In the Right Place: Foggy Thoughts

It’s foggy today, as it was yesterday. Perhaps the most famous American observation of fog was by the poet Carl Sandburg in his 1916 poem “Fog,” a self-described form of “American Haiku.” (Haiku, as you probably know, is a stylized form of short, Japanese poetry, usually about nature; Sandburg’s poem does not quite meet all of haiku’s style requirements, but it’s a beaut.)

Sandburg described what he saw in Chicago one day, looking at a harbor in Lake Michigan:

The fog comes

on little cat feet.  

It sits looking

over harbor and city on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Most often, the fog here on the Maine coast does not arrive on little mammal feet, especially when it’s mixed with rain as it was yesterday. A larger, more threatening animal often seems responsible.

Yesterday at Naskeag Harbor, shown above, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the incoming rain-fog was the spittled, billowing breath of a giant sea serpent. As with Sandburg’s cat, our serpent moved on. It was last seen looking over the islands in Great Cove:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 27, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Down Memory Lane Again

Here you see ice-covered Great Cove Drive and the WoodenBoat School’s post-and-panel boat shed on Sunday’s cold morning. The Drive is literally named – it’s last 30 feet or so consist of a sloping boat ramp into the Cove waters, right behind the camera here.

More important, as you’ll see ibelow, the shed is protecting some of WoodenBoat’s precious fleet of small boats. As you know, I visit them regularly to refresh fond summer memories and to please some of the School’s far-flung alumni who browse these posts.

Among some favorites shown there: the big-ruddered Beetle Cat “Whimsey” in the foreground; to her bow’s port, with the white lapstraked (overlapping planked) hull, is (I think) the sailing dingy “Skylark”; and, in the center, is the green-hulled outboard skiff “Babson II” sporting her big Yamaha outboard motor.

Some of their mooring gear hangs outside all year:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Saint-Like

The March full moon, the first full moon of spring this year, appeared last night and the night before at 100 percent luminosity to us. (Some years, the March full moon appears before the spring equinox and, therefore, becomes the last winter full moon.) This year. it was shrouded in misty clouds both nights. The luna sea craters were only hinted at, but the moon had a mysterious halo that was worthy of a saint.

Unfortunately, our forefathers and native Americans did not have saints in mind when they named this the “Full Worm Moon.” That’s because it comes when the ground is softening enough for robins and fishermen to find worms, not to be blessed. (I wonder whether there is a patron saint for worms.) (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2024.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Transformation Department

Perhaps it’s fitting that a plant that was used unsuccessfully to treat the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages has started to flower and provide life-saving nectar to our earliest insects. It is one of our earliest plants to flower in the spring, second only to skunk cabbage.

The plant, shown above as it was yesterday at its earliest stage, is Japanese sweet coltsfoot (Petasites japonicus). It reportedly was introduced into North America in the 19th Century by Japanese immigrants to Canada’s British Columbia. It has a sweeter scent than other coltsfoot plants, including Maine’s native sweet coltsfoot (Petasites palmatus).

The Japanese version goes through an enormous transformation in which the little one- and two-inch flower clusters shown here are replaced by sturdy stems of about three feet in length. The leaves at the ends of those stems can grow up to four feet in width and are shaped like a colt’s hoofprint, hence the plant’s name:

Leighton Archive Image

The mature leaves also are the source for one of this plant’s alternative common names: Japanese Butterbur. In days of yore before refrigeration, those large leaves were used to wrap butter for storage in cool places. By the way, the plant is very invasive; I wouldn’t recommend planting it. (Primary images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Our White Spring, Yet Again

If many April showers bring many May flowers, what do many March snowstorms bring April? Many exasperated Mainers, that’s what! As you very well may know, we had another spring snowstorm yesterday with high winds last night that knocked out pole power.

Yes, the snow was pretty. Yes, it increases groundwater. However, I’ve had enough of white prettiness; I want some green prettiness. And, we have more than enough water flowing underground now; I want some flowers swaying above ground.

Nonetheless, we might as well document yesterday’s pretty annoyance:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 23, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Yesterday’s Sunny Memory

Our springtime continues as I write today while more halfhearted snow flurries outside in wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour and a temperature of 20° (F). That is to say, a wind chill of 05 °. Did I mention the Flood Watch and Gale Warning we’re under for this afternoon, Tra-La-La?

NONETHELESS, I’m enjoying the memory of yesterday, the first full sun day here since the vernal equinox. Of course, yesterday wasn’t perfect; it also was cold and windy. But, as I say, it was sunny and clear, which was enough for those of us who are spring-starved.

As for that sun, in the images above, you see the WoodenBoat School’s pier prodding the white caps of cold, clear Great Cove yesterday morning – no snow, no rain, no fog – but a little wind. The pier points to the Cove’s protective islands, Babson Island (aka “Big Babson”) and Little Babson Island. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 22, 2024.)

In the Right Place: A White Spring, Continued

Our springtime continues today with early morning temperatures in the teens and windchills in the single digits. Yesterday, we had another half-hearted snowstorm, mostly during the morning hours. There wasn’t enough snow to require driveway plowing or hinder travel. But there was enough snow to provide some interesting photographic effects while it was annoying us.

