http://www.eregulations.com/maine/hunting

The daily (except Sunday) banging of firearms coming from the woods, is over for another year.  True, Acadia National Park is always closed to hunting. In fact, some park roads are closed in firearms season to discourage poaching. For the rest of us, we can now venture outside without wearing orange. This hunting season in Maine, during which deer, bear, and moose  can be shot, ended Saturday, November 26. Duck season is still on though. Sea ducks can be hunted with guns until January 31, 2012 and regular ducks until December 24.  Sea duck hunting goes on right off our shore, and it’s a little nerve-wracking. Admittedly, the boats are about a mile away, due north of Mount Desert Island, but the sound carries well over the water. The urge to duck (pardon the pun) is hard to resist. I have to remind myself that steel bird shot (lead is prohibited) will probably travel no further than 800 feet, about 1/7 of a mile. Bad for the duck but harmless to us.

http://www.eregulations.com/maine/hunting

So how does Maine do, safety wise, in hosting the primal hunting ritual? Actually not bad. This year was worse than the past few, with one fatality and two gunshot injuries but compared to 1970, when there were 52 incidents in the Pine Tree State we’re looking pretty good. Consider we’ve lost 4 hunters from fatal gunshots from 2000-2010 while Pennsylvania has lost 29 and Arkansas 36. That’s actual numbers, but in per-hunter statistics we don’t do bad either, averaging 42 incidents per 100,000 hunters in the ten year period. That’s 4.2 per year. Compare that to New Hampshire’s 5.6 per 100,000 per year and Vermont’s 5.5.

How did we achieve this goal? Two laws. One is the mandatory wearing of a very specific color of orange on the body and head. Still, according to a post on thefirearmsforum.com:

Blaze orange will not protect you from being shot by a color-blind hunter, and there are a lot of us out there….The thing that others need to be aware of is that Blaze Orange is the same color as Grass Green to me – make all the arguments you want to on the basis of wavelengths and stuff, it’s perception that counts. And more specifically, it’s the perception of the color-blind guy with a .30-06 three hundred yards away that counts.

And the other law requires a mandatory hunter’s training course. The training course law had an immediate effect on fatalities when it went into effect in 1986. Another law, called the positive identification law, requires hunters to ID their targets before pulling the trigger. Sounds like a no-brainer, but I guess some people need to think about it.

The first full winter I spent in Maine there was a terrible fatality. A young mother of year-old twins stepped outside her house wearing white mittens. She was shot dead in her backyard. Some people actually criticized her for her choice of handwear, I was appalled. The hunter was initially charged with manslaughter but not indicted. He was a scout leader and well loved in the community. The surviving husband and twin girls moved away shortly after the grand jury decision. Fortunately, this was the worst incident of its kind as far as I know in recent memory, and I think of it every year around this time.

As the reader can probably infer, I’m not big on hunting. But hunting season does bring cash into Maine at a time of year when not many folks want to be here, and the vast majority of hunters are careful and respectful of private property, and human life.  Now deer season’s over and I can walk through the woods without fear, which I will do as soon as I’m finished typing this. I think I’ll still wear orange.

The morel, from wikipedia

This fall like most we attended the Common Ground Fair in Unity. While there, we listened to a talk by Greg Marley, our local (Rockland, ME) mycologist (mushroom expert), mycophile (mushroom lover) and mycophagist (mushroom eater). His talk was meant to put an end to mycophobia.

Marley sees the world as divided into the mycophobic (like here and England) and the mycophillic (just about everywhere else). He tells us our society has an irrational fear of fungus, but then points out how mushroom poisonings in the mycophillic world number into the hundreds per year. The one thing to remember, he says, is to focus on edible and medicinal species which are not at all similar to poisonous ones. This means avoiding LBMs (little brown mushrooms) which are notoriously difficult to key out. Also, keeping a checklist of the traits of the most toxic

The death cap from wikipedia

‘shrooms is a good practice. The most toxic genus (the last stop before individual species) is by far, Amanita. One typical cap of Amanita phalloides, the death cap, can kill 5 people and will do so slowly over a week or so. Saving the life of the victim often involves a liver transplant. Amanitas have a white spore print, white gills which are free from the stem, a ring around the stem (an annulus) and a swollen base (a volva), as if it came out of an egg. The death cap is rare in Maine but other Amanitas, including equally toxic ones, are plentiful.

