Damariscotta Lake: Nature Observations

Having just spent the first week of June near Damariscotta Lake, Maine, here are a few nature observations and photographs:

Male (note large antennae)
Click on any photo to enlarge.

Luna moths: seen either evenings, fluttering or perched near exterior
lights, or days, immobile until night. The rarity of sightings, pale green color and serene flight of these large moths trigger inquires into symbolic meaning and also inspire poetry. This topic has been written about at length in a May 2013 posting of this blog. Briefly, the moths emerge in late May or early June to a 5-10 day lifespan as winged moths. Males seek females by following the trace of pheromones she has released into the night air. He finds her, they mate, she lays 100-300 eggs over a few nights. There is no male display competition. The first male to get to a female is the winner.

Horse chestnut flowers

Horse chestnuts are of the genus Aesculus, not to be confused with edible chestnuts, which are genus Castenea. Within Aesculus, several species are native to North America, while others were introduced; the one we know as horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) is from eastern Europe. It can exceed 100 feet in height. In May and June is is covered with large clusters of white/red/yellow flowers. These attract bees and especially bumblebees. On quiet mornings the sound of bumblebees can be clearly heard some ten to twenty yards from the tree. Everything worth knowing about bumblebees is found in the book Bumblebee Economics. A key trick to their ability to compete with honeybees is that bumblebees can shiver flight muscles in order to raise body temperature, allowing them to harvest nectar at early morning air temperatures which bees avoid.

The large brown nuts which fall from spiky pods in the fall are informally known as conkers, and if from an American species common in the mid-west, buckeyes. Unlike American Chestnut, the wood from Horse Chestnut has poor decay resistance. It is also of low density compared to hardwoods, and thus not desirable for building nor as firewood. 

Pink Lady's Slipper - flower height
about two inches, atop a stem 6-12".

The Pink Lady's Slipper (or Lady Slipper)  is indigenous to eastern U.S. and Canada. This is the most common of several species found in Maine. This member of the orchid family is not easy to grow as a potted plant, nor away from it's natural habitat, as it requires partial shade plus the very acidic soil one finds in pine/spruce/hemlock forests. Better to admire it in situ. This is New Hampshire's official state wildflower. 

WEATHER: Not easily portrayed by a photo, but weather trends are affecting southeastern Maine which also impact the Damariscotta area. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has weather data for Portland, Maine dating back to 1870. Over this period annual precipitation has increased by 18% (from 40 to 47 inches) while average temperature has warmed two degrees and snowfall decreased by 13% (from 75 to 65 inches).

Fish ladder at south end of lake

As so much of nature's seasonal timing is temperature driven, there are noticeable shifts. Alewives (an ocean-living, fresh-water spawning fish) move into rivers to spawn when the water temperature exceeds 51 degrees Fahrenheit. The photo shows the top end of the fish ladder at Damariscotta Lake. This is the latest in a string of constructions intended to allow alewives to detour around the mill dams. After breeding, the alewives return to the ocean. A check against old records would probably confirm that alewives now return to the lake weeks earlier than in the past. 

Like salmon, the alewife can become a landlocked (100% freshwater) species. Wherever this happens, the freshwater fish breeds to a smaller size - closer to six inches compared to the ocean visitors' 10-12 inch length. These lake-bound fish can succumb to massive die-offs whenever the water warms too much. Lake Michigan's beaches have been the scene of hundreds of tons of rotting fish washing up onto the sand. 

Buckeye Bell Foundry 1910

KieveWavus is a non-profit corporation that runs a boys' camp and a girls' camp on Damariscotta Lake. Kieve has been in operation since 1926. Traditionally, a bell is sounded to mark mealtimes and other camp schedules. In 2010 Kieve purchased and installed a larger bell next to the dining hall. The design is plain - no adornment except for "BUCKEYE BELL FOUNDRY 1910" along the crown. Dates can signify the origin of the company or the manufacture of the item in question; in this case the latter. Buckeye Bell Foundry was started in Cincinnati in 1837, going through several owners before Ezra W. Vanduzen and his heirs ran it from 1865 until closed circa 1950. [Church bell manufacture in the U.S. ceased in 1939 because metal was needed for the war effort. It is not clear if Buckeye produced bells after the war.] Thousands of Buckeye bells can be found in churches and other installations the world over. This one is 30 inches across at the base, weighs approximately 550 pounds (the mount and mechanism weighing another 500-600 pounds), and the bell sounds a "C." 

