove in the West and, below, you’ll see today’s first light coming to the Cove from the East. Your view is to the west-southwest, about 240 degrees on the compass.

When this morning’s image was taken, it was 34 degrees (F) with an 8-mile-an-hour westerly wind that was gusting to 12 miles-per-hour. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 19 [dusk] and 20 [dawn], 2022.)

In the Right Place, Mixed Feelings Category

Seeing and hearing this giddy brook almost every day now, after having watched it dry up into a dusty rut this summer, produces mixed feelings.

Of course, there is the joyful relief that things are back to the old normal and that, compared to many other places, Maine continues to have a plentitude of fresh water. However, there also is the worry that the old normal may be a temporary thing to be remembered more than experienced, hence it’s paradoxically an abnormality in a world of increasing unpredictability, unpleasantness, and danger. Brooks like this remain dry in many parts of this country where drought has become almost a normality, if not a normality.

Fresh water is perhaps the most important resource on earth. To many Native Americans, it was sacred. The Lakota, who lived in the often-arid Great Plains, reportedly had (and still have) a succinct saying that has been transliterated as “Mní wičhóni.” It recognizes a reality that we sometimes forget: “Water is life.” (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November17, 2022.) Click on image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place, Gawking Category

Yesterday, we were overrun by migrating stratocumulus clouds, the best clouds for us cloud-gazers. These low-flying, everchanging clumps of vaper allow us to imagine the sunny sky filled with stampeding bison, fast-flying bufflehead ducks, winged pigs, and countless other phantasmagoria.

Yesterday’s visitors also caused spots of sunlight to turn on and off on the slopes of Mount Cadillac in Acadia National Park across Blue Hill Bay – like a slow-blinking “Here-It-Is” sign.

Cloud myths apparently were among the first spiritual interpretations made by man. I like the ancient Greek myth about clouds being a crowd of mischievous nymphs who have collected water in opaque pitchers and will soon pour it on gawkers. Some Native Americans reportedly thought that the clouds were the discarded clothes of the gods.

(Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 17, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Brighteners Category

 Here you see our local Winterberries brightening yesterday’s wet and dismal day.

The Winterberry fruit this year continues to be exceptional and, in large part, uneaten by the birds and small mammals yet. After the other wild food is gone, I expect a run on these beautiful red clusters of native deciduous holly fruit.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 16, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Trap Stacks Category

Another two of Brooklin’s finest were winding down their lobstering season yesterday at Naskeag Harbor. While Judith Ann’s traps were being unloaded at the Town Dock, trap-stacked Meaghan Dee was pulling in to unload hers.

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

In the Right Place, Hanging On Category

Here you see one of our local “wild” apple trees that is older than 100 years trying to get some sun yesterday in the chilly morning.

Note that she’s still hanging onto a few apparently edible fruit, even though the morning temperature reached the day’s low of 31 degrees (F).

Below is another old, abandoned apple tree that is holding onto a few red apples.:

Apples are high in sugar and have a hard skin. They don’t start to freeze until the temperatures fall to about 28-28.5 degrees for several days, according to the literature. On the other hand, the reports indicate that temperatures of 22 degrees and below will freeze the apples solid, breaking down their cells into something that you probably wouldn’t want to eat.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 14, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Golden Fog Category

 Here you see one of the last of this year’s fully fall-foliaged Tamarack trees, just before several days of torrential rains and strong winds scattered the trees’ needles in what sometimes looked like tumbling wisps of golden fog.

Rest in peace, Tamaracks. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 11, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Weather Drama Category

Yesterday afternoon, after a night and morning of howling winds and sheeting rain, the sun inched sideways through crowded clouds, the temperature rose into the humid 60’s (F), and mists steamed through the softened woods.

As the sun went down over Great Cove in the evening, the clouds were crowding again, preparing to bring the rain that again came to us last night and this morning.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 12, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Bringing Them In Category

Lobster fishermen continue to winddown their season at Naskeag Harbor, bringing in their traps to be trailered to winter storage.

One technique, shown above, is to place their trailers in Naskeag Point’s shallow water as the tide is coming in and run their boats up on the shore next to them. The traps then can be transferred to the trailers without hoisting and the emptied boats can later slip away in the higher water of the incoming tide.

