Category: Postcards

Real Maine

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 

This year the Red Barn has featured a lot of photos from Downeast Maine, many of them taken about a five-hour drive from our home in coastal New Hampshire. (Driving the other direction would put us in Manhattan in the same amount of time.) It’s easy to imagine the remote coastline as idyllic, but the reality is that much is also economically challenged and impoverished. Here’s an example from downtown Eastport.

Silent autumn reflections

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Colorful foliage reflects in a cove along the Cocheco River just a few blocks from downtown Dover. At one time, the site was used to cut blocks of ice each winter for sale to cities to the south each summer.

The picture was taken from this former railroad bridge that’s now a highlight of the Community Trail.

Now, if we only had a place to put a canoe or kayak into the water.

Aloft in color

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments
Hardwoods along the high school athletic field.

The Columbus Day weekend is typically touted as “prime foliage” across much of New England, though we can quibble. In truth, the leaves of the deciduous trees change color in waves rather than all at once. Many are already bare, while many others are still green. And this year, severe drought has taken a toll, too.

Sometimes they seem aflame.

While Allen Ginsberg once quipped, “New England, famed for red leaves,” the reality is that few trees fulfill that vision. Far more are golden or buttery. Still, we keep looking.

By the end of the month, our landscape will emerge monotone – and likely remain that way well into March. Knowing what’s ahead, we savor what we can now.

The Cocheco River at Whittier Falls.
Don’t forget to look underfoot, too. And don’t overlook the impact of purple.

~*~

For my in-depth thoughts and photos reflecting New England’s fall folige, check out my posts from September and October 2013 at my Chicken Farmer I Still Love You blog.

Prime time for an afternoon along the Atlantic

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Fellow blogger Mark Bialczak’s recent posts about his romantic getaway from his home in Upstate New York to the Cape (as we New Englanders refer to Cape Cod) kinda guilted me into giving myself a day off and taking a few hours at a beach a bit over a half-hour’s drive from my little city farm.

Yeah, I know I’m retired (or was, before signing on as a Census enumerator … yesterday was a day off for me). Still, somehow, I get tied down at home. Haven’t swum in the ocean in the past three years, for that matter, not since getting the city pool pass. I always think there’s too much other stuff to tend to.

So yesterday, telling myself the season’s running out, I hopped in the car a tad before noon and simply took off. I thought about heading north to the mountains, but I’d already done a work-related drive in the direction earlier in the day, so I veered east into Maine and settled on Fort Foster, a Kittery town park situated at the mouth of the Piscataqua River.

Regular visitors here at the Red Barn have seen many images from this tranquil alternative to the more popular beaches just up the coast from it. For us, it’s closer than the beaches in New Hampshire, and always less crowded. During the summer, there’s an admission fee, which limits traffic, and for several seasons I opted for a season pass, sometimes spending an afternoon in the water before heading an hour inland for an evening shift in the newsroom. Even so, as I said, for the past several years, I’ve just been more of a homebody, with writing and revising as a top priority.

After Labor Day, the park gate is open only on weekends through September, but it is possible to park outside and walk in, which was the case yesterday. Despite the number of cars lined up along the road, I encountered few people in the park itself, most older couples or individuals walking a dog.

En route, I stopped at the Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier for raw oysters on the half shell, which is always a rare treat for me. It’s a lovely setting, a deck over the water in a narrow tidal passage off Pepperell Cove, and typically crowded. Some diners even arrive by boat. After Labor Day, though, the tourists thin out, making for a perfect time to enjoy our  local attractions. Maybe it has to do with Covid somehow, but the oysters yesterday were smaller than usual, especially for this time of year, when they’ve fattened up for winter. No complaints, though, they were still tasty. If only I could learn to shuck them myself. It’s a skill, one that can lead to emergency-room stitches for an amateur.

‘Nuff background. Here’s a sampling of what I enjoyed a mile or two later.

The road into the park splits, with one branch crossing a marsh filled with cattails. As I walked along it, I was struck by the way Whaleback lighthouse seems to pop from the trees, rather than its usual position surrounded by tides.

For the most part, I had the oceanside trail to myself. Autumn was definitely in the air.

This pebble beach is my usual place to swim. It’s less buggy than the sandy stretches further on, and less crowded than the pocket beaches along the river. My fingers indicated the water was still warm enough for swimming, though I hadn’t brought a swimsuit. September can be some of the best times for swimming, but the cooler air can be a problem. The current also looked a bit rough, not that you see it in this photo.

A wave pours into a tide pool. Had I come prepared, wearing old sneakers and a swimsuit, I would have been in the water, looking under rocks for starfish, urchins, anemone, and other colorful life.