Husband and I took the girls to an old haunt on the Maine coast Friday.  The sun was high, the tide was low, our oldest dog’s legs were sturdy.  Happy hearts.

 

Took these late last month.  Blurry but worth posting.  My favorite duck quacks are the ones that sounds like sardonic laughter.

 

 

 

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Took camera in hand this weekend after far too long away from it.  I like its weight.  I like the narrow focus I’m forced to take when peering into the viewfinder.  I like the expansiveness and freedom of wandering in the woods looking and listening for just anything, or nothing.  I like that my neighbors don’t call the police when I am traipsing through the fields and woods at 8:15 am, almost certainly talking to myself, peering at frost-covered weeds and squinting into the sun, then circling a small tree like it might contain the answer to an important question.

I like wondering which birds are living in certain tree cavities, and waiting with cold cheeks (you pick which) for the resident to sneak a peak at me. I like that nobody tooted at me while I sat on the guardrail on Route 202 and snapped shots of geese picking their way across sheets of ice at the end of the lake.  Have you ever watched a goose walk on ice?  They seem to value careful foot placement as much as we do.

Sassy, seed hogging blue jays are back. I have made my peace with it.  They are hungry too.  If they don’t mind at least basic manners I will yell at them.

Hear the owls occasionally.  Don’t see them.  Somebody bought the abutting parcel – the spot I first found them this summer.  The new owner is busy piling brush into burn piles.  Sigh.

Was grateful that two immense deer were only on the edge of somebody’s lawn late one work night this week – not in front of my fender. Scary that my tired brain first processed their image as wolves – as in, “Why is there a very large wolf in the road right now?”

Our kitchen sink looks onto the back lawn, which turns into tree lines, which slopes down to lake. So when my hands are in the sink I watch the woods and the sky.  That is why Saturday morning at least one neighbor might have seen me standing in my backyard in a tank top and yoga pants trying to capture the eagle soaring overhead.  Eagles don’t wait for you to put on a jacket.  And the sun moves so fast at this time of year that when you decide the frost covered field looks amazing you jump out of bed and suit up – fast!  Next on my agenda is to learn to shoot into the sun.

In case you missed Monday’s supermoon.

 

 

Mushroom.  Lichen.   Tree rust?  Algae?  I don’t have specifics for you on any of these photos – though I would guess that some of you readers could help out.  In any event, I’ve found myself noticing the many shapes and colors that these “creatures” take with an increasing interest.

P.S. Lichen is not actually rot and it won’t hurt your trees.

Hooded mergansers on the far side of our cove for the past few weeks.

Muskrat feeding this afternoon.  There was a second one but it was too shy to smile for the camera.  The muskrats were in the area pictured below – which was underwater all summer.

Followed deer trails along the edge of the lake to work my way into the inlet without sinking up to my knees in muck.

Turned around after realizing that this immense stump would require me to use my broomstick to avoid a potentially dangerous slip into knee-deep muck.  Sadly, I’d left said broomstick at home, so I turned around.  (Note to my mother: gymnastics and dance class were worth it, because I can balance on rotten logs  quite well.)  I made it half-way around this stump before I gave up.  At some point in the process I did try to do a mental review of my “Get out of quicksand” skills and realized I didn’t have any.  What a let down.

 

 

 

Ruffed grouse crossing the road a quarter of a mile from our house.  Love the leg warmers!

And later, a pair of red-breasted mergansers (at the maximum of my zoom).

 

And always my friends the GBHs, right in my own lake-turned-lawn.

And my reward for traipsing through muck?

This.

 

Rain and fog today.  The lake is still busy with geese.   A lone duck was in the midst.  I watched him consider leaving the area, then return, and the climb onto the rocks that the geese had claimed for themselves.  I wanted to applaud him when he’d finally won the rock outcropping for himself.

I had my lens at full-zoom, and was shooting in the rain around 4:30, so photo quality is poor, but it was all that I could get today.  What a funny size difference between a goose (gander?) and what I think is probably a mallard.

 

 

I stepped onto our front porch half an hour okay to listen to the pair of great horned owls calling to each other from opposite sides of the woods.  An hour later they are still calling – and I’ve taken a few photos of the moon.

 

Easily 200 geese feeding in our cove tonight.  Sat in the padded divot at the bottom of a pine and rested my tired self against a trunk twice my size, then watched them paddle and listened to them chatter.  Was glad to be allowed to observe.

