Between school and gardening and odds and ends like carving, my day follows the rising and setting sun.  I work until some wheres between 6 and 8 pm, to come into the house, shed the dirt or sawdust laden clothes, read for half an hour and force myself upstairs to bed.  I love it as I expend the pent up energy of winter

JAKE SWIMMING BACK FROM THE MOORING AFTER A DAY ON THE BOAT

The only sure thing in life is change, whether you like it or not it will happen.  With four distinct seasons in Maine, change is a constant. A 30-year-old Sugar Maple stands like a sentinel at the top of the stairs that descend to the house.  It’s green flowers and budding leafs are in full bloom this week, but the flowers will soon drop probably in today’s storm and will briefly form a green carpet on the ground. The leaves will remain and grow to full bloom. In only a few months, the predominate winds will shift from the south to the north bringing in air from the arctic and the changing light will trigger the leaves to turn from green to scarlet and orange. The cyclical change is timeless.

Passages of life happen all too frequently, some barely noticed or recorded and some are so gut wrenching they leave an emptiness that is felt every hour.

We had to put our old yellow lab Jake down the other day, like his sister a year and a half ago; he developed kidney failure and refused to eat or ate very little.

It was an expected thing given he was almost 13; still and all it leaves an incredible void. I am more aware of the loss in what was our daily regime.  I would wake most mornings in the pre-light and he would stir also, or at times he would want to go out before I woke up, and would communicate that by putting is head on my slumbering big belly which would solicit the normal half-wake response of “go lie down” or “a few more minutes.” At this point he would make the decisions to actually lie down, either at the foot of the bed or if he really wanted to go back to sleep next to my side, when it was a real need.  If he was next to me, I knew I didn’t have much sleep time left and would soon have a dog face next to mine letting his breath quickly waking me up.

I would get up and fumble with my clothes in the dark, go downstairs and make coffee, all the while he would wait patiently by the door.  Out we would eventually go always in the same direction off the deck, he had his favorite haunts, and I would come awake usually in the pre-dawn to the changes happening in the cove. One of my favorites was the arrival of the resident Loons.  It becomes a special day when you can awake to their unique haunting cry.

I don’t have that morning regime anymore. I find myself sleeping later and when I do stumble down the stairs, there is no dog patiently waiting for me to get the coffee going. I also don’t get out on the deck to great the pre-dawn and I miss that and him.

I liken the approach of sixty to riding the merry-go-round and with the golden ring fast approaching and all you have to do is grab it. Given that philosophy when my buddy chuck (who is soon leading a photo shoot to the Serengeti) was wondering if I was interested In driving to Alabama to visit his brother Art on Spring vacation, I said absolutely yes, even before I checked with my wife; Oh, what a gamble.

3500 miles in 7 days later we are back in Maine and attempting to recover. In terms of expectations, the trip was a huge success.  In 26 hours we traveled from early spring in Maine, where a few lawns were turning green and the red maple buds just swelling to a full 75-80 degree Maine like summer, 1500 miles away. Of course, the focus of my expectations was a new and probably just ended hobby called Herping.  This essentially meant traveling the back red dirt roads looking for sunning reptiles or heading into the swamps and forests chasing them.
Once caught, they created a great photo opportunity before being released.

Art and Julie whose house we stayed at were gracious hosts and got right into the spirit of things.  Each morning we piled into the SUV harmed with snake poles and fishing gear and headed out the more primitive the road the better. Top of the list of snakes was anything poisonous, as I had never encountered a poisonous snake.  Little did I realize that the list of poisonous critters in Alabama was large and ranged from Brown Recluse Spiders to Rattlesnakes. The area had experienced a devastating flood just three weeks earlier; it had destroyed minor bridges, damaged fields and generally played havoc with the ecosystem, plus the high day-time temperature of 75 was a bit cool for drawing the snakes to the road to sun.  This is somewhat different than Maine when teenagers consider 50 degrees as T-shirt and shorts weather.

Overall, we had success finding a couple batches of Copperheads, seeing Water Moccasins swimming in the swamps, Tortoises on dry land and pile upon pile of Fire Ants, to be avoided at all costs.

It gave me a greater appreciation for Maine, were I plop down on any patch of land, never giving thought to what could bite me or go tromping in any swamp never looking in the trees (where we captured a black racer) for some nervous snake that might drop on you or near you, or while taking a dip in some lazy river would you ever consider that log look-a -like that might be moving towards you.

Then again, I didn’t notice any large swarms of biting black flies or skeeters. Black flies versus Black Wldow Spiders, mosquito swarms versus fire ants, Nope, I would take Maine anytime, the bites may hurt but they won’t kill you.