A fully-loaded trailer of traps — colorful rectangles within rectangles — can be a work of abstract art to those with a little imagination:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 9 [on pier] and 11 [on shore], 2022.)

In the Right Place: Strange Traditions Category

This image of a Wild Turkey appeared yesterday in my monthly column in the Ellsworth American.

To read the column about the origins of the strange Turkey-On-Thanksgiving Tradition, click this: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place, Weather or Not Category

We live on a ridge overlooking the wooded islands of Eggemoggin Reach, a windy channel that starts as an offshoot of Penobscot Bay to our north and empties into the Atlantic Ocean to our south.

As you might expect, weather is a factor in our lives here. As you might not expect, one of the best predictors of our weather happens to be a mountain about seven miles out to sea, which we can view (sometimes) on our south-south-west horizon.

On a clear day, such as yesterday, we see Mount Champlain on Isle au Haut (“High Island”) looming into our view from the sea behind some of the Reach islands. Her presence is one of the first things that we check for in the morning. When we can’t see her, it usually means that bad weather is on the way or already here.

For eons, Isle au Haut reportedly was a popular summer fin-fish and shellfish harvesting island for the Wabanaki tribes of Native Americans. It was put on European maps under its French name in 1604 by its “discoverer,” Samuel Champlain, the famous French explorer of Northeast America. After their Revolution, newly “American” farmers, fishermen, and boatbuilders claimed and began “settling” the island; they soon established a robust community.

In 1943, heirs of the founders of that community donated about 60 percent of the Island to Acadia National Park for its preservation (and maybe in hopes of attracting nature-loving tourists). To this day, Park officials manage that part of the Island and the entire island has become a popular summer tourist attraction. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 9, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Pollution Sponging Category

Below you’ll see images of yesterday’s sunset, as viewed from within a polite crowd of mostly spruce and balsam fir trees. The images were inspired by an article in yesterday’s Boston Globe on an important new report relating to New England’s forests, which are sponging-up tens of millions of tons of carbon-based greenhouse gas pollutants annually. The report urges policy makers to increase the trees’ protective roles by taking certain dramatic actions.

Titled “New England’s Climate Imperative: Our Forests as a Natural Solution,” the important report was produced by Harvard Forest, the University’s 4000-acre laboratory-classroom, and two environmental groups. It details the carbon benefits of five complementary pathways that, taken together, “can greatly enhance the forests’ contributions to mitigating climate change.” These five pathways are:

·         Avoided Deforestation: Change developmental practices to reduce annual rates of deforestation by 75 percent.

·         Wildland Reserves: Designate at least 10 percent of existing forests as forever wild.

·         Improved Forest Management: Apply better management to 50 percent of timberlands.

·         Mass Timber Construction: Replace concrete and steel with wood in 50 percent of eligible new institutional buildings and multifamily homes.

Urban and Suburban Forests: Increase tree canopy and forest cover by at least 5 percent in urban and suburban areas.

To read the Harvard release on the report, click this: https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/news/report-informs-policy-making-process-detailing-how-forests-contribute-climate-change-mitigation

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 8, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Splitting and Stacking Category

Many Mainers are now splitting and stacking wood to burn in their fireplaces and wood stoves this winter. In some residences, wood is the primary source of heat, and the number of such homes reportedly has been expanding in Northern New England. The increasing costs of heating oil and heating gas are a big part of that story. Split wood and wood pellets are relatively inexpensive, especially if you do your own splitting.

Another reason for the increase in wood heating is that modern wood stoves must have federally-regulated emission controls, which considerably lessens the guilt factor of burning wood. These stoves also come in a variety of modern and traditional styles. Here’s an example from the Leighton Archives:

Leighton Archive Image

The latest Census data that I could find, as analyzed by the Alliance for Green Heat, show that, as of 2019, Vermont was the state that had the largest percentage of homes heated primarily from wood. Maine was second, followed, in order, by New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, and New Hampshire. (Primary image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 6, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Loudmouth Category

Here you see the leader of a band of Blue Jays that recently has been marauding bird feeders and acting like impolite loudmouths in the quiet woods around here.

As with other members of their Corvid family (e.g., Crows and Ravens), Blue Jays are smart, but have a few bad habits. Nonetheless, Blue Jays perform a very important environmental function – they are prodigious acorn hiders, each bird reportedly planting thousands of potential oak trees a year.

