Spire 2023 Issue Archives - The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability /spire/category/spire-2023-issue/ 91 Mon, 24 Apr 2023 16:45:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 Hunters’ Moon /spire/2023/04/21/moore-2/ /spire/2023/04/21/moore-2/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:54 +0000 /spire/?p=3998 By Leslie Moore   Artist Statement I am a relief printmaker whose subject is often animals. My work is influenced by Japanese printmakers, especially Ohara Koson (1877-1945), although I don’t use the same multi-woodblock technique. Instead, I practice the reduction method, cutting a single linoleum block and printing a succession of colors—one after the other, […]

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]]> By Leslie Moore

 

Artist Statement

I am a relief printmaker whose subject is often animals. My work is influenced by Japanese printmakers, especially Ohara Koson (1877-1945), although I don’t use the same multi-woodblock technique. Instead, I practice the reduction method, cutting a single linoleum block and printing a succession of colors—one after the other, one on top of the other—until the final image emerges and the block is reduced to almost nothing. There’s no going back. My artwork may be found in book illustrations and cover designs, private collections, and at the Local Color Gallery in Belfast, Maine.

 

Hunters’ Moon

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/moore-2/feed/ 0 Fieldnotes on Grief /spire/2023/04/21/hotopp/ /spire/2023/04/21/hotopp/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:53 +0000 /spire/?p=3734 By Alice Hotopp   The morning before, the nest had been full of fat, begging chicks. At six days old, they had grown large enough to be nearly spilling over the nest’s strained, woven-grass walls. Their bellies were soft with newly unfurled feathers, and plastic-y sheaths still covered the growing flight feathers on their wings. […]

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]]> By Alice Hotopp

 

The morning before, the nest had been full of fat, begging chicks. At six days old, they had grown large enough to be nearly spilling over the nest’s strained, woven-grass walls. Their bellies were soft with newly unfurled feathers, and plastic-y sheaths still covered the growing flight feathers on their wings. When I had peeked into the nest they begged for food, chirping and gaping their tiny bills. The puddles on the marsh floor were wide and deep but the nest was still dry, perched in a tangle of grasses just above the water. Then last night, with the onset of the full moon, the tide rose high enough to sweep cold seawater over the marsh.

This morning, we wound our way through the marsh in the cool dawn light, splashing through standing water. Quietly, I approached the nest while my technicians waited several meters back to minimize disturbance to the chicks. I parted the grasses covering the nest like a canopy and then looked back towards my techs, shaking my head. They didn’t make it. Opening small plastic baggies, I started collecting the limp, drowned chicks. Two were tangled in the grasses, limbs and necks stretched in unsettling directions. One still sat in the nest, cold and dead, its wings and legs tucked perfectly against its body.

The saltmarsh is a dynamic ecosystem. Flooding of this kind regularly occurs during the full moon, when the gravitational pull on the ocean is stronger with the sun and moon in alignment. Nesting on the floor of the marsh, as several species of tidal marsh sparrows do, is always a risk. The nesting cycle of these birds is in sync with the monthly tidal cycle – nests are built and eggs are laid as soon as the previous cycle’s high waters recede. The eggs then have the interval between the full moons to hatch and fledge. Survival is a race against time and tides. If the female is late in laying her eggs, places her nest too low in the vegetation, or a major storm hits the coast, odds are that her clutch will drown. Driven, she will try again in the next cycle.

While this ebb and flow of life is natural, nest failure due to flooding is becoming increasingly common and is part of why tidal marsh sparrow populations are in dramatic decline. With anthropogenically-caused sea level rise, the days between flooding events are being whittled down, making the window for nest building, mating, egg laying, incubating, hatching, and fledging almost impossibly short. Even worse, the saltmarshes themselves are disappearing, squeezed on both sides by sea level rise and coastal development.