Elvers are sent live to the far east to be raised to adult size 4-5'

Fyke nets at low tide, we empty the bag end a few hours after high tide in waist deep water

LOG

4/13/09, 35 degrees, 15 mph NW wind, coming off the water on the outgoing tide.  The average high is suppose to be in the 50’s, but the forecast says that won’t make it this week. Still feel the bite of winter, although the tulip bulbs are up and over 3”, Cut and hauled wood yesterday hauled a cord over from the woodlot, the road in is a muddy mess.  The first osprey showed up in the cove, not sure what they are eating in terms of fish.

WE’RE NOT NORMAL PEOPLE

No Sir, We’re not normal people. As soon as spring hits, as soon as some grass patch on some southern slope starts turning green we have about 6 fevers hit all at once.  Now this is somewhat reasonable after a long winter of “thinking about things” and most people just have a breakout urge to go trout fishing, or digging in the garden or pickup a baseball, normal things, but not us.

There is something in our genes, or embedded in our bones, some ancient siren calling, that makes us want to try to make money from the sea.  It first started for me around 1962 when I was 11.  Father brought home a beater Swampscott Dory, to be worked on and fixed up and that was all she wrote.  That boat and I were attached for the next 7 summers. This also meant I could now fish a few lobster traps. Since my budget was zero, I had to repair thrown out traps and go begging for bait which included scrapes of rotten left over fish pieces from the bait barrels behind Macleans Fish Market on State St.  The good bait, cod and Pollock heads and bodies were saved for the real fisherman, I got three-day-old leftovers.

That was o.k. I actually caught a lobster or two but  it was a little rough on a weak stomach or on a choppy day.  It didn’t matter because the urge to harvest from the sea was set as deep as any swallowed hook.  It pushed me to study Marine Biology at U Mass Dartmouth near New Bedford and it came to Maine with me in the mid 70’s where I tried a number of fishing adventures in between teaching school.

Probably the high or low point was elvering in the gold rush days.  Elvers are baby eels about two inches long and nearly clear.  They do a reverse migration having been born at the Sargasso Sea off Bermuda and migrate as young to the fresh waters of North America and eventually to Belfast Harbor and into the feeder ponds of the Passy River.

Elvers are caught live either in a fyke net or hand dipping, kept alive and eventually sent to the far east as stock for their eel ponds to be raised to adults when they are then harvested.  At one point a dozen years ago there was a real scarcity of eel stock in Asia so the price skyrocketed to $300 a pound (live) and Maine was one of the few states that allowed harvesting.

To survive and struggle against the currents and rapids of the streams these baby eels would only move on an in-coming tide and at night, which translated to checking your nets a few hours after the high tide in the evening or hand dipping on the incoming tide some weekend night.  All that is fine and good if you didn’t have to work the next day. Once you bring the night’s harvest to the shed, the tiny eels had to be separated from other little critters and then aerated and brought to a buyers truck usually set up on Rt 1 the coastal road. Cash was paid that same day which hopefully was enough to motivate another night’s work.

I’m a numbers person, so I even kept records of my expenses: licenses, aerators, net materials, the sewing machine we burnt out making five nets. That was tallied against the daily cash.  I finally managed to pay off the expenses at the end of the second year.  Hmmm two years of work and no wage, after the first year most people would have stopped in frustration and commonsense, most normal people.

Come to think about it, I believe I have figured out my problem, I have the ancient pull to harvest from the sea whether it is lobsters or any other life form, I just don’t have the competence to make a living at it.

I don’t know how many times I was lugging a wet net, to finally find “the spot” when I tripped and ended face down in the mud.
Then there was the time that I found “the spot” but it was someone else’s and they took some objection of placing my net there, by slashing it all to pieces.  You haven’t lived, unless you have spent some cold afternoon sitting in the mud in your waders, and sewing your net back together.

Now I look back fondly at those days, and I now have a new fish to harvest this spring. I spent until dark yesterday fixing up some traps and can’t wait for the run, only this time, I might have to set in a little deeper water, that would be deeper than my waders, so I expect to be swimming in the predawn light most mornings or at least have a wader full of water, but there is gold in them waters, and the fever is building. It’s a new year and a new fish and being of good puritan stock, I will have fun showing up back at the house, the pick-up full of fish, and me half-frozen and tired, ready to jump into a hot shower and head to school, a grand adventure already accomplished.

No Sir, we’re not normal people.

Harbor Seal resting on a flow as it drifts down river

LOG: 38 degrees, over cast, normal is 48/30, an hour to dead low tide. We had a melting rain the other day that knocked back a lot of the snow on north slopes.  Our crocus and tulip shoots over 2” tall on the south facing terraces.

