Tag: Nature
Hikers atop a seaside bluff
If you see them, they’ll give you a sense of proportion for the experience of hiking the coastal trail at Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec.
Maybe this will help you locate them. There were five in the party, including a child, when we caught up with them.
Red squirrel jitters
Squirrels were a pestilence back in Dover, raiding our garden and devouring the crown molding in our barn, in addition to some damage to the house itself.
While deer are a problem here, we haven’t had squirrels.
But the other day, I looked up from my keyboard and saw a small red squirrel scampering across our brush pile.
A few minutes later, my wife, working in another room, called out to say she’d seen a squirrel.
“A red one?”
Yep.
They’re worse than the grays we had, in the opinion of many.
So far, at least, it hasn’t been back.
Cross our fingers. We really no longer see them as cute.
Baby spiders
I do love day lilies
So do the deer.
I really do wish they’d stop eating ours, at least until the blooming’s over.
You’d think those birds would be far more ravenous in the depths of winter
We continue to keep our bird feeders out through the summer (something we wouldn’t do if we had bears in town), but I am surprised by how much more they eat in summertime, when there’s plenty of other food available, than they do in deep cold and snowy conditions when they need more to keep their metabolism up.
Yeah, we know there are more of them now and that they’re also feeding their babies. But on some days they eat as much as they would otherwise consume in two weeks – or more.
On the other hand, we do enjoy watching the variety and drama as they dine right outside the window at our kitchen table throughout the year.
That record flooding gets personal
Looking at the news of Vermont’s flood damage, I’m seeing places I know and have traveled. Towns I pass through on my way to and from Quaker Yearly Meeting sessions at Castleton University, for instance, all now heavily hit. I wonder about some of the covered bridges I anticipate visiting or places I stop for a stretch, too.
I’ve been waiting to hear from a dear friend, especially, though I know his home is high above the stream running through town. Still …
My wife and I retain strong impressions from seeing the devastation from Hurricane Irene nine or ten months after it delivered its wallop. You wouldn’t believe the extent unless you saw the evidence.
The mountains become a funnel for the falling water, and many of the roads have nowhere to go but beside the streams. People, of course, live along the roads … many of them at the foot of natural chutes from the hillsides.
It’s not just water, either, but the boulders and gravel it unleashes.
There are real stories that will unfold long after the TV cameras and breaking news headlines have moved elsewhere.
But it does make a difference when events do somehow seem to reflect home for you. Or when you look for what I think of as “slow news.”
We’re stuck in fog, fog, fog
While I had heard that these stretches of a surrounding blur of dense gray could linger weeks here, I assumed folks were talking about March or maybe late November, not the height of glorious summer.
And then a friend told me of one summer in Lubec, a few miles over the water to our south, where it hit every day, often without any splash of sunshine.
It does dampen the emotional wellbeing of many.
As much of the nation – and world – suffers under recording-breaking heat, we’re having many days when the day’s high has barely reached much above 60, as in Fahrenheit. Only a few readings have even broken as far as the lower 80s. I’ve worn my beloved Hawaiian shirts only three times, and my shorts are still in the bottom drawer of the dresser. If you’re wondering, unlikely as that is, I’m not one of those guys who goes bare-knees in January, believe me.
Much of this has been accompanied by weeks of fog – morning and late afternoon through the night, especially – but sometimes without break during the day as well.
I’ve stopped reminding people that Seattle experiences something like this six-months straight every year or that San Francisco is accustomed to watching the ground-hugging clouds return every afternoon.
We do live on an island, so the temperatures just seven miles away on the mainland traditionally run ten degrees warmer, but those are still much more reasonable than the hellfire raging elsewhere.
None of the wider extremes should come as a surprise. True prophets had forecast them a half century ago, and we are running on those projections, contrary to the decades of denials and resistance of capitalist naysayers and their puppet politicians. Remember, too, it was “climactic instability” rather than mere “global warming.”
So, on a more mundane level, on those partly-cloudy to partly-sunny days in the forecast, we jump onto running the laundry early and then getting it promptly out on the line to breathe, and I attack the lawn with the mower as soon as the grass dries sufficiently. Not that I’m the only one, not by a longshot.