***

On June 7th, 2019, just before first light, my dad died of pancreatic cancer. The nurse woke my mom and I, asleep on a futon in his room, with a hand on my mom’s shoulder. He’s gone. She snapped off the bubbling flow of his oxygen, plummeting the room into silence.

He was diagnosed two years earlier, a long time for patients with pancreatic cancer. Ultimately, the cancer spread, wrecking fragile tissues in his lungs and filling them with fluid. Drowning him internally.

I navigated the completion of a master’s degree and the beginning of a PhD during his illness. I was lucky enough to travel home for a summer during my master’s degree, spending weekends with my parents and weekdays working in the lab at a university two hours south. For my PhD I relocated closer to family, and during my first semester I spent many weekends home or driving to the emergency room when my dad wound up there. My first field season had begun June 1st, giving me time to meet my crew, join them for one day in the field, and then rely on my professors to train them as I rushed to the hospice.

My father was a conservation biologist, specializing in land snails but fascinated by all aspects of the natural world. If I had gotten a chance to bring him to the marsh, he would have marveled at the sea of swaying grasses, at finding beneath its green surface a nest the diameter of a clementine, filled with pale, mottled eggs. He had an unparalleled tenderness for wild creatures and places and emanated a deep sense of respect towards all living things. On the first warm, rainy nights of spring, he would drive the roads to move migrating amphibians out of the way of traffic. He knew the names of the smallest snails. How to hold a dragonfly so as to not hurt the scales on its wings.

The death of my dad felt like the death of part of me. He had long been my guide to wildflowers, trees, animal tracks and scat, river names, bird song, the latest news on the battle against climate change. I had used his knowledge almost as a crutch, letting it seep into me through osmosis. Wading through my grief, I also now felt lost as an ecologist, stuttering my way through a graduate program on my own. I wished I could call him to discuss research ideas, send him the rough draft of my dissertation proposal for feedback, show him a photo of sunrise over the marsh and try to describe to him the delicate beauty of sea lavender in bloom.

***

Beginning a career in ecology has started to feel like an exploration of loss. Like committing to entwine my life with that of an animal, a plant, a place, all the while knowing that it might slip away. I sometimes feel lonely in this grief, observing other ecologists face loss while appearing to not feel its toll. Those who decide to dedicate their careers to ecology likely feel some connection to wild places and creatures, some embeddedness in their study systems. Yet somehow, as a collective we seem to fall short at fully experiencing, or at least conveying, what it means to lose what we study. Scientists predict the number of decades until extinction without expressing what it would be to watch the marsh disintegrate under the rising sea, to walk its remnants without hearing bird song. Reporting the number of nests flooded in the spring tide is commonplace but recounting what it does to the brain to spend a morning gathering dead chicks is not. After my dad died, while being understanding of my slow progress, hiring an extra field tech for me, and giving me time off, few of those in my academic circle asked how I was doing. I may not have given them a chance to.

I do not believe that these passed-over moments indicate that ecologists are unfeeling or ill-intentioned. Yet, to better understand this emotional distancing, I have begun probing at certain aspects of scientific culture. Does prioritizing scientific objectivity lead us to forget that we were drawn to ecology by a deep love for the natural world? Do we overlook the fact that science itself is inseparable from emotion, as it was born from the human desire to understand the world? Will we be taken less seriously by our peers and by the public if we appear emotional, vulnerable? Do we compartmentalize our work as unrelated to the crushing, systemically amplified effects of climate change and ecological destruction on fellow humans?

I do not have answers to these questions. I often interrogate my own emotional involvement in my work and am apprehensive to share how I feel. Still, I believe that if ecologists were to lean into our vulnerability, what we might gain from opening ourselves to compassion for the natural world, and by extension, each other, is not trivial. Rekindling emotional ties to our research may make us fiercer protectors of imperiled places and creatures, better community members that are attuned to the affronts of environmental injustice. If nothing else, articulating the losses we have experienced (and will continue to experience) gives grace to our humanity, to the part of us that feels alive when we stand in a wilderness to which we feel connected.