Now, are we ready for the edibles? Feeling uncertain? Good! Identifying edible fungus is best first done with an old hand. Someone who not only knows how to identify them, but where they are likely to grow. When I was a kid that guy was Smitty, a retired mail carrier and big band musician who lived

Shaggy Mane, from Sisyphus. A little past its prime.

across the street. Every May he and his wife Louise would take me into the woods and we would look for morels. This was northern Michigan, where morel hunting is a favorite pastime. The big benefit of morels, besides their flavor, is the fact that they look like sponges on a stalk and so can’t be mistaken for anything poisonous (actually, there’s one, but it’s easy to tell apart and it’s not as deadly as a death cap).

When I moved to Maine I had to leave morels behind. They do grow here occasionally, but you can’t gather enough for a meal, just the odd one. So after years of feeling sorry for myself I ended up listening to Greg Marley and realizing all I had to do was to substitute local edible mushrooms for the ones I miss. Greg presented the “fool-proof four” mushrooms for Maine. They are the morel, puffball, hen-of-the-woods, and shaggy mane. But he said these four are from

Hen of the woods, from AMG

another mycologist and the morels here are scarce. He also pointed out that the puffballs, while an easy target, are not the most choice. He advocated three more which may be more appropriate for Maine, the chanterelle, the sulphur shelf and the king bolete. I am looking forward to finding all these gems. I already came across a nice stand of shaggy manes, and I had a great meal.

There’s much more to getting started in wild mushrooming that looking at a few pictures and

Sulphur shelf, from wikipedia

warming up the frying pan. An intermediate step is to start an excel spreadsheet of all the specimens you find. Each row corresponds to the found fungus with columns for date, location (GPS is good!), habitat, link to photo, spore color, best guess (genus, species, common name) and notes. This will get you practice in identification, a feel for the features of different families and genera, and will give you a chance for a return visit next year. You need an up-to-date field guide. Mine is old and fails to reflect all the name changes that have occurred in the last 30

Chanterelles, from wikipedia

years.

Mycology is very much an evolving field, with genetic data starting to turn the old classification system on its head. Two  on-line resources to use are mushroomexpert.com and Europe’s Roger’s Mushrooms. Don’t do a google search for a picture of a certain species without realizing you will get pictures of misidentified mushrooms–stick with the above sources or a good field guide. Stay in touch with other mushroom hunters like Ari Rockland-Miller and his blog themushroomforager.com to see what’s popping up in the area.

Greg Marley’s book, Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love, Lore, and Mystique of Mushrooms is available in the usual places and is a great tour through the fungal world (did you know flying squirrels eat truffles?). Greg wrote in my copy, “Hope this gets you out into the mushrooms!” It did!

Latona was a goddess of Roman origin. Daughter of Caeus the Titan and Phoebe, or, according to Homer, of Saturn, and mother of Apollo and Diana. For our town, I assume one particular legend of Latona’s applies. She was banished to earth and earth people were forbidden from giving her comfort by the jealous goddess Juno. Latona and her two children asked the farmers around a lake if she and her children could drink from it. The farmers, fearing the wrath of Juno, denied her. After repeated entreaties she finally decided she had had enough, and turned them into frogs. Lamoine people, by naming our spring after the spurned goddess, are certain to provide her water, and therefore need not fear being changed into frogs.

Latona Spring is downhill from Blunt’s Pond, once used for a public water supply, and kept relatively pristine by laws against bathing, motorboats and swimming dogs. This water is filtered through the aquifer and emerges at Latona Spring, where it is captured in a brick enclosure. From here water emerges through a pipe where visitors or Roman goddesses can drink or capture as much as they wish.