Although there seems to have been plenty of resources (weeds, bugs, water) to share without getting tense, the full-moon madness that has come over me seems to have a few of the geese on edge as well.

The pinks and yellows were especially pretty tonight.

I watched the geese for maybe 45 minutes, amused by their white bums in their air and their black legs and feet splashing and kicking to get them upside down and right side up again.

I always turn my back on the lake with reluctance, knowing the distance from shore to door is minimal, but the space between the calm I feel at the water’s edge and stress of the daily grind is a chasm too wide to bridge.

Saturday, after our big family trip to the dump – I mean “Transfer Station” – we stopped along the massively overbroad shoulder of Route 202, where the road runs over a culvert that allows Maranacook Lake to flow into Annabessacook Lake. (A post from earlier in 2016 mentioned beavers blocking this culvert and I have no reason to believe that that has changed, though I have no solid proof either.)  In any event, this portion of Route 202 has been widened on both sides of the road in this area, making it a safe place for fisherpersons (that rolls of the gender-neutral tongue, doesn’t it?) and duck-dispatchers to access our lake without committing vehicular homicide.  So we stopped so that I could climb the guardrail and get some photos.  The water levels are so low that it looks like low tide has struck the lake.

In addition to snapping my first ever photos of a belted kingfisher at our lake, I also had the pleasure of being tooted at by a fine young gentleman in a jacked up red pick-up truck with a healthy collection of tires in the truck bed.  Having not been tooted at in something like a decade, I was rather pleased with myself.  Didn’t even trip in the weeds when I looked up to see who’d mistaken me for a bottle picker on the side of the road.  Ever-present air cast on my right leg be damned!

I wasn’t in quite such good spirits about the air cast today, after finally being passed by the two pretty ladies hiking on my heels at Jamie’s Pond today.  After they finally past me I stood there and cried. “Oh, you’re hiking with a cast on?!” observed one fit, smiling woman.   “No F&4K!ng kidding!” my brain screamed.  But out of my tired mouth came, “Yup, for four months.”  Meanwhile the other happy looking hiker asked permission to pat my younger dog.  No matter that I’m perched on the edge of a slope trying not to tip backwards.  It’s cool – let’s pat the dog.  Or NOT.  NEVER a good idea to reach out for stranger’s dogs.  We try to explain this to people while they are reaching fingers toward her sharp, excited teeth, but they don’t listen and they are surprised when (after I’ve said, “She bites…she bites….”) she has in fact nipped them in excitement.  To combat this stupidity I’ve learned to say, “She’ll make you bleed,” in a very urgent and frightening manner, which generally causes people to withdraw their idiotic fingers in time, as well as to look at me like I’m a monster.

So, the pretty lady did not stick her fingers out, and in fact thanked me for warning her. So as the two happy ladies pranced away with their sneaker-shod feet gamely taking the rocks and pine needles with real style, I just went ahead and let those tears that I’ve been saving for months now sneak out.  But only long enough for my husband to get so far ahead of me with the older dog that I had to then pick my younger, able-bodied dog up and carry her, since otherwise she would have (1) run off and dive-tackled those ladies or (2) dragged me over a 45 degree boulder-strewn slope fast enough for me to break an ankle, which quite frankly at this point would be a welcome relief.

Well aware that I’m not a child and nobody was going to carry me out of the woods, I decided it was time to buck up.  Plus, I’d run out of tissues two miles back, started blowing my nose on my shirt one mile back, and really had to pee.  Again.  So off I went – though not without a bit of extra gimp in my step just to show the universe how pathetic I am.  (Insert sheepish grin.)

But WAIT – I’ve gotten far afield of my original story.  So where was I….oh yes, getting honked at on the side of Route 202 after Saturday morning’s dump run.   Having finished with the seagulls, I happened to see a belted kingfisher fly in.  I love getting to photograph a new friend.  Photos aren’t as clear as I’d liked but here they are.

Since husband and dogs were patiently waiting for the rest of Saturday morning to get underway, I tore myself away and headed back into the car.  And off we went on our merry little way.  All the way into Augusta to walk the dogs at the trails behind UMA.  Great trails there for those (like me and my old lady dog) who are mobility impaired.  We arrived to find a huge cross country meet underway, so we drove back to Winthrop to our old fall back – the high school trails.   The rest of Saturday involves pumpkin carving, which I must say it fun for those from age 18 months to 87 years old.  It’s not too late folks.  Gut a pumpkin today.  Share the seeds with your woodland friends.  Have you noticed their haste to stash winter’s meals?