I met a woman in a writing workshop who shared a poem about the hemlocks on her property becoming infested with woolly adelgid. Woolly adelgid, an invasive insect that causes mortality in hemlocks, is moving northward with climate change, robbing forests and stream sides of deep shade under sweeping hemlock boughs. It was refreshing to sit in sadness with her. When I told her that I was sorry about her loss of the hemlocks, she said it was all the same. Losing our trees, our fathers, the relationships that bind us to the world and help us find our place within it. Sometimes I think about her words when I stare out over the marsh, watching the wind sweep through the grass. Imagining my father stooping down to part the canopy covering a nest, making no effort to mask the sadness on his face as he shakes his head. They didn’t make it.

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/hotopp/feed/ 0 Poetry Series: I’ll Become a Whale; A Gentle Reminder /spire/2023/04/21/read/ /spire/2023/04/21/read/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:51 +0000 /spire/?p=3758 By Sydney Read   I’ll Become a Whale When death comes and if I’m lucky I’ll go back to the water. I’ll become a whale.   Watch me slip, steady Out and Into […]

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]]> By Sydney Read

 

I’ll Become a Whale

When death comes

and if I’m lucky

I’ll go back to the water.

I’ll become a whale.

 

Watch me slip, steady

Out and Into

the great blue

See my back,

Sunny-slick and breached?

I found, there, between

the waves some

warmth and ease, at last

A little rest.

 

And

Oh, I’ll chitter with delight

When I find that

𱹱岹

is my great journey

my humble flight

 

So when the water gets too warm

The sun too close

(as I’m sure

It’s wont to do)

Watch me dive—

Dive!

With one

simple

strong

stroke

Swoosh!

 

Down, down

Under, Into

the blue-dark

Of shimmering tentacle friends

and little gods.

You won’t see my fin, its gentle wave

Hello,

I’ll say, a shy visitor

You are beautiful. I know that beauty doesn’t need

a name

Only, a little love.

Could I stay for a moment? With a little love?

A blink,

a swish,

a crackle-blue electric wish

For peace.

 

And so I’ll stay a little while

For cold water stories.

From where I’ve been

For where I’m going.

 

I’ll wave hello to Giant Squid

I’ll tell him about the sun

Bright and brave

It reaches, ever farther,

and learns.

A journeyman, like you

He’ll chirp wonderfully, tentacles tickling

He has not seen the sun

And one day, when he dies

if he’s lucky

He says he’d like to become a bird

I’ll dive into the sky if it’ll have me,

Mark my words I’ll—

I’ll touch the sun.

A blink,

a swish,

a crackle-blue electric wish

For peace.

 

And

󾱲Բ

When the dark

is enough and sun is

enough and time is enough

I’ll take my tale across the great water

I’ll take the stories on my back and

leave my love behind

Patience guide me

to the end of the world

They never found it. Pray they never will.

A flick of my tale,

a final smile

A splash!

 

I’ll tip over,

off

And into

the stars.

 

A Gentle Reminder

±,

it’s not really

about the snow.

it’s the ice that’s

The Problem.

 

They tell me this with knowing smiles,

a gentle hand on my arm.

imagining perhaps

my future

(inevitable)

Բ,

my car helplessly stuck

in its space.

 

We must get used

to the world and

know that it

is hard.

And that

That

is living.

 

Here is why snow

Is dull and difficult to drive in.

It’s not about the snow. Think:

Where are you going?

You may not get there.

 

But I have never seen

deep snow!

New sight, new sound (soundless!)

and what a gift to know it!

 

I’m from the South.

(I’m sorry)

We cry for the snow.

Back home, we flush

ice down

the toilet.

We turn our peejays insideout

we beg

to watch it come

just to see it go.

 

But oh, when it stayed!

The landscape altered

and how it altered us.

Snow made us frantic rosy people, stumbling

about, fumbling with our humanity like car keys.