LOBSTER: Obviously, no lobsters are harvested from Damariscotta Lake, but anyone who visits Maine without dining on lobster at least once is a fool. (Or a vegetarian. Or keeping kosher. There are ongoing debates whether lobster is halal or haram.) Maine's catch per year has been topping 100 million pounds the past few years, with an expectation that 2014 will be similar. Thirty years ago the catch was consistently under 40 million. So far, "off-the-boat" prices are a bit higher than the lows of 2012 and 2013. There is a sense that the increased yield is a consequence of warmer water, far fewer lobster-eating fish, plus a tightly regulated harvest practice that returns egg-bearing females, too small, and too large lobsters to the ocean. These practices promote reproduction.

STONE WALLS: Much of southern Maine and neighboring states are woodlands threaded by stone walls. It helps to know that during the Colonial era stone was the last choice of materials for fencing fields. Farming through the 1600’s consisted of laborious clearing of small fields for vegetables, corn and livestock feed. These plots were bordered by cut brush and branches. The fields were stump-filled and worked by hand. As the brush fences rotted they were replaced by fences made of logs laid horizontally so the ends would overlap as the fence zig-zagged along the edge of a field. The goal, always, was to keep livestock out of the fields.

Bedrock, or 'ledge' in New England parlance, showing evidence of
being scraped by loose stones being dragged along at the
underside of a glacier. Grooves align north to south.

Later still the stumps of trees cut to clear the fields were rotten enough to pull out of the soil and were laid along the edge of a field. As stones emerged through the eroding soil they were added to the fences. Stump fences were functional but not handsome; hence the old-time insult “Ugly as a stump fence.”  When the stumps rotted away, post and rail fences were built over the growing rows of stones.

By the end of the Revolutionary War much of New England was almost denuded of trees. What wood was left was needed for building materials, cooking, and heating buildings. Stone fencing tall and strong enough to contain cattle took a day’s work from two men equipped with an oxcart to gather stone and build 10-20 feet of a fence. Most of what we see crisscrossing New England was a hybrid of wooden post and rail over stone, laid down between 1775 and 1850. Barbed wire, the easier solution, was not perfected until 1874. The stony soil of New England is the result of being worked over by several ice ages.

Post-Colonial northern Maine still had significant treelands, but southern Maine became sheep country. By 1870, Maine had more sheep than people (as did New Hampshire and Vermont). Sheep pasture was also typically post and rail over stone, sometimes augmented by barbed wire.


         

Sid's Airport, Maynard, MA

July 2017 update: the house at 165 Summer Street was sold August 2016. After 68 years, this appears to be the end of Sid's Airport.  

Start with a Google search on Maynard MA. Select the Maps option. Zoom in a couple of clicks. Drag the map so that it is centered on the west side of town, just north of Summer Street. You will see a designation: "Sids Airport." A switch to satellite view will confirm a grassy airstrip. At this point, say to yourself "Really?!?" Next time you are driving west on Summer Street, remember to glance to the right two houses after passing Durant Avenue on the right. Voila! Sid's Airport.  

Sidney H. Mason created his backyard airstrip in 1948 (the same year Orville Wright died). Sid was 28 at the time and an Army veteran. He and three friends bought a used Luscombe 1946 8A in 1947 for $1000. Sid bought out his partners soon after. The plane was a two-seater with an all aluminum body and wings, powered by a 65 horsepower engine. The airstrip was carved out of what had been an extensive Mason family farm that dated back to at least 1875. In fact, back in the farm days, the family had two runways, and many of the pilots in Maynard and nearby towns kept their planes there.     

Sid and his wife Susan with his 1946 Luscombe (courtesy of Jack Mason )

Sid was still flying in the left hand (pilot's) seat as late as 1997, age 79. A few years before he gave up flying he had switched over to a 1955 Cessna that needed a bit more runway than his private airstrip provided, so he started using Stow's Minute Man Air Field. In the meantime, Sid's son - Jack Mason - had taken up his father's hobby while still in his teens, earned his pilot's license, and was flying a Vector Ultralight in and out of the backyard. This meant that their landing strip continued to be an active, FAA-numbered airstrip (MA52). Sid also soloed the ultralight now and then.

By the way, the official U.S. definition of an ultralight is a one-seater that weighs less than 254 pounds empty, carries no more than five gallons of fuel, and has a top speed of 63 mph. The limits are crucial, because going over any one of them redefines the object in question as an aircraft requiring registration, and the user, a pilot's license. Under those limits and it is defined as a vehicle that just happens to be airborne, requiring no registration or license.

