Raking the Forest

We are up at the cabin and it is very dry. Northern New England is stuck in a high pressure weather system. Fire danger warnings are up; no one is making campfires.

One of our neighbors at the lake tells me she always rakes away from her cabin in spring to clear out the dead leaves and pine needles. She does it to lower fire danger.

We never rake at the cabin. We let the pine needles, birch and beech leaves pile up as they always have, decomposing and hopefully enriching the soil of the forest floor.

But to each his own. Once a year, my sister rakes the forest around her cabin in the Northwest. I laugh at this, but she swears that it allows the moss to thrive. I also recently learned that another neighbor here at the lake also rakes the forest in spring. Gets up all the pine needles, and pine cones...from the driveway and the mossy rocks.

To me, the forest has not had rakers for thousands and thousands of years. Does it need it? I suppose if one wants to cultivate moss it makes sense. And I suppose if one has a staff to do it, it would be a nice thing to have done. But when I'm at the cabin contemplating such things, a certain woodsy slothfulness takes hold.

Moose in the Morning

Photo from Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/pin/265219865527729715/

 Wonderful poem by May Sarton, found today on NPR (and website) of The Writer's Almanac. You can link to it here  and listen to it recited.

Moose in the Morning

by May Sarton

Oh wild and gentle beast,
Immense antlered shape,
This morning in the meadow!
Like something ancient, lost
And found now, promise kept,
Emerging from the shadow,
Emerging while I slept—
Wilderness and escape!
You set me free to shirk
The day's demanding work
And cast my guilt away.
You make a truant of me
This moose-enchanted day
When all I can is see,
When all I am is this
Astonishment and bliss.

Midwinter Thoughts

We've passed the midwinter mark, and it's now 43 days until spring. The days lengthen more than a minute every day. Sunrise gets earlier; sunset gets later. Birch tree branches are tipped in subtle pink. Last week we saw Canada geese flying in formation. It couldn't be possible that they are already heading north, could it? No, they must be hovering near the ocean and open waters waiting for the signal to head farther north. In a few short weeks the sap will start to run. One of my favorite bloggers, poet Kristen Lindquist, keeps an eye on bird migration on the Maine coast near Camden. Her blog is called Book of Days and you can link to it here.
No, we're only in midwinter. Lots of snow yet to go, but it seems doable once we pass the half-way mark.

Cabin Christmas - from Down East Magazine

The December, 2012 issue of Down East magazine includes a wonderful Christmas excerpt from Louise Dickinson Rich's treasured memoir, WE TOOK TO THE WOODS.  Dickinson and her family spent many years in the lakes of western Maine during the Great Depression, and she wrote about it. We recommend her books. WE TOOK TO THE WOODS makes a fantastic winter read.

You can link to the article here. 

The photograph was taken at a sporting camp in western Maine, Bald Mountain Camps in Oquossoc.

Deepening Silence

It's the end of our cabin season now. We're packing everything up. The canoe is stowed safely away. All liquids are boxed and ready to go. We turned the potted geraniums and impatiens out in the woods, setting them upright in their own soil, hoping they'll last a few more weeks on their own.

While working outside, we notice the silence more this time of year. On cloudy days the chickadees are silent, and the migrating warblers give only the smallest, highest calls. The brown creepers are quiet too, hopping up the tree trunks looking for bugs. How different this silence is compared to when we arrive in spring, when birdsong fills the air. We catch a few loon calls, the kingfisher chatters on sunny days, and at night the barred owl calls out in the woods.

Most of the cabin owners have left, so there are no motorboats, and no conversations float across the lake. And once the snow falls, which can begin any day now, there will be weeks of deeper silence until the deer hunting starts. Then the snow mobilers and ice fishermen arrive.

But these sounds we will not hear. As we return to the city for the long winter, we'll keep the treasured silence in our hearts.

Roaring winds

After torrential rains last night, a cold front raced in from the northwest. All day the forest roared, wind ripping through the tall trees that swayed in the gusts. Whitecaps raced down the lake. Fortunately our little cabin faces east into a cove and is somewhat sheltered from the northwest gales.

All day the animals were nowhere to be seen. They can't smell or hear danger when the wind is high so they can't sense predators. Only the red squirrels chattered from their safe nests, as the trees rocked back and forth in the wind. At one point I stepped onto the porch and a lone robin hopped out from under our porch. He or she was hunkered down waiting for calm. The cat stayed in all day, only now near sunset did the wind die so he snuck out for one quick run. No doubt we'll be after him with the flashlight soon.

Taking the dock out - ballooning over the stream

The season-end ritual of taking the dock out of the water is always daunting. Whether you are taking a multi-stage fixed dock out of the water in sections, or horsing a floating dock up onto the beach, it's a big job. Some years we've had a team of friends to help, temperatures in the 40's, everyone inside directly afterward for hot coffee. Some years it's been just us two, trying not to put our backs out, not exactly enjoying the process.

This year, however it went much more smoothly. We finally realized that we've been making it much harder on ourselves by putting the 'connector section' on top of the floating part before winching it up tight on the beach near the rocks. The connector section weighs over a hundred pounds! So this time we did it without the connector weighing down the floating dock. Piece of cake. Where in past years we struggled for an hour, inching the dock up with the come-along and rusty chain round the big pine, this year we pulled the dock up tight in about fifteen minutes  Done. Here is a photo of the dock all put away for winter.

It was a beautiful day - sunny and in the 70's with a very light breeze. As I was putting waders on at the dock, I noticed spider webs flying up into the air, seemingly out of nowhere. Then I traced one of the strands to the top of the dock post, where a medium-sized spider was standing - a long strand flying above him in the light breeze. Suddenly he jumped up, and the wind carried him right out over the stream, as he held onto his long web/balloon. I hope he knew where he was going because it's about 300 feet to the opposite shore. I've read about this, but have never seen a spider 'ballooning' before. Just like the end of CHARLOTTE'S WEB.

Here we huge mammals were struggling over moving a dock a few feet, and this little creature fashioned himself a balloon and flew away.

Follow this link to a great blog entry about a family in Minnesota who hired the local highschool football team to take their dock out!  The link is here