As you see above, the snow was dramatic while coming down and trying to bury some of Brooklin’s skunk cabbage spathes, including the unusual yellow ones on which I previously reported. As you’ll see below, less snow in Blue Hill provided accents for red-orange holly berries there:

More monochromatic scenes abounded in Brooklin, including these:

(Images taken in Brooklin and Blue Hill, Maine, on March 21, 2024.

In the Right Place: What Happened to Tra-La-La?

Yesterday morning, we had one of those events that make life interesting here. But first, a relevant fact: Yesterday also was the first full day of Spring. (The vernal equinox arrived at 1:06 p.m. the day before yesterday, Tuesday.)

Now, back to Wednesday morning. At first, it was raining in a routine sort of way and the temperature was around freezing, but rising. The wind picked up at about mid-morning and began to deliver whipping rain. Then, all of a sudden, as if a switch had been flipped on, everything turned into what you see here, a furiously raging snow flurry that was blinding at times:

After about 15 minutes of high winds flinging around mini- and maxi-sized flakes, the snow stopped suddenly, as if that switch had been flipped off. Pale sunlight appeared for several minutes and revealed that a fraction of an inch of snow was on the trees and ground. It soon melted:

The rest of the day returned to mostly routine rain, raw winds, and several unsuccessful attempts by the sun to break through a dense overcast.

Then, last night, it snowed again, leaving a light white cover here and there this morning. Now, we’re under a Gale Warning until Tomorrow at 9 a.m., and the forecast for today is: “Windy with morning snow showers. Highs in the low 30s and lows in the upper teens.” Ahh, Spring! (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 20, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Vernal Pooling

Our vernal pools are overflowing with enchanting reflections. It’s almost disorienting to slosh through a stockade of reflected woods, especially in the areas that are dense with tall spruce and balsam firs that have lost their lower branches.

I haven’t seen or heard any amphibians yet, but it’s been chilly. In the area that you see here, we usually have springtime performances of intense medieval cantatas from our large wood frog tabernacle choir. During the last two years here, for some inexplicable (but no doubt environmentally nefarious) reason, few salamanders have returned. I’m hoping for a resurgence of these silent amphibians in 2024. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 19, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Prone Perspective Department

Cumulus clouds were on the rise here yesterday morning, creating scenes worthy of the best sky watchers. (Thomas Cole, J.M.W. Turner, and N.C. Wyeth come immediately to mind.) Here you see the first billows rising over a local landscape.

The clouds kept billowing as they moved northeast over Blue Hill and Jericho Bays, crossing over the western mountains on Mount Desert Island:

However, by early afternoon they had decided to huddle into a solid gray mass that was no longer cumulus, it was overcast.

As you may know, the name “cumulus” is derived from the Latin for “piled” or “heaped.” They’re the clouds that most attract people who like to lie down on the slope of a hill and imagine celestial shapes. Yesterday, there were turtles, clowns, camels, and castles drifting by. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 18, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Nearing Season’s End

Here you see a scallop “drag” (dredge) on the Town Dock with the Fishing Vessel “Christopher Devin III” in the background. The scallop-dragging season ends in Maine on March 27, but the scallop-diving (SCUBA-type) season continues into April.

It looks like the winter fishing vessels other than CD III have taken an early leave and entered their spring break. During the break, they’ll be removing their drags, masts, and booms and cleaning up for summer lobster fishing.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2024.) See also the image in the first Comment space.

In the Right Place: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This post is a tribute to the late Judith Fuller, a good neighbor who used to display this enigmatic roadside banner at the head of her driveway on and around St. Patrick’s Day every year. The image was taken during the snowy year that she died.

One of my many small regrets is not having asked Judith (who had a searing sense of humor) what was the message of this banner’s weird illustration? Why a flamingo wearing a Leprechaun hat and dancing on (stomping?) shamrocks? Was it “Everything is (or should be) Irish – in the poetic sense – around this time of year?” (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2019.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Harbingers of Spring

Thursday, I stumbled onto a gaggle of 12 Canada geese in a local pond that was stockaded on three sides by cattails.

My sudden appearance caused the surprised geese – the jumbo jets of the goose line – to execute a mass, explosive takeoff.

Now, Canada geese (Branta canadensis) average somewhere between three and four feet in length, often have wingspans of over 7 feet, and weigh up to 8 pounds. A five-alarm takeoff of a dozen of these monsters in a confined space is a happening – two dozen big, black, fast-churning webbed feet making long, splashing strides across the water to get some uplift, accompanied by clamorous cursing in the form of booming honks.

Canada Geese are the only goose species that breeds, winters, and migrates through Maine. (Other wild geese just migrate through.) These birds were extirpated here in the last century. However, they have become increasing plentiful due to a state revival in the 1960s that “has been a bit too successful,” according to Vickery (“Birds of Maine”).