Run the timeline forward to 2012 and Jack Mason had just became the proud owner of a 1946 Luscombe 8E (a model with a bit more horsepower than his Dad's old plane). He won the plane in a lottery. By choosing a propeller that maximizes take off and climbing power, he has a vintage but modernized plane that can be flown in and out of the landing strip behind his house. Thus, while the plane lives at Stow's airport, Jack can start a voyage from there, stop home for lunch, then head out again. Or just step out the back door and into an ultralight.

Sid Mason passed on to the big airport in the sky in 2005. His life-long love affair with the air is memorialized by his tombstone, as it portrays his Luscombe in flight, with the plane's registration number N72025 on the side.

One interesting perspective on the history of flight was that early aviators thought it would put an end to war. In Orville Wright's own words, from a 1917 letter: “When my brother and I built and flew the first man-carrying flying machine, we thought we were introducing into the world an invention which would make further wars practically impossible...We thought governments would realize the impossibility of winning by surprise attacks, and that no country would enter into war with another of equal size when it knew that it would have to win by simply wearing out the enemy.”

Orville had a rueful but still optimistic opinion after that war ended: “The aeroplane has made war so terrible that I do not believe any country will again care to start a war.” However, by 1946, having lived long enough to witness a second world war, the invention of jet airplanes, and the dropping of atomic bombs, he was resigned to his invention being just one more tool of war.   

Luna Moths Inspire Poetry

Male Luna moth in morning sun. Note feathery antennae 

A different version of this article, with more photos, was posted on this blog May 2013. Still there.

Luna moths sightings are rare. The moths themselves are not so much rare as secluded, secretive and short-lived, for these are deep-woods dwelling, night-flying, short-lived moths. In New England, adults emerge from pupa in mid-May to early June. The adults rest all day. The adults do not feed, hence are never seen flitting from flower to flower, and live for only about a week - their sole purpose (besides beauty) being to mate before dying.

In northern states the cycle from egg hatching to egg laying takes a year, with only the last week spent as a winged adult. In central and southern states there may be two or even three generations during the warm months, with only first cycle of adults having overwintered as pupae.

The males use their intricately branched antennae to detect scent pheromones released by females. The detection system is so sensitive that a male in flight can detect the presence of just a few molecules in the air. He will then immediately turn and fly upwind into the mild night wind, traveling miles on her gradually intensifying scent steam until he finds her perched on a tree.

Each male and female mate once (a process that takes several hours). The female deposits several hundred fertilized eggs over the next 2-3 nights. Caterpillars hatch several weeks later, eat and grow until fall, over-winter as a pupa, then burst forth as adults in early summer.

Tiger Swallowtail butterfly feeding at flower

Luna moths have "eyespots" on both pairs of wings. Some related species have eyespots only on the underwings. There is a theory that moving the top pair of wings apart to suddenly reveal what looks like large eyes on the underwings might briefly scare away an attacking bird or other predator, allowing the moth time to escape.

Henry David Thoreau jotted a few notes in his journal, June 1859: "I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep, they appear to sleep during the day, as large as the smaller birds. Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches long...with a remarkably narrow lunar cut tail of a sea green color with four conspicuous spots whitish within then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown orange and black above toward head. A very robust body covered with a kind of downy plumage an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick. The sight affected me as tropical and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July."

Similar moths, i.e., night fliers with green coloring, wing eyespots and tailed underwings, live elsewhere in the world. A search on "moon moth" will yield information and pictures on many related species in Asia, Africa, plus one in Spain that as a caterpillar eats pine needles.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds have wingspan and body
weight similar to Luna moths. Painting by Bruce Davidson.

In many cultures, butterflies and moths are thought to represent human souls. From Bulfinch's Mythology "The Greek name for a butterfly is Psyche, and the same word means the soul. There is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb [pupa] in which it has lain, after a dull, groveling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which is purified by sufferings and misfortunes, and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness."

Psyche's story is of a young woman who became the lover of Eros (Cupid), who was with her only during the darkness of night. For the forbidden folly of viewing his sleeping body by lamplight, she was tasked by the Goddess Aphrodite (Eros' mother) with four near-impossible challenges. Upon completing these, she was given the drink of immortality by Zeus, and rejoined Eros. In art, Psyche is often portrayed with butterfly wings while Eros is shown with feathered wings.

