arghman
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Geez, you go away for four days in the middle of July and it takes forever just to read posts here, never mind write them. This report will be somewhat abbreviated and vague, for various reasons, one of which is a lack of time on my part and others which may become apparent.
Let's begin with a short side trip to Alton Bog. I spent a summer as an engineering intern at the University of Maine in Orono in 1994 -- a quick and deep introduction to northern New England that has affected me greatly, and I do not plan to live anywhere south of the northern border of Massachusetts, ever, if I can help it. Without going too much into detail there were four things in particular that have had a lasting impression: moose, hiking at Baxter Park, the DeLorme Maine Gazetteer, and the sight of this bog from I-95 just north of Old Town:
The picture doesn't give much of a sense of scale. The bog is perhaps 800 acres in extent, maybe 250-350 acres of it is open with few trees, and the interstate highway roughly bisects it. (the construction of I-95 must have been before wetlands were Protected with a capital P.) I may be wrong, but it is probably the only open bog in the Northeast that can be seen from a car traveling at 65+ MPH on the interstate. There's a sign at the town line on the highway that says "ALTON BOG", and you don't have to be very smart to figure out what they're referring to. I was hypnotized the first time I saw it back in 1994 (very glad a friend was driving) and it got me interested in bogs. On my trip this weekend I had a little time to kill, so I drove up to take some pictures, as a pilgrimage of sorts to memories past. Fortunately it is not too far from Bangor. Unfortunately it is just north of an exit, and the next exit is another 20 miles past it, so I added an extra 40 mile U-turn to see the bog -- although there's a nice grove of white birch on the median in Edinburgh, which I vaguely remember from 11 years ago. Snap. Snap. Snap. Pictures taken (none of them came out too well), time to drive on.
One part of this trip was a New England Wild Flower Society rare plant survey in the Great Heath. As the information gathered on these field surveys is rather sensitive, I will just refer to our target species as "Plant X". This plant's only known occurrence in Maine is here (where????); maybe 10-12 of the plants were found in one spot by some botanists ten or twenty years ago, who were looking for something else, and wrote down in passing some very vague details about its location and the description of the surrounding area. So we were essentially looking for a needle in a haystack.
My interest in this was visiting the Great Heath, a peatland of several thousand acres which is one of the "Natural Attractions" listed in the DeLorme guide (at one point I had a goal of visiting all of the ones in the Maine atlas) and is the largest raised bog in Maine. (See U. Maine's website on peatlands, or Charles W. Johnson's excellent book "Bogs of the Northeast") I brought a pair of water shoes and some clothes that could get wet and wasn't sure what to expect.
As it turned out, we were not really going to be looking in the open part of the Great Heath (drat!) but one of its margins somewhere in Columbia and/or Township 18. It was, however, boggy wetlands, even if wooded rather than open bog, and I will say it is much more fun to plan to get wet than to go through all that trouble with Gore-Tex etc. to try to avoid the water. The weather was very nice, sunny but in the low 70's in the shade where we were. Not too many insects and the water was cool and refreshing. We did not actually find Plant X although we did run across some rare sedge that I wouldn't recognize if you showed some of it to me now, as well as some other interesting plants. Plus there was lots of sundew (my question to one of the group leaders: "When is it actually in bloom? I've been wanting to see some." Answer: "Now!") and one lovely spot where some was growing on an old log:
Anyway, an interesting day. I have very little idea where we actually were.
On Monday I went hiking on a 5-mile loop trail I'd been to before, somewhere not too far away, and I made a couple of very bad decisions. The weather forecast was a 50-75% chance of showers and thunderstorms throughout the day. If I had been planning a hike above or near treeline, I would have canceled immediately, but with this hike being essentially no elevation gain and not alpine, somehow the forecast didn't faze me. (bad decision #1)
It was overcast and I took a few snacks and some raingear. I got to the trailhead and the trail register was out of maps. I was the only one there on a weekday. But I'd been there before. (bad decision #2)
I had gotten about halfway around this loop, heading along a granite-ledgy shore, when it started raining and then soon after, started pouring. I took shelter among some small spruce and birch trees in the woods for a while, hoping it would let up so I could go back to taking pictures -- but it didn't, and then I heard thunder.
I waited about an hour, with the tide rising and my rainjacket's "waterproof"-ness proved to be lacking. I was shivering slightly and began to get very worried. There was occasional thunder, loud and prolonged though at the closest it seemed about 3 miles away judging from the light-sound delay. At some point I began guesstimating probabilities of survival given that I had no idea what the weather would be (+ aloneness + wet ledges near seashore at high tide) and I was starting to get wet and chilled. I think I came up with 95-99% for some reason, and this was both encouraging yet far too low for comfort. I wolfed down a few handfuls of peanut-butter-chips and cranberries for energy and began moving again, mumbling "rain go away, rain go away, rain go away" as a mantra. Bad decision #3 was going forward rather than turning around; it would have been slightly shorter w/ much less sea exposure. But I didn't remember that, not having a map in front of me.
Rain go away, rain go away, rain go away... I reached the trail turn heading inland in about 45 minutes, and the rain started letting up about that point. Near the trailhead I ran across a couple from Georgia right about the time the rain had stopped; we chatted briefly & I warned them about the shore loop being not that easy, then I continued on & got back to the car, still mumbling "rain go away, rain go away" despite the fact that it was no longer raining.
My nerves were on edge the whole rest of the day, including an odd hypersensitivity to sound, an effect I became vaguely aware of when noticing that my car's engine sounded louder than normal, but which did not hit home until I took another very conservative, short hike and was startled at a low whining sound which turned out to be an insignificant breeze blowing past the rim of my hat.