Many locals use the water for drinking if their own well water is less than tasty. We have recently used it as we “break in” our new well. We know that the bottled water from the supermarket is no better than that from our Roman goddess. The spring has recently undergone renovations by the owners, Lamoine’s Whitcomb family. The roof has been temporarily moved and is in need of shingles. Plumbing has been replaced and the outlet pipe has been artfully enclosed in granite stonework. New gravel now improves parking.

Stone steps lead to easy access of cool, pure water

The entrance to Latona Spring is just opposite the sign for Latona Lane on State Route 184, Lamoine Beach Road, about 2 miles east of the school. If you visit, please remember this is private property shared with the public, and may not remain so if abused.

Photo courtesy of http://www.gardenpreserve.org

Paired up with Asticou Gardens, Thuya Gardens offers a beautiful formal English  garden set in a native Maine woodland. Asticou tends to the Japanese, so visiting both in close proximity is quite a world tour.

“Thuya” is a derivation of Thuja, which is the genus of the northern white cedar, Thuja occidentalis. While botanists know to pronounce the j like a y, I’m guessing garden founder and Boston landscape architect Joseph Henry Curtis (1841-1928) chose a name meant to avoid mispronunciation. His major contribution was Thuya Lodge, his home on the hillside, where visitors can find a broad selection of botanical and horticultural books. After his death the gardens were developed by Charles K. Savage in 1958, replacing the original orchard with a broad spectrum of colorful annuals and perennials arranged as borders to an expansive lawn. The lawn leads to a formal pavilion on the north side and a reflecting pool on the south end.  Mr. Savage designed the gardens in the style of English designer and author Gertrude Jekyll, as interpreted for the coast of Maine by island gardener Beatrix Farrand.

Photo courtesy of http://www.gardenpreserve.org

Visitors have a choice of how to get to the lodge and gardens. They can park at the lot on Rt 3 and walk up the steep steps on the hillside, complete with rest stops and covered shelters, or simply drive to the top on Thuya Drive.  We chose the former. Both Thuya and Asticou Gardens are accessible using the Island Explorer bus, and while both gardens ask for donations, there is no admission charge per se.

from Google maps

There is still time and lots of color in our fall season for both gardens, but Thuya Lodge is now closed (open mid June to mid September from 10-4:30). The gardens remain open until Halloween, during daylight hours. Both gardens are owned and operated by the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve, a non profit, which would put your tax deductible contribution to good use.

A website called mentorseries.com pairs up professional photographers with paying guests for treks to different parts of the world, and in September they are coming  here.  Leading this trek will be Daniel J. Cox, a veteran nature photographer and frequent contributor to National Geographic, National Wildlife and Wildlife Conservation; and Layne Kennedy, whose work has appeared in over a hundred different magazines world-wide on subjects as diverse as wolves in the Northern Hemisphere to boat builders in the Caribbean.

Even amateurs can find photographic opportunities here

Naturally, I can’t paste cool professional photos here, just one of mine, but I can link to the mentorseries website where you can read about signing up for the two day trek.  Also check out their slideshow of  Acadia photos here. Need a place to stay for your Fall photo trek? Our bookings for Fall are still as wide open as a Cadillac Mountain vista.

Crossing the bridge into Maine

I came back from a working trip to northern Michigan to find that during my absence four tall spruce trees were threatening SeaCat’s Rest.  Apparently there had been a big storm. One had fallen on our deck, one hung at a sickening angle over our driveway, one had fallen on our power lines (this is #5 or #6 since we built the house) and a big one fell over onto some fire cherry trees and was barely suspended above our roof, 30 feet off the ground. Most of the spruce forest we started with is gone, mostly due to the affects of age. The center wood starts to rot and carpenter ants often invade. The next big blow and they’re down…or leaning. We’ve had trees fall on two boats, a wheelbarrow, the house, outbuildings, fences and the compost bin.