Snow meant my step dad pulling out dusty sleds

and pushing us down a novel ice street and

Building snowmen out of mostly dirt and

taking photos and saying thanks

for a day, before it went,

as all things do.

 

I have never seen snow stay.

 

Now,

I sink my boots into forever-snow

I’ve forgotten, a little

What the ground looks like and grass looks like.

Yes, my car got stuck and my face was red and frustrated.

I’ve walked on ice and worn big coats and seen my hands

Turn blue.

It gets dark so early here (read: I sleep forever here!)

I’ve now had the privilege

Of being bored by snow (the world)

I see, yes,

That it is hard.

 

But see my puppy!

See her play, see her dash and make powder

and chomp snowballs in her mouth.

I cannot help but sink into its deepness with her.

What a season! What a life!

What a crystal blue sunset

Over a snowglobe world.

 

I think I’ll still cry

When the snow goes.

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/read/feed/ 0 Poetry Series: Maine: Wildlife Management in the Anthropocene; In the Dark; Rescuing Caterpillars on Birch Avenue; Gypsy Moths /spire/2023/04/21/owen-2/ /spire/2023/04/21/owen-2/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:47 +0000 /spire/?p=3723 By Lucia Owen   Maine: Wildlife Management in the Anthropocene 1. Euthanizing Canada Geese Rangeley No one really wants to, not the State guys or the Selectmen, but no other way to keep the tourists from stepping in the goose shit or local business losing money because of it. No one to scoop it or […]

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]]> By Lucia Owen

 

Maine: Wildlife Management in the Anthropocene

1. Euthanizing Canada Geese
Rangeley

No one really wants to, not the State guys
or the Selectmen, but no other way
to keep the tourists from stepping
in the goose shit or local business
losing money because of it.

No one to scoop it or hose it or use it
or say Watch Your Step. Geese here
since the end of the last ice age
have adapted admirably
to human habitat.

The geese follow the careful trail
of cracked corn family by family,
goslings in the order hatched
walk precisely in line between
their parents to an unnamed site

where in some unnamed way
not wounded, diseased or rabid
they will die to remove
the slippery inconvenience
of their shit.

2. Black Bear Hunting Referendum
Statewide

We keep bumping into bears
invading our habitat.
Tentacled twining suburbs,
rich and fragrant garbage cans
and the sweet greasy smell of burgers
dripping fat onto charcoal
lure bears.
For our own safety we vote to extend
black bear hunting by a month.

3. Eradicating the Winter Tick
Franklin, Somerset, Piscataquis Counties

Is it good management practice
to remove the host of a parasitic
species? Winter ticks have killed
more than half the moose calves
born each spring, sucking their blood
until they slowly die.
Adult moose host the winter tick.

4. Euthanizing Canada Geese
at the former Mercy Hospital, Portland

When the shit got to be
too much and people complained
the game warden or whoever
herded the geese into something
and took them somewhere
and maybe used gas.
At night.
No one saw.

More geese, not understanding
inconvenience or mercy,
appeared the next day.

 

In the Dark

One eye
flares
in my headlights –
cheek ear antler shoulder
slam against me –
gone.

I hyperventilate
hit the brakes hit the dirt,
expect an animal bleeding,
leg broken, thrashing in the road.
But nothing.

Above the dent gray-brown hair
clumped in the door handle
all that’s left. A friend ties flies,
wants the hair. I
pop out the dent.

Broken ribs, punctured lung
the deer’s death all that’s left
after the sad, sad collision
of our ways.

 

Rescuing Caterpillars on Birch Avenue

When I walk there I try to save them from the steamy asphalt river,
The squish of pulp trucks and the school bus.

They drop everywhere from nowhere and squirm and wriggle
With pure Purpose every which way.

It’s hard to tell where they’re headed.
I break bracken fronds and lure each one up

And shake it off in the roadside jungle
Where it may – or may not – escape the birds.

Most words are longer than they are. I admire
Each one, exquisite in its minute plumage.