“Life on the river is free and easy
Life on the river will make you smile”
So goes a song sung by Ed Trickett and it is true

Our river is the Passy which drains ponds and watersheds from over 5 small towns and at is mouth forms Belfast Harbor. The part of the river we live on is upriver from the bridges and is about 200 yards wide at high tide and at low tide exposes about 150 yards of mudflats. It is about a mile from the bridges to the narrows up river, which forms the north end of the cove and has the remains of an upper bridge. It is our backyard and influences much of our daily life.

In the days before the white settlers, this estuary supported migrating populations of Sturgeon, Atlantic salmon, Striped Bass and Herring.  These populations by the end of the 20th century were overfished but most species perhaps even sturgeon is making a slow come back.  Last summer for the first time in years we had an obvious ball (school) of herring being fished by seals right in front of the house. Most years the striped bass fishing begins in late June for a month or more and the best spot is in the narrows up river.
When I was a kid the salt water of the north shore of Massachusetts was my playground; a half century later the river water is the playground of my grandchildren.
The river and cove is a central core to our lives, whether we play in it or on it or just observed its wildlife. Its seasonal rhythms becomes a subconscious constant, as we mentally store its daily snapshots, we are always aware of how lucky we are to be a part of it.

Now, at the end of March, the ice flows are breaking off from up river and flowing past out to sea.  Some, for a few hours, get stranded on our shores, and become an imaginary glacier for the grandchildren, as they scale and slip on their version of Mt. Everest.  Much like a harbor seal the other day that was basking on a flow caught in a slack tide.
It could have cared less as I took photos and the old yellow lab barked at it. Just another visitor caught for a few moments waiting, much like the worm diggers do, for a change in tide.

The grandchildren are 6 and 8 and since the cove has been their playground all their lives, they have learned the same rules about the water as I did at their age.  In the summer to play on the river means to swim in it, fish in it and kayak on it, activities that by the time they were five they had soloed in. Granted an adult was always near by, but it is their entire backyard and they have learned the boundaries.

A standard refrain from an adults is to “go out to play” which covers a world of activities in the mudflat/river playground.  At an early age they received their mud boots, which are essentially rubber boats you wear outside or on the boat. Boots allowed them to play the obviously game of lets stomp in the mud, and go so far out that we became stuck.  Both my wife and I played similar games at their age, so after the first rescue by the grandfather who had his own mud boots, he declared the next time you are stuck you are on your own.  This usually happened with in the hour, so the pleas or help were ignored, and finally they just stepped out of their boots with their stocking feet, now covered in mud from head to toe and ready to share their dirt with the closest human.

Having been through the same experience as a child and having their mother also play the game, the grandmother was ready and armed with the hose, quickly washed the mud covered and squealing children then sent them scrambling inside to a hot shower.

The grandfather was relegated to retrieving the boots left in the mud, and giving the evil eye to the wife who was stilled armed with the hose. It was the same scene played out from generation to generation, as my mother back in the 50’s would make me disrobe on the porch and holding our cloths with a few fingers far away from her body would promptly deposited them in a tub of water.

That is one of the things I love about Maine, the traditions live on, no matter what century and life on the River always makes you smile.

South Slope Spring

The hillside that we live on faces south and slopes to the water of the cove, so the opposite bank faces north and during the in between time of seasonal changes, especially winter to spring, that makes a world of difference.

The calendar says spring, but in Maine, winter in March goes through a slow methodical retreat. The most excitement we can get and it is significant, is to start seeing bare ground again, no matter that it means mud season and then probably another month before it turns green. The south slope now is almost all bare, while the north has its layer of crusty icy snow. Snow in some spots in the woods is still knee deep. Two different sides of the same cove and in our weary of winter minds, two different attitudes

Our patio being south facing, creates hope and gives us a refreshing breath of spring but when we turn our heads to look across the cove to the north, we get that cold winter look.  This just messes with our minds, like a threatened turtle, checking to see if it is all clear, do we get our heads back in our shell, to keep hunkering down, or shall we pull out and seeing the coast is clear allow ourselves the fantasies of spring to summer?

The warmth of 40 degree days and below freezing nights makes the sap run, and a few hardy souls have their trees tapped which means they have signed up for the daily or every other day gathering and the weekend burn, when they spend 12-14 hours rendering it down from 40 gallons of watery sap to 1 gallon of syrup. An exercise of the true old ways, burning cords of wood, gathering buckets after buckets, spending hour after hour, all for a gallon of ambrosia, that will sweeten our pancakes of winter with a taste all New England. On one hand it seems inefficient and self-punishing, but it comes at the exact right time of year, and a good sign of the end of winter, where we long for any distraction.  I bet if it occurred during summer, we would gladly settle for some colored corn syrup, but in March, let’s all sign up and enlist in finding any sign of spring.

