September 2: Fonts of Nature

While running today along Route 105, headed south, my attention was drawn to a view of Mount Megunticook rising craggy and forested beyond a bend in the smooth as glass Megunticook River. Only a patch of lily pads marred the river's surface. The setting sun was hitting the mountain full force, causing the tree-covered mountainside to glow with all the power of summer. The river reflected the green patterns of trees on both banks. It was a moment of perfect calm and beauty: still water, still mountain. I was so entranced I veered toward the center of the road, only realizing my distraction as a car neared.

On the opposite river bank, a slender poplar or birch curved down toward the water. The trunk and the reflected trunk formed the two arms of a K, with a straight trunk immediately to the left forming the left side. My initial, written by trees and river.

For my eyes only?
Glimpse of calm river, mountain,
signed with a tree K.

July 13: Waxing Moon, Swelling Music

On Monday, I'm driving on Route 52 in that rich, late summer afternoon light, clouds billowing on the horizon, music blasting. This is my home territory, these farmhouses and fields familiar and beautiful. I slow along the shore of Megunticook Lake, Bald Mountain rising blue and hazy beyond. Several people are jumping off a dock on one of the lake's islands, and teenagers in skimpy bathing suits are poised on the roadside ledges in the same spot we used to swim from when we were that age. The road rises up the hill, a steep wall of rock to my left surmounted by verdant pines. I crest the hill, spot the faint gibbous moon in the still bright summer sky. Below me, lush farm fields and forest. I love this song. In a few days the moon will be full. I'm almost home.

Fast car, loud music.
Happy to see the pale moon
and all this bright green.

(Song: "Truly (Wise Buddha Mix)" by Delerium)

September 21: Flocks of Flickers

On this eve of the Autumnal Equinox, fall is making its arrival felt. For the first time I noticed a few patches of red amid the green carpeting the Mount Megunticook ridge. Mornings are chilly. And migrating flickers are everywhere. I think I saw or heard one every time I went out the office door. I heard them while enjoying lunch on a friend's porch in the lovely late summer sun in Rockport. I saw their white-patched rumps bobbing into the bushes here and there as I ran errands and watched one eating berries from a bush at one stop. And to top it off this flicker-full day, a friend sent me a beautiful photo he'd recently taken of a flicker:

Photo by Karl Gerstenberger: kegerstenberger.zenfolio.com

Derek Lovitch, a bird biologist based in Freeport, keeps track of migrating birds passing over Sandy Point, on Cousins Island in Yarmouth. He actually counts everything he sees each morning he's there. His previous high count of flickers on a single morning during fall migration was 105. This morning's total, during what Derek refers to as an "EPIC, Record-shattering Sandy Point Morning Flight": 1,092! Flickers made up the highest percentage of all the birds that flew over, with 334 cedar waxwings bringing up a distant second. So flickers are on the move en masse, and the falcons are right behind them... Can you feel that energy in the air?

Last day of summer.
Flocks of flickers flee the fall,
falcons on their tails.

July 18: Summer Songs

My husband and I went for a long hike today on Mount Megunticook in Camden Hills State Park. We wanted to get outside together on this beautiful day, get some exercise, and enjoy the views from on high, but we were surprised by how many birds were singing in the shady mixed forest through which winds the Ridge and Jack Williams Trails. We started off at the Maiden's Cliff trailhead, and as we began the climb up to the ridge line, heard what I thought was a scarlet tanager. Because he wasn't singing his full song, it wasn't till we had completed the entire hike and returned miles later to that same place when we confirmed that it was indeed a tanager (he finally gave his characteristic "chick burr" call) and then we were even able to find the vivid red bird gleaning bugs among the oak leaves overhead.

My favorite birdsong in these summer woods is that of the hermit thrush: angelic notes tumbling down from the trees, clear and haunting in the lush forest air. We passed several singing thrushes, to our delight, as well as another Maine forest favorite, a winter wren, whose lovely, complex song goes on and on, seemingly rising out of the trees themselves.

Although we expected to hear black-throated green warblers, which seem to sing all summer, we were surprised to hear several black-throated blue warblers and a Blackburnian warbler. When I commented on how unusual that seemed, my husband suggested that that's what I should write about for today's haiku. Ever the dutiful wife, I did so:

On the mountainside,
height of day, height of summer:
warbler still singing.