When I did live in the Pacific Northwest, I was in the interior desert with dreams of escaping somehow to a writing life somewhere along the coast, maybe in a cabin in British Columbia or Alaska.
Something like this, perchance.
I’m sold on Maine’s crab
Ours are smaller than the glorious Dungeness of the Pacific Northwest or Chesapeake Bay’s popular Blue delicacy, named for the color of their tips.
But that’s not to say Maine doesn’t have crabmeat that’s as sweet. Ours comes from two species.
Here’s some perspective.
- Jonah crabs are the slightly larger and more celebrated of the two. They’re reddish with large, black-tipped claws, and found primarily in deep waters offshore.
- The meat comes from the claws. When Jonahs show up in a lobster trap, a fisherman typically removes one claw and throws the rest of the crab back. The crab, we’re told, can survive on one claw while the other grows back.
- Jonahs are regulated by an interstate commission that places a 4.75-inch minimum size on keepers and prohibits the retention of egg-bearing females.
- Atlantic rock crab, or “peekytoes,” live in bays and tidal rivers closer to shore. These measure just five inches across and are the most commercially caught crab in the state.
- Peekytoes cannot be shipped live, presumably because they’re too delicate. Instead, they’re cooked and hand-picked before shipment.
- Both commercial and recreational crabbers require a license from the state and must observe strict limits on their take. At least, those specifically going after them. See the lobstermen, above, for a clue to exemptions.
- Locals in the know say that picking the meat from a crab is a nearly lost art. They admit they can’t avoid getting hard bits of shell in the tender flesh, no matter how carefully they try. Instead, as they advise, go to Betty’s in Pembroke or Earle’s down in Machias for your supply.
- Favorite dishes around here are crab rolls, crab salad, and crabcakes. Our house also celebrates a heavenly crab imperial. Others make them into a dip or spread. And, in some circles, Jonah crab claws make an appetizer served like a shrimp cocktail.
- They can be harvested year-‘round, though fall, when crabs are most packed with meat, is the peak season.
- Smaller, invasive, nasty green crabs have been proliferating as Maine waters warm, decimating other marine species and their breeding grounds. Some enterprising chefs, though, see tasty opportunity in some dishes to counter that.
Me? I haven’t yet had to complain of having too much. Now, please pass the Old Bay.
Now, for our big whirlpool
One of Eastport’s travel attractions is the “Old Sow,” the world’s second biggest whirlpool or the biggest one in the Western Hemisphere.
~*~
Before you make reservations to come see it, let me point out a few things.
- Its intensity varies greatly, depending on the gravitational tides cycle. It’s best about three hours before high tide, especially around the new and full moons when 40 billion cubic feet of water flood through the half-mile-wide passage to Passamaquoddy Bay.
- Its swirling diameter can reach 250 feet or drop 12 feet into its vortex, but it’s also likely to appear as a series of boiling countercurrent piglets and eddies.
- Most of the time, it’s not particularly visible from land. It is, however, a regular feature on Butch Harris’ whale watch runs. And even then, it will likely be a disappointment if you’re expecting to see a big hole in the water.
- It remains, nonetheless, a hazard to small boaters and has claimed lives, most notably in 1835 when a mother watched from shore as a two-masted schooner was sucked down with her two sons. The young men were never seen again.
- Another account, from the late 1800s, tells of two men with a barge loaded with logs, that went under and the bodies never found.
- It’s closer to Deer Island, New Brunswick, than Eastport, Maine, in part a consequence of public works construction of a causeway to the north during the Great Depression that pushed the current eastward.
- The name likely derives from the mispronunciation of “sough” as “sow” rather than “suff,” reflecting a “sucking noise” or “drain.” Or even “grunting.”
- The phenomenon arises from a unique funneling of powerful currents over a sharp trench on the seafloor, with water rising abruptly from 400 feet to 119 feet. It then intersects other trenches to thicken the action.
- The upswell brings nutrients and small sea creatures from the depths to the surface.
- The channel’s ferocious currents can run six to seven knots, a special hazard for divers as well as small boats.
Jnana's Red Barn 