Another spruce gone

This time the biggest challenge was to figure out how to deal with the big tree leaning over the roof, held in place by the young cherry trees. Normally I cut sections out of a leaning tree so that it gradually falls into a vertical position, then tip it in the direction I want it to fall. But this time the tree was so tangled up with the cherry trees that removing a few sections only produced a shortened spruce, still leaning toward the house.

I plucked up my courage and climbed to the top of the roof with my fishing pole. The casting rod was fitted with a heavy nut and I cast that puppy halfway to the neighbors property. After finding the nut (not easy) I removed it and tied on the end of a braided cord, substantially stronger than the monofilament fishing line.

and another

Back onto the roof where I pulled the cord up as I reeled in the fishing line. Now I tied off the cord on the roof and headed back down where I tied a 3/8 inch three strand nylon line to the cord. Back up again and now I tied the nylon rope to the top of the leaning tree.  I was trusting the friction between my shoes and the asphalt shingles to keep me from plunging into oblivion as I was standing a few feet from the edge. Now it was a simple matter to tie the rope to my borrowed truck and yank the tree back the other way, away from the house. With little effort the tree was down and the boring task of chopping up the tree was all that remained.

The big winds happen in Spring and late Fall, so summer visitors don’t have to worry about falling trees. But life on the Atlantic shore can be a challenge sometimes, just like everywhere else I suppose…

A nice, fresh blanket of snow. It’s enough to make you….tear your hair out! Enough already! It’s April!

April 2, 2011. No April fooling

Lou McNally, now living in Florida!

I have often said that the coast of Maine does not fit into the image of Maine as a place of arctic whiteness, but with this winter’s six months of the stuff I have to eat my words. Lou McNally, longtime Maine weatherguy and former host of MPBN TV’s Made in Maine spoke recently on the subject. He  holds a PHD in meteorology and when asked what effect global warming will have in Maine, said that we will probably have more storms and abrupt season changes. No mention of higher temperatures or less precipitation. Maine is known for having the most winter sunshine, second on the East coast only to Florida, as moist clouds get wringed out by mountains or the coast further south.  We may end up with Boston winters, lots of wet show and little sun. Another few winters like this and I’ll be a believer. Lou is now a professor of meteorology at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University…..in Florida!

Crocuses in the snow, 4/2/11

On Monday, December 6, downeast Maine awoke to a thick blanket of snow, the first this year. The snow is wet and the ground underneath is muddy, making it difficult to plow. This means at SeaCat’s Rest a significant amount of dirt will end up on the neighbor’s lawn which will have to be raked away in spring. We got along without plowing so far (Tuesday). The trick is  to charge down the road (our shared driveway is 1/4 mile long) until the drifted snow and upward slope begin to slow you down. Either you make it to the end, where the town plows have left a nice solid ridge of snow, and hope you don’t have to stop for traffic before busting through, or stop and back up to try again. Backing down the driveway in the tracks you made for 1/4 mile is not easy. Sometimes you get way off and end up stuck. The total whiteness of what you see in your rear view mirror is surreal after an autumn of browns and grays. (Technically, it is still autumn).

The snow brings another kind of change. There’s an undefinable shift in your perception of the outdoor world. It’s cleaner and dryer. The air is less penetrating and chilling. It’s brighter and prettier. When the sun emerges it’s almost too bright. You can fall down and it doesn’t hurt; your car can smash into heaps of snow without damage. It’s kind of fun. Also, there is a new found feeling of affection for your home as a warm, dry burrow. Cabin fever comes later.

The drifts mean getting plowed twice for one snowfall

Meanwhile, the ocean hasn’t heard the news. It is still doing its ocean thing. Rough, calm, tides, birds. It will have to be a very cold and calm day in mid to late January before the salty water ices over, and the cold would have to continue for days and weeks for any thickness to develop. This is rare, happening only about once every 7 years or so. So while Maine’s interior is solidly snowy, our coast can flip to rain as soon as the weather comes from the ocean. Sometimes the line between rain and snow is at our mailbox at the end of the driveway. But once the ice thickens on the water, we might as well be in Minnesota. The temps can go sub-zero in a big hurry, dashing gardener’s dreams of a mild temperate climate. It is this rapid and sudden drop which kills grapevines.