July 13: Summer Fog

This afternoon from the summit of Beech Hill you wouldn't have known there was a panoramic ocean view. Inland, you could enjoy the beauty of the Camden Hills just fine, but the bay was completely hidden behind a thick bank of fog. The southeast-facing fields rolled into woods which faded into a wall of white. I felt sorry for people from away who were missing out on what I consider one of the best bay views in the area. On the other hand, fog has a way of making a landscape more intimate by highlighting the foreground and hiding the distraction of what surrounds it. The wildflower-spangled sod roof of Beech Nut, the historic hut that crowns Beech Hill, was highly visible in all its midsummer glory, for example, as were the damp stones of its walls.

Fog mutes, distorts, and obscures the landscape in disorienting but interesting ways. Driving back to the office, I observed a small island of green rising from a sea of mist and cloud--a peak of Mount Megunticook floating within the fog. Later, in the day's last light, I was driving back from a meeting in Searsport and marveled to see the big rolls of hay wrapped in plastic looming under fog's wet shroud like guardians of the fields or strange, organic monoliths loosely arrayed throughout the mown rows. And even as I drove through patches where it appeared to be clear all around me, a blank, swirling backdrop rose in the distance where rolling green mountains should be.

Mountains disappear.
Hay bales form shadowy ranks
within fog's embrace.

April 22: Earth Day

This Earth Day I've spent a lot of time watching the sky. The cumulus clouds rolling in from the west to heap up against Mount Megunticook have been dramatic. Puffy piles of water vapor accumulating and dissipating fill the horizon in ever-shifting arrangements. Today would have been a good day to lie out on a lawn somewhere and observe cloud patterns. I see the Sphinx in the cloud below, or maybe a griffin. Poised next to a cabbage. A good day to let the mind wander a little bit.

How vapor becomes
a griffin poised on pine trees:
clouds, a relaxed mind.

March 31: Clouds Passing

Although the night sky is hidden by clouds now, earlier today we breathed a big sigh of relief when the rain finally stopped. The clouds began to pass eastward over the mountains, leaving behind sodden soils and a swollen river. Someone said we'd gotten 11 inches of rain this March, when we normally get about three. For a while sunlight shone into my office, illuminating the room in what seemed like a new and wonderful way. I wanted to stretch out in my rug like a cat. We exclaimed over patches of blue sky.

This respite from the elements lasted till dark, so I was able to run outside after work. Everywhere the earth seemed to be celebrating the passing of the rain. Birds warbled from budding trees: song sparrows, blackbirds, house finches, and robins--the first singing robins I've heard this spring. People were out running, walking, biking in that brief window before darkness. The river jubilantly spilled over its banks all along Route 105 and into town, creating tree-filled ponds, foreshortened lawns, wild rows of foaming waves, and new side streams. The air was redolent with that fresh lake water smell I associate with fishing. As I ran past the view of Mount Megunticook along 105, the tail end of the clouds was sweeping up its western flank like a vaporous scarf. Goodbye, rain!

Draped by cloud mantle,
mountain becomes resting girl
lulled by robin's song.

Like the mountain, I too can now rest, satisfied with my day's activities, uplifted by the birdsong of spring.

January 4: Snowy Peaks

It's amazing how lofty and remote the familiar Camden Hills can become with the addition of a few inches of snow. Although Mount Megunticook is the third highest peak on the Atlantic seaboard, that's not saying much. It's just over 1,300 feet in elevation, behind Cadillac and another Acadia mountain, and just ahead of Ragged and Bald, also in the Camden Hills. Most of the Atlantic coast is just that: coast. As in, sea level. Camden isn't called "where the mountains meet the sea" for nothing--most of the coast doesn't have such a lucky and scenic conjunction of geography.

But after the past weekend's storm, the snow-covered Megunticook ridgeline looks positively alpine. Perhaps it's because the frosting of snow accentuates the craggy appearance of the mountain's open, rocky ledges and spiky summit evergreens. Or perhaps it's that the old landslide scar from several decades ago is highlighted by the whiteness, looking now like a fresh avalanche chute. Whatever the reason, when the sun hit the ridge this afternoon, I caught my breath. There was a mountain! Remote, inaccessible, lofty... and beautiful.

Snow-covered ridgeline--
is that really where we walked
in last summer's heat?