Climate warming has resulted in increasing numbers of these geese overwintering. These full-time residents produce young that become non-migratory because the immature geese have not been taught to migrate by being part of a high-altitude wedge headed south; migration is not instinctive in them.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Water, Water Everywhere

It rained all night; it’s raining as I write, and it’s expected to rain all day, perhaps with some mixed snow for seasoning. But it’s not very cold. We may set a record for precipitation in March this month and have an early spring in which our sunny days are special. I sense the stirring of salamanders already.

Our ponds are full, as you can tell from the above image of the WoodenBoat waterlily pond. Our bogs also are full and our woods are wet, as you’ll see from the image below:.

A wet spring is welcome in this era of Climate Change. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 13, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Valuable Migrants

This image appears in my monthly column in the current Ellsworth American. Those are baby American eels called “glass eels” and they’re Maine’s most valuable wildlife, if you judge value by the price-per-pound. Click on the image to enlarge it. To read the column about the extraordinary life, travels, and prices of these fish (yes, eels are fish), click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Swamp Lemons

These are unusual, perhaps rare, all-yellow eastern skunk cabbage spathes. They’ve returned to the same area that they appeared in last year, when I first reported on them.

Usually, our skunk cabbage spathes are covered in seemingly random purple and yellow-green splotches:

It’s mysterious; I wonder if these swamp lemons are another Climate Change phenomenon, some kind of pigment problem. I also wonder if the coloring on the spathes is intended to attract pollinators.

These images were taken yesterday, but the spathes have been up about two weeks and have endured cold, high winds, and torrential rain. Skunk cabbages, which generate their own heat, are the first flowering plants to reappear here each year. The flowers are inside the pixie-hat-shaped spathes, into which our earliest pollinators (often flies) can crawl and be protected from the elements and predators. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 12, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Daylight Storming Time

Here you see usually placid Naskeag Harbor this morning on the first Daylight Savings Time day of the year.

She’s experiencing daylight storming conditions after losing an hour of sleep – whipping rain and wind gusts of over 40 miles per hour from the East-Southeast:

“Christopher-Devon III” was the only fishing vessel to risk staying in the Harbor today; despite some bucking, she looked secure:

We’re under High Wind and Storm Warnings until 5 p.m. today and a Coastal Flood Warning until 2 p.m. We’ve lost electric power and are on generator as I write. It could get worse, especially the wind, but things don’t look serious yet for those who don’t intend to take a swim.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 10, 2024.)

In the Right Place: State of the Woods

Substantial rainstorms and relatively warm temperatures this week have chased virtually all of the snow and ice from the woods without damaging the trails, although they are a bit soggy in places.

Off-trail, many pools of water remain, creating little runoff streams full of happy water that races freely down inclines toward the sea, sometimes creating two- or three-foot miniature oases that appear and disappear in the dappling sun:

It looks like we’ll be having a vibrant spring. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8 and 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Rocks and Wracks

When you look at this image, there probably will be little doubt in your mind why we call that growth “Rockweed.”

It’s other common name, “Knotted Wrack,” also has a partly obvious origin: this organism is “knotted” with little air bladders that float its “blades” up at higher tide to get needed sunlight. I found it interesting to learn that it’s called a “wrack” because “sea wrack” is the old name for “seaweed.” (Even more interesting: historically, “wrack,” once meant something cast up from the sea onto the shore. That word evolved into “wreck” and “ship wrack” became “ship wreck.”)

The scientific name for this seaweed is Ascophyllum nodosum and, not surprisingly, “nodosum” means “full of knots.” There are other, similar seaweed species that are also commonly known as Rockweed simply because of their trait of anchoring themselves on rocks.

Rockweed is not a weed or true plant and it is not limited to rock habitats. It’s one of our brown marine algae. It has no roots; it uses a “holdfast” mechanism to glue itself to hard surfaces, including pier pilings. But, it’s often ripped from its base by rough seas and can be harvested mechanically or by hand for conversion to fertilizer and other usages. 

In Maine, there’s tension between many owners of intertidal shorefronts who refuse to permit commercial harvesting of their Rockweed, especially mechanical cutting by Canadian interests. Basically, the owners’ primary concern is that Rockweed should be allowed to flourish because it provides an environment and food source for over 100 marine species. The harvesters and their supporters primarily argue that the organism is renewable and harvesting it provides needed jobs. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8 and 6, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Angelic

The conditions were magically right for taking portraits of fishing vessels yesterday in Naskeag Harbor. The tide was going out and rain clouds were gathering, drawing most of the color out of the day.

There was virtually no wind and, where the water was still, it seemed like a polished black onyx table. Where the tide and current rolled slowly, the water seemed to turn into hammered silver chasing. The white vessels began to glow almost angelically in the fading light and orange mooring buoys seemed to have been turned on at the flip of a hidden switch.

Above you see FV “Dear Abbie:” and, below, you’ll see FV “Tarrfish.”

They soon will be stripped of their masts and booms and allowed to rest a while before the lobster season. The Atlantic sea scallop “dragging” (dredging) season ends this month and the scallop diving season ends in April. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8, 2024.)