Last winter we had snow until January, and then nothing. I know this by looking at our plowing bills. It seems as soon as we’re in the snow mode, it’s over. Not the gray skies or cold rain or icy roads, just the snow. Maybe this year will be different.

The wild cranberry crop on Mount Desert Island is still awaiting harvest, except for the several pounds I collected on Sunday the 17th. What was different about this year was the high water level: you have to harvest from a boat and reach into the water. The berries can be seen under 3-8 inches of water. Sticking your hand into late October water sounds cold, but as you glide over 6″ of water in your kayak you realize that, if you’re lucky enough to have a sunny day, the shallow water heats up fast. I have to say that harvesting this way has it’s advantages. No need for rubber boots or waders, no wet knees, no balancing act getting out and in. Also, the submersion in cool water seems to preserve the crop and extend the harvest. All the berries seemed to be at the same point of ripeness. And the berries float, so if you lose your grip they pop to the surface.

This little trip is never crowded

There’s really no reason not to get out and harvest your own. There’s a huge supply; the Northeast Creek flooding is hundreds of acres and it can be accessed from Rt. 3 in 15 minutes by kayak or canoe. Just park by the bridge 2 miles east from the MDI side of the causeway to Trenton. Perhaps the water level has dropped since my outing, so you may have to end up using boots. It is a beautiful time of year but weather and wind can change quickly, so be prepared. I would have had difficulty getting back if I had soloed in my eighteen foot canoe; the headwinds were very strong. The kayak was just fine.

Turn right at the hummock in the distance

The meandering Northeast Creek has quite a few boulders just under the surface. You may find yourself suddenly high and dry. It takes five minutes of paddling to leave the roar of civilization behind. Bird life has dropped a bit with the colder weather. Still, I saw ducks, kingfishers and great blue herons as usual. After 10 to 15 minutes of paddling you will emerge into the great boggy area where trees are rare and the water spreads out. Bear right at the hummock (photo) and you will find yourself following a canal where berries can be gathered from either side. If you don’t see them, paddle a few more minutes and check again. You should see this under the water:

If the water level is the same as it was on Sunday, you can just push your kayak into the grassy vegetation and start picking. Otherwise, look for a slot to run your boat into and get out. I always set my paddle vertical so I can spot my boat from afar. Watch out for holes in the bog mat if you’re walking-I’ve gone up to my knee sometimes. Can’t make it this year? Make sure you plan for 2011. Come for Oktoberfest and cranberries starting the first Saturday in October. We can set you up with lodgings and kayaks. Share your favorite cranberry recipe in the comments below!

Now is the time of year when visitors to Acadia National Park may find the skies filled with raptors. They migrate from the north to the south in fall, and they like to stick by the shore to be close to a resting spot. Otherwise, the ocean is their preferred highway since it offers the best chance of food and effortless flight. We’ve written before about eagles, but their migration timetable is different. Still, they will be around as usual to add to the mix. Last year, between August 19 and October 14,  rangers, volunteers and visitors counted 2,831 hawks, kestrels, eagles and falcons in the 2009 Hawkwatch. This tops the 15 year average of 2,579, and is the 4th best year.

from the National Park Service

Why get involved? Besides the fun of seeing rare birds soaring overhead in a beautiful location, participation in Hawkwatch adds to important data about population levels and helps scientists understand the status of the raptor population—if the numbers of a species are increasing, decreasing, or stable in the environment. If you participate you will learn how to tell one bird of prey from another based on silhouettes.

Don’t think that the best part of the Hawkwatch is behind us, the best single day last year (2009) was September 26. Who knows what effect our warm sunny summer will have on the migration? Park rangers will be on hand every day until October 12 from 9 AM to 2 PM, So bring a pair of binoculars, some warm clothes, lunch, a field guide…I would bring a folding chair…and join in Hawkwatch 2010 on the top of Cadillac Mountain.