POETRY AND OTHER HOMAGE TO LUNA MOTHS

Luna moths show up in poems. For reason of copyright, none are reproduced here, but an internet search on Luna moth poetry will turn up at least a dozen - easily enough for a chapbook. Authors, in no particular order: Carl Phillips, Sean Nevin, Robert Crawford, Cicely Parks, Jeff Friedman, Don McKay, David Mark, Jo Pitkin, Aerlynne, Amanda, Christine Kelley, Steve Luxton, Jerry Judge, Kay Goldstein, Sharon Rose Miller, Daniel Tobin, September...

An internet search on 'luna moth tattoo' will yield many interesting images.

A Cleaner River - the Assabet Transformed

Moss in early Spring, wetlands near Assabet River

In its natural state the Assabet was a glorious little river, but historically it took awhile to settle on a name. Old maps show Assabeth, Asabet, Elizbeth, Elizabet…all thought to be Anglicized versions of an Algonquin Indian name. One of the alternative names is preserved in Elizabeth Brook, a tributary that flows southwards through Stow before merging into the Assabet River.


Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turn aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth.”

Given its modest length and modest volume, the Assabet was an extremely 'worked' river, meaning that little remains of its original natural state. From the headwaters, where a dam insures less flow in times of flood and more flow in times of drought, to the conflux 31 miles and 220 feet lower in elevation where it merges with the Sudbury River to become the Concord River, the Assabet had powered eight mills, has its high water rampages hobbled by flood control dams, suffered channeling between restraining walls through the centers of Hudson and Maynard, lost water to our various usages, and gained water back from our numerous waste streams.

From Thoreau's journal entry in 1859: "So completely emasculated and demoralized is our river that it is even made to observe the Christian Sabbath... for then the river runs lowest owing to the factory and mill gates being shut. Not only the operatives make the Sunday a day of rest but the river too, to some extent, so that the very fishes feel the influence...of man's religion." His point here is that natural flow was stopped Sundays so as to back up as much water as possible before work started again Monday morning.

The Assabet was also an extremely polluted river. As Ann Zwinger wrote in A Conscious Stillness (1982) "...the reach above the Powder Mill Dam is closed by joint action of the Maynard and Acton boards of health...the river smell is nauseating, reeking like an unpumped-out campground outhouse times ten."

By then, the issue was no longer industrial pollution left over from the mills that had dotted the Assabet River and its tributaries. Rather, the smells emanated from rotting of bacteria, algae and water plants such as duckweed - the consequence of eutrophic growth promoted by the excesses of phosphorus and nitrogen entering the water from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Five of these return cleaned water to the Assabet. Their combined volume is so great that in the low flow months of summer much of the river water is processed water. Surface water run-off of fertilizer from farms, golf courses and lawns also contributes unwanted nutrients, as does untreated stormwater from roads and parking lots.

Assabet River channeled through the center of Maynard, 2010 flood.

Until quite recently the limits on phosphorus content of processed water were not stringent enough to lower the rampant warm weather plant growth. But starting in 2009 and completed in 2014, all of the WWTPs on the Assabet River now meet higher standards.

Furthermore, effective January 1, 2014, lawn fertilizer purchased or used in Massachusetts may no longer contain phosphorus. Mid-summer phosphorus content in the river has decreased from 0.4-0.8 milligrams per liter to about 0.1 mg/L. A target for a healthy river is to get below 0.025 mg/L. Large amounts of sediment trapped behind dams harbors reserves of phosphorus and nitrogen, thus slowing the trend to a healthier river, but over time the water quality will continue to improve.    

All this focus on plant growth is not to say that local rivers had never suffered from industrial insult. Back in the day, wool arrived in Maynard unwashed. Cleaning it at the factory meant all the lanolin, dirt, urine and feces matted into the fleece ended up in the river, along with the chemical dyes and whatever. Children frolicked in the river behind the Main Street School (where Town Hall is now), but not downstream of the mill.  

Spring 2014: Kayaker on Assabet between
Main Street and the footbridge

One saving grace - the Assabet did not suffer the extensive mercury dumping that still haunts the Sudbury River. From 1917 to 1978 the Nyanza Color & Chemical Company operated a textile dye manufacturing factory in Ashland. Wastewater entered the Sudbury River via a tributary named Chemical Brook (how apt). The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 45 to 57 metric tons of mercury were released to the Sudbury River. Other contaminants included chromium, arsenic, lead, and carcinogenic chemicals. The current advisory: "The general public should not consume any fish from this water body."