Enough excitement indeed, and I hope my judgment is better in the future when it counts.
I may or may not post some other pictures, mostly of plants, if I get to it.
Let's begin with a short side trip to Alton Bog. I spent a summer as an engineering intern at the University of Maine in Orono in 1994 -- a quick and deep introduction to northern New England that has affected me greatly, and I do not plan to live anywhere south of the northern border of Massachusetts, ever, if I can help it. Without going too much into detail there were four things in particular that have had a lasting impression: moose, hiking at Baxter Park, the DeLorme Maine Gazetteer, and the sight of this bog from I-95 just north of Old Town:
The picture doesn't give much of a sense of scale. The bog is perhaps 800 acres in extent, maybe 250-350 acres of it is open with few trees, and the interstate highway roughly bisects it. (the construction of I-95 must have been before wetlands were Protected with a capital P.) I may be wrong, but it is probably the only open bog in the Northeast that can be seen from a car traveling at 65+ MPH on the interstate. There's a sign at the town line on the highway that says "ALTON BOG", and you don't have to be very smart to figure out what they're referring to. I was hypnotized the first time I saw it back in 1994 (very glad a friend was driving) and it got me interested in bogs. On my trip this weekend I had a little time to kill, so I drove up to take some pictures, as a pilgrimage of sorts to memories past. Fortunately it is not too far from Bangor. Unfortunately it is just north of an exit, and the next exit is another 20 miles past it, so I added an extra 40 mile U-turn to see the bog -- although there's a nice grove of white birch on the median in Edinburgh, which I vaguely remember from 11 years ago. Snap. Snap. Snap. Pictures taken (none of them came out too well), time to drive on.
One part of this trip was a New England Wild Flower Society rare plant survey in the Great Heath. As the information gathered on these field surveys is rather sensitive, I will just refer to our target species as "Plant X". This plant's only known occurrence in Maine is here (where????); maybe 10-12 of the plants were found in one spot by some botanists ten or twenty years ago, who were looking for something else, and wrote down in passing some very vague details about its location and the description of the surrounding area. So we were essentially looking for a needle in a haystack.
My interest in this was visiting the Great Heath, a peatland of several thousand acres which is one of the "Natural Attractions" listed in the DeLorme guide (at one point I had a goal of visiting all of the ones in the Maine atlas) and is the largest raised bog in Maine. (See U. Maine's website on peatlands, or Charles W. Johnson's excellent book "Bogs of the Northeast") I brought a pair of water shoes and some clothes that could get wet and wasn't sure what to expect.
As it turned out, we were not really going to be looking in the open part of the Great Heath (drat!) but one of its margins somewhere in Columbia and/or Township 18. It was, however, boggy wetlands, even if wooded rather than open bog, and I will say it is much more fun to plan to get wet than to go through all that trouble with Gore-Tex etc. to try to avoid the water. The weather was very nice, sunny but in the low 70's in the shade where we were. Not too many insects and the water was cool and refreshing. We did not actually find Plant X although we did run across some rare sedge that I wouldn't recognize if you showed some of it to me now, as well as some other interesting plants. Plus there was lots of sundew (my question to one of the group leaders: "When is it actually in bloom? I've been wanting to see some." Answer: "Now!") and one lovely spot where some was growing on an old log:
Anyway, an interesting day. I have very little idea where we actually were.
On Monday I went hiking on a 5-mile loop trail I'd been to before, somewhere not too far away, and I made a couple of very bad decisions. The weather forecast was a 50-75% chance of showers and thunderstorms throughout the day. If I had been planning a hike above or near treeline, I would have canceled immediately, but with this hike being essentially no elevation gain and not alpine, somehow the forecast didn't faze me. (bad decision #1)
It was overcast and I took a few snacks and some raingear. I got to the trailhead and the trail register was out of maps. I was the only one there on a weekday. But I'd been there before. (bad decision #2)
I had gotten about halfway around this loop, heading along a granite-ledgy shore, when it started raining and then soon after, started pouring. I took shelter among some small spruce and birch trees in the woods for a while, hoping it would let up so I could go back to taking pictures -- but it didn't, and then I heard thunder.
I waited about an hour, with the tide rising and my rainjacket's "waterproof"-ness proved to be lacking. I was shivering slightly and began to get very worried. There was occasional thunder, loud and prolonged though at the closest it seemed about 3 miles away judging from the light-sound delay. At some point I began guesstimating probabilities of survival given that I had no idea what the weather would be (+ aloneness + wet ledges near seashore at high tide) and I was starting to get wet and chilled. I think I came up with 95-99% for some reason, and this was both encouraging yet far too low for comfort. I wolfed down a few handfuls of peanut-butter-chips and cranberries for energy and began moving again, mumbling "rain go away, rain go away, rain go away" as a mantra. Bad decision #3 was going forward rather than turning around; it would have been slightly shorter w/ much less sea exposure. But I didn't remember that, not having a map in front of me.
Rain go away, rain go away, rain go away... I reached the trail turn heading inland in about 45 minutes, and the rain started letting up about that point. Near the trailhead I ran across a couple from Georgia right about the time the rain had stopped; we chatted briefly & I warned them about the shore loop being not that easy, then I continued on & got back to the car, still mumbling "rain go away, rain go away" despite the fact that it was no longer raining.
My nerves were on edge the whole rest of the day, including an odd hypersensitivity to sound, an effect I became vaguely aware of when noticing that my car's engine sounded louder than normal, but which did not hit home until I took another very conservative, short hike and was startled at a low whining sound which turned out to be an insignificant breeze blowing past the rim of my hat.
Enough excitement indeed, and I hope my judgment is better in the future when it counts.
I may or may not post some other pictures, mostly of plants, if I get to it.
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