Some of our Blue Jays migrate south in the winter, but most of them reportedly stay over the winter, bothering their neighbors and trying to find the acorns that they stored.

There are four subspecies of Blue Jays in the United States, The ones in Maine (and Canada) are the Northern Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata bromia), the largest subspecies. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 3, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Uncertainty Category

This year’s disappointing lobster season is winding down. The lobsters have started their annual winter migration to deeper waters and the fishermen (male and female) are bringing in traps for winter storage:

The fishermen also are working fewer days, which gives us more opportunities to view their handsome vessels in late-fall light:

However, the potential long-term effects of Climate Change on lobsters, the immediate effects of inflation on fishing costs, and pending regulations that will require expensive new equipment that may or may not protect endangered North Atlantic Right Whales make the future of sustainable lobster fishing increasingly uncertain. These are troubling times.

Lobster fishing is more than a job to most fishermen and more than a tourist attraction to many of us who live on the Maine coast; it’s a cultural heritage. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 31 and November 1, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Beaver Deceiver Category

Here you see part of a Beaver Deceiver™ system that was just installed on the WoodenBoat campus to protect a culvert under the only road into the campus.

The culvert carries the water from a stream, under the road, and into a large pond – except when beavers dam up the culvert, the stream rises, and the road is washed out.

Rather than kill its beavers, WB had for years humanely trapped and relocated them. Here’s an image of one from the Leighton Archives:

 And, for years, new beavers arrived to carry on their kind’s mission. Taking beavers for a ride is a very short-term solution, especially with the beaver population increasing.

Beaver Deceiver systems such as this include culvert-protecting fences and protected pond-leveling pipes. They allow the beavers to stay in their area and do their damning on the protective fences or elsewhere if they wish, but the pipe keeps the stream flowing and the water level from rising. A similar system was installed in Acadia National Park.

Left to their damming activities in natural areas, the beavers are a demonstrated net plus for the environment and man. It’s good to see a solution to an interaction problem that recognizes this, allows us to continue to see beavers, and allows beavers to continue to do their important thing. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 5, 2022, and May 13, 2017.)

In the Right Place, Normality Category

Yesterday’s U.S. Drought Monitor reported for the first time in a long time that Maine finally was free of any abnormally dry or drought conditions. That’s what the federal government’s latest meteorological and hydrological measurements showed, as of  November 1, 2022:

As you see from the above tabulation, only one year prior (November 2, 2021), the Monitor reported that 27.58 percent of Maine’s land area was abnormally dry, 11.82 percent was experiencing moderate drought, and 6.56 percent was experiencing severe drought.

Above and below, you see recent images of a brimming marsh pond and a burbling woods stream that I monitor several times a week.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 1 [pond] and 3 [stream], 2022.)

In the Right Place, Lumps and Bumps Category

I keep saying that our amphibians have gone into their winter hideaways, yet I almost stepped on this little fellow yesterday. (Sex assumed.) He, of course, is a well-camouflaged Eastern American Toad (Anaxyrus anaxyrus americanus), warts and all.

Actually, those lumps and bumps are not warts. They’re glands of toxic substances that the toad secretes as protection when it feels in danger. The biggest bumps behind the eyes are its paratoid glands, which apparently are the amphibian’s most lethal toxic goo secreters:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on November 2, 2022.)

In the Right Place, Golden Revelations Category

Here and there, the Tamarack Trees have decided to reveal their hiding places, as you see from this image taken yesterday:

November 1, 2022

They’re late coming out here this year; in prior years, many more were in full incandescence by this time:

November 1, 2018

Perhaps our dry summer delayed the process.

Tamaracks are green-needled in the spring and summer, and often are impossible to distinguish at a distance when they arise among Spruce and Balsam Fir Trees. As are those other trees, Tamaracks are coniferous; that is, they produce and drop cones for propagation.

However, Tamaracks are thinner and wirier than their cousins and – most important – they’re not evergreen. They’re deciduous and, in the fall, their true nature is disclosed when they quickly turn yellow and drop their needles like golden rain.

“Tamarack” reportedly is the Algonquin Tribe’s name for one of the tree’s uses by Native Americans: “snowshoe wood.” Nonetheless, the tree also is commonly called a “Hackmatack” (the Abanaki Tribe’s name) or a “Larch” (from Latin and German names for European pine-like trees). (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine.)