Mottled green, silky hairs, pairs of orange dots
That undulate along its underside like tiny treads.

Splotchy camouflage, naked segmented skin –
Any bigger and you’d scream and run.

White, black back diamonds, bristles on a tiny bottlebrush.
Hard to tell which end is which until it moves.

Harder to imagine what ephemeral winged thing
Each will become and how.

Hardest to know what may come to crush us or what
Can rescue us or who or what we will become.

 

Gypsy Moths

Too hairy for any bird to eat
their caterpillars squirm and swarm
up the sides of my house, my car
defecate tiny green pellets that patter
in continual rain from the trees
they are defoliating, leave streaks
of green slime when I sweep
and hose them off daily. I am defending
Rome against the Goths.

Gypsy Moth – subtle mottled brown,
small, antennae delicate as fern fronds
or hummingbird feathers. Squashing one
leaves a gentle puff, an imprint
of life in moth fur.

Upstairs I stop counting one day
at 50 crowding the windows
clinging to curtains, dying behind doors.
I take the vacuum cleaner, suck them in
out of mid-flutter. Moth Buster. I plug
the vac hose so none escape.

Undulating hordes of caterpillars continue
to devour my trees leaf by leaf. Insatiable
they feed to fuel their metamorphosis
into something almost pretty but are really

The vanguard of invasions sure to come
Brown Tailed Moth Emerald Ash Borer
Hemlock Wooly Adelgid, waves and
winds and fires as I stand here
and wield my feeble broom.

 

The post Poetry Series: Maine: Wildlife Management in the Anthropocene; In the Dark; Rescuing Caterpillars on Birch Avenue; Gypsy Moths appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

]]> /spire/2023/04/21/owen-2/feed/ 0 Web of Life and Death /spire/2023/04/21/lake/ /spire/2023/04/21/lake/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:47 +0000 /spire/?p=3748 By Allan Lake   If my car is idle for a couple days, ambitious spiders create competing empires in uninhabited valleys between bumper and side panel or where seldom used rear door meets rear panel and even within springy trapdoor that opens to allow my car to drink fossil fuel so I can drive to […]

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]]> By Allan Lake

 

If my car is idle for a couple days,
ambitious spiders create competing
empires in uninhabited valleys between
bumper and side panel or where seldom
used rear door meets rear panel and even
within springy trapdoor that opens
to allow my car to drink fossil fuel so
I can drive to a supermarket to replenish
bread, eggs and insect spray. Spiders
are born builders; as a descendant
of Cain, I’m a born killer.

And I am the wrathful one who owns
the past-its-use-by chariot. I wreck with-
out mercy because I can. Look out, planet.
Let simple creatures devote their energy
to building ‘netropolises,’ imagine them-
selves architects of low-rise Babels
to cloak the world, if I allow it.
Insects that fly or bumble into my car
would not be brightest of their kind
but might be nutritious. I’ll find out
if climate change forces me to consume
whatever is left of the insect world.

If readers expect insightful reflection
on empires in general – Incan, Persian,
Roman or extant MacDonald’s –
don’t hold breath, unless I’m spraying.
I’m going to wash despidered, outdated
car then beeline to nearest fast food joint.

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/lake/feed/ 0 A Letter From the Editor /spire/2023/04/21/editor-2023/ /spire/2023/04/21/editor-2023/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:47 +0000 /spire/?p=4075 Dominic Piacentini Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology & Environmental Policy 91 Welcome to Spire’s seventh issue! We are glad to announce Leslie Moore as the winner of this year’s cover design contest. Her linoleum block print “Hunters’ Moon” and her series of paired prints and poems are a bright look into the eccentric wildlife of […]

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]]> Dominic Piacentini

Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology & Environmental Policy
91

Welcome to Spire’s seventh issue! We are glad to announce Leslie Moore as the winner of this year’s cover design contest. Her linoleum block print “Hunters’ Moon” and her series of paired prints and poems are a bright look into the eccentric wildlife of Maine. As we received submissions this year, I was thrilled by the diversity of the pieces and inspired by the contributors’ engagements with conservation and sustainability in Maine. In an increasingly uncertain world, one filled with dire climate predictions and toxic landscapes, the pieces here are a testament to Mainers’ commitment to their environment.