OARS clean up, Maynard, 2012
Click on any photo to enlarge

Solid waste trash also contributed to the Assabet's lack of ambiance. In Maynard alone, decades of annual river clean-ups organized by the Organization for the Assabet, Sudbury and Concord Rivers (OARS) have removed more than 1,000 car and truck tires, tons of metal scrap and hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of broken glass. Intact glass bottles from 50-60 years ago have come out of the river. Ditto televisions, bicycles, shopping carts, beer cans... Cleaning up the river appears contagious, in that each year less new trash goes into the river. 

Coda: Fishing boating, canoeing or kayaking on the Assabet River all popular pastimes. Site  [http://www.oars3rivers.org/river/recreation] has maps and guides to boat access points. The fishing information includes where on the rivers it is safe or unsafe to eat fish. In addition to the marked boating areas, local kayakers know that at just the right water levels it is possible to enjoy Class I-II rapids through the center of Maynard by putting in below the Ben Smith Dam. If water too low, cannot get past the shallows. If water too high there is not enough clearance under the sewage pipes that run under some of the bridges.

Mill Street Bridge, Assabet River in flood, Spring 2010
Water depth was 7.1 feet at the gauge when this photo was taken.

Skunk Cabbage

Spathe framed by unfurling leaves. Click on photo to enlarge.

Two signs of spring occur in April: the still-furled skunk cabbage leaves are roughly hand-tall, and young men start to drive their convertibles with the top down. Both of these spring-signifiers are pushing the season. Compared to skunk cabbages, all other woodland plants are just beginning to show leaf buds. And women will not yet be driving convertibles. Let’s focus today on the botanical story and leave the human mystery to the social psychologists.

The Latinate nomenclature for skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, makes clear this plant is fetid, i.e., stinks. Tearing or crushing leaves will release a sulfurous smell akin to whiff of skunk, combined with notes of rotten eggs, garlic, and rotting flesh.

Skunk cabbage prefers boggy woodlands. In mid-summer these regions will be dry and in deep shade, but at the front end of spring they are wet from snow-melt and sun-lit. During April the leaves are unfurling, growing, and will in time form plants that will be 2 to 4 feet across. Each stalk ends in one leaf. At full growth the leaves superficially resemble the open leaves surrounding a head of cabbage – hence the name. By mid-July, when the trees are in full-leaf, skunk cabbage leaves are already beginning to decay. By mid-August all that is left are root clusters deep under the soil’s surface, waiting for next year.

The unfurling of green leaves is actually a skunk cabbage’s second act. Weeks earlier, a specialized leaf called a spathe emerged from the ground. Spathes are not green. Instead, their colors are positively Lovecraftian: eggplant-like purples, wine-dark maroons, streaked or mottled with yellowish green. Size-wise, spathes are 3 to 6 inches tall. Shape-wise, think of a somewhat stretched Hershey’s Kiss, two to three inches across at the base, with the top twisted and/or tipped to one side. Inside the spathe, and accessible to the outside by only a narrow opening, a stalk forms with a flower head atop, called a spadix. Carrion-feeding flies enticed by the rotting smell enter the spathe-space, pick up pollen in the process of exploring the spadix, then depart to visit other spathes, completing the fertilization process.

Skunk cabbage melted a hole in the snow

Skunk cabbages have one trick shared with just a few other plant species – heat generation. The air space inside the spathe will be 15 to 30 degrees higher than the outside temperatures. Heat protects the flower from freezing at night. Furthermore, the combination of warmth and odor attracts the flies that will be fooled into the task of fertilization.

Patches of skunk cabbage are easily viewed from the Assabet River Walk trail. This marked trail starts from Concord Street, one-third of a mile east of Route 27, on the right. There is a sign. Cars can be parked across Concord, on Hird Street. The trail descends 60 feet over a half-mile length, to the bank of the Assabet River, and would be considered mildly difficult for an experienced mountain biker. The skunk cabbage patches are about a quarter mile in, to the right (downhill) side of the trail. Closer to the center of town, skunk cabbage inhabits the wet area at the back of Carbone Park, across Concord Street from ArtSpace/Acme Theatre.

This column was first published in the Beacon-Villager in April 2010. A recent hike in the woods confirmed that skunk cabbage spathes are again rising up (leaves to follow), so time to go a-walking.