Winter walk
Tag: Nature
A few islands in comparison
Islands come in all shapes and sizes, and even that can change dramatically with the tides. Now that I’m living on one, I’m really beginning to appreciate their variety. Some you can drive to or from, while others require a ferry or even an airplane. The better-known ones seem to be vacation or travel destinations.
Here’s a sampling, starting with home.
- Eastport, Maine, including Moose, Treat, Carlow, Matthews, and a few more: 3.6 square miles (12.3 with water)
- Manhattan: 22.7 square miles
- Staten: 58.5 square miles
- Martha’s Vineyard: 96 square miles
- Nantucket: 48 square miles
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick: 55 square miles (198.4 with water), but one side is a 20-mile wall of tall bluffs – the same length as Martha’s Vineyard.
- Sanibel, Florida: 16.1 square miles
- Mount Desert, Maine (home of Acadia National Park): 108 square miles
- Santa Catalina, California: 75 square miles
- San Juan, Washington: 55 square miles
Care to tell us about others?
Deer tracks in fresh snow
They had an active night, as seen from our kitchen window.
In the early evening sky
Sea smoke
When the air temps drop to near zero Fahrenheit or below around here, these sprites start dancing atop the ocean.
In the ebb and floe
River ice, downtown Bangor
North of zero, as a relief
That’s Fahrenheit, or minus almost 18 Celsius. And that’s after the reading had gone much, much further south.
I know we’re not alone in the northern U.S. in a brutal cold wave, especially after an unusually warm spell, but what’s hit us has been brutal. The kind of snap that probably killed off my favorite beekeeper’s hives. Minus 17 and quite windy, for one thing. The temps dropped about ten degrees an hour before finally bottoming out overnight, where they lingered. After that, about noon today, reaching zero felt like a relief, especially since it appears no pipes froze. We’ll see. Two or three nights in a row might have been a different story.
Oh yes, our fuel oil tank was reading much lower than I would have liked, especially once we cranked the thermostat up just to keep up. The very walls were radiating cold, after all.
Unlike last year, neighboring towns were recording roughly the same temps rather than ten or more colder. The ocean around our island wasn’t providing any relief.
Worse yet, a man could go mad under the unending roar of the wind, especially when the condition of the roofing is in question. Men definitely did out on the prairie and likely Scandinavia, but here? You see asphalt roofing tiles all over town when you walk (not yet today) and wonder about how many have come from your house. And we’re grateful the gusts didn’t go over 25 or so, rather than the 50 we were bracing for.
The sea smoke this morning was incredible, but you’ll have to take my word for it.
No way was I going out to photograph it.
Not to be left in the dark
Is it just me but are power outages becoming more common, more widespread, more severe?
That would fit the forecast of climatic instability, otherwise known as global warming, which is no longer undeniable.
Remember the scoffers who first decried the prophets as ridiculous, denied the causes, spent millions to ensure their profits, and ultimately said there’s nothing we can do about it, contrary to what those insightful prophets had warned?
I’m looking for a better option than paying for a propane-powered generator that further lines the pockets of a source of the problem. Got it?
Those guys should be paying us.
End of this jeremiad, for now.
I finally got a shot of a pileated woodpecker
At the Pembroke public library.
Scalloping in the dead of winter
This time of year, I hear the puttering motors in the chill air before the sun’s even up as the fishing boats head out to drag the depths for scallops. No matter how low the thermometer reading or how bad the weather, the vessels venture by, or attempt to, intent on catching their daily limit of ten or 15 gallons a day in a season that runs no more than 50 or 70 days but may close earlier, depending on the sustainable harvest in each of the regulated zones.
A day not out on the water of the bays around Eastport is a day’s income that’s lost for the season. The economics of fishing are precarious enough.
These intrepid fishermen shuck their catch onboard, tossing the shells overboard, which provides grounding for the breeding of more, and then return to port with their precious harvest, often well before noon.
The licenses are coveted and even the size of crews is limited by state law.
Come summer, many of the boats, with their rigging reconfigured, and their crews will have turned their attention to lobster.
Other important harvests here are urchins and clams.
What workers impress you the most when they’re out in bad weather?