Desperate for spring, I noticed some lilacs that I had trimmed had the beginning of swollen buds.  I immediately started looking at Popple, which is a Maine nickname for quacking aspen.  Popple is our first official tree to flower and bloom with a unique lime green leaf that can be identified at long distance.  Next in line a week or so later comes the red flower of the red or rock maple. It has a short life as the spring rainstorms soon knock them to the ground.  Already my mind starts dwelling on green grass, leafed out trees and warm river water.

That is the trap we south slopers fall into.  Just one glimpse of the brown slope and the lucky critters that live on it and we are all a gee gaw thinking spring must be here. It is a trap that sucks us in every year and it would only take a quick glance the other way to the north to bring our minds back to reality.  Spring isn’t here no matter what the calendar says.  My wife is a real south sloper, who not only washed the waterfront patio but put out the wicker summer furniture.  Not I, being the good puritan, I will face the north and the winter reality, take a deep breath and not project into the coming spring. No sir, like a good plow horse, I will just keep my blinders on and only focus on the next few feet, the next few days and pretend that it isn’t snowing again, like it did yesterday.  Nope I will just go get my ice chipper, find a patch of ice, chip it all to hell and focus on that tiny bare patch and ignore the rest of the icy yard.

I love winter I say to myself, as the pick hacks through the ice, I love winter as the wind from the snow squall froze my hands and face; I love winter as I slip again on the rest of the ice patch. So once again, just before spring, my mind has entered that special place. In Maine “March madness” has a different meaning.

summer cove facing the highway bridge

The north side of the summer cove, showing old boat landing

Blog # 2 The Cove

2/28/09, 8 am, low but incoming tide, the wind shifted to the Norwest, as a cold front passed through, dropping the temps from the mid 30’s into the 20’s.  Light drizzle changed to sleet and now to snow all in a half an hour.  The mallards are quacking outside the window and the goldeneyes have ventured swimming towards the house.  Most are the Common Goldeneye, but every winter we have the Barrows Goldeneye as a visitor and I am on sharp alert, if I can only find where he grandchildren put the binoculars.

THE COVE:
Up river from the highway bridge in Belfast, as it approaches the narrows and the site of a washed out wooden bridge, is a tidal area that I call the cove. It is an estuary (an area where salt water mixes with fresh) that is a constant changing vision in our lives with the low tide that might expose long mudflats or a high tide that come right to our wall.  Living on it allows us to have a natural window into the flow of nature.

In winter, as soon as we see the wild ducks and gulls rising and whirling in the scene that resembles a frenzied vertical dash, we go on eagle watch.  Almost always within a few minutes, one of the occupants of the house glued to the water – facing windows, cries out the location and all eyes search the skies.  The small house, actually a rebuilt cottage, jets out a bit into the cove right into the pathway of some of the birds.  I imagine sometimes that in their desperation to fly past, they suddenly look up and see a house in the way, which necessitates a wild veering and gyrating around the windows.

We’ve had two mature bald eagles visiting to feed most days this winter.  With the mixing water of salt and river water and the tidal currents all moving any surface ice, we have open water for almost all winter.  This makes a feeding ground for ducks and gulls and all other temporary visitors including at the lowest of tides, a trio of worm diggers.

Across the way, a distance of a couple of hundred yards is a huge white pine, a perfect resting place for the eagles. They often soar into the cove area, sometimes right over the highway bridge and land on a branch of the big pine, often accompanied by squawking crows that constantly harass them.  The cacophony of a dozen crows, cawing in alarm is another sure sign for us, to go on the eagle watch.

This morning with an incoming tide, grey skies and brisk norwest winds the water has a cold and angry look to it, which makes me want to huddle by the woodstove even more. A lone female small bufflehead is diving around my mooring feeding off the growth attached to the underwater chain.  In the summer the mussel growth alone, although it is removed twice a year, will add tens of pounds to mooring system.

It is a Saturday morning where the necessity of going across the street to split some wood for the weekend is competing with the urge to bury myself under the covers for a morning nap.  I wonder which one will win out?

Belfast Harbor looking out to Penobscot Bay, photo by Charles Hamm

Penobscot Bay is often described by sailors as some of the best cruising grounds in the world.  The  beauty of the many islands and the coast from the perspective of a small boat is breath taking.

The Bay itself is divided into east and west sides by a series of islands with Isleboro in the north and Northaven and Vinalhaven to the south.

Belfast is one of the few river mouth harbors located in the northern part of the Western Bay.  It has a mouth nearly a mile across and as you go up harbor or into the estuary it narrows within a mile length to where the original bridge was first constructed to connect up the west side to the east. Over centuries the current highway bridge is the famous coastal Rt 1 and Rt 3 that directs traffic north.  One of the many unique aspects of Belfast is that it has saved and rebuilt the old concrete bridge, which now allows a walkway across the harbor, one of the few in the east coast.

We live just upriver of the bridges, an area I call the upper harbor, away from the bustle of most boat traffic and the calming center of our world.