The authors in this issue do not shy away from the feelings of sadness, frustration, and anger that come from living in times like these. Alice Hotopp’s “Fieldnotes on Grief” poignantly reckons with ecologies of loss and the emotional and psychological strain of studying disappearing ecosystems. In Lucia Owen’s “Gypsy Moths,” the speaker wrestles with futility, wielding “feeble brooms” against the vanguard of invasions to come — of emerald ash borer and hemlock wooly adelgid. And in “Pǻܳ,”Jim Krosschell offers a fiery indictment of the roots of our ecological crises. In the issue, authors reflect on environmental changes to their home, like Vi Nelson’s plaster sculpture, “Bustins on Ice” and Erin Coughin’s art series of discarded, coastline objects on Allen Island. At the same time, many are finding new notions of “home” in bogs and in snowfall. Amid the sadness, anger, and frustration — which are all very real — contributions such as John Paul Caponigro’s “I, You, They, Us, We,” and Tamra Benson’s love letter to Braiding Sweetgrass illustratenew (and old) ways of mutual thriving. In this issue, you will find hopeful invitations to rethink local to global climate governance, sustainable agriculture, and materials reuse in Maine. I think in Spire’s seventh issue, you will see a great deal of honesty and vulnerability, but you will also see hope and inspiration for sustainable, equitable solutions.

Although in many ways, we are still in the throes of a global pandemic, I was glad that the editorial team was able to periodically get off of Zoom this year to meet and celebrate the release of the issue in person for the first time since 2020. We received more submissions this year than in any previous year, and the production of the issue would not have been possible without the help of our committed editors — Gabrielle Hillyer, Elizabeth Payne, Michelle Hoekel-Neal, Katie Matthews, Harrison Goldspiel, Marissa Ander, Braden Collard, Sara Delaney, Rebecca Champagne, Sophia Colfer, Julia Schneider, Neily Raymond, Rachel Swanwick, and Cheyenne Hebert. Special thanks go to Val Watson who managed Spire’s social media accounts. (Check us out on , , and if you haven’t already!) Thanks also go to our faculty director, Dr. Dan Dixon, and Spire’s co-editor in chief, Clinton Spaulding for their ongoing support and enthusiasm for the journal’s mission.

I thoroughly enjoyed serving as editor in chief of the seventh issue and getting to know poets, artists, and essayists across the state. I am happy to say that Cora Saddler, MA student in English, will be next year’s editor in chief. Cora has been a valuable member of our editorial team and a great help in getting this issue put together. As Spire continues to grow and change, I can’t wait to see what Cora is able to do with the eighth issue. I’m already looking forward to reading it.

Happy Reading,

Dominic Piacentini
Editor in Chief

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/editor-2023/feed/ 0 Poetry Series: March into April; Product; Morning, Late February /spire/2023/04/21/krosschell/ /spire/2023/04/21/krosschell/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:47 +0000 /spire/?p=3702 By Jim Krosschell   March into April “I have an appointment with spring.” Google informs me that none of the two million words of Thoreau’s Journal offer any description, drawing, or meticulous tracking of the emergence, in spring, of the crocus. Pity. I would have liked to compare his feelings with mine. I would have […]

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]]> By Jim Krosschell

 

March into April

“I have an appointment with spring.”

Google informs me
that none of the two million words of Thoreau’s Journal
offer any description, drawing,
or meticulous tracking of the emergence,
in spring, of the crocus.
Pity.
I would have liked to compare
his feelings with mine.
I would have liked to exceed his joy
in even one small way,
for if I plan it right,
I can meet spring’s true and lovely sybil
not merely for a week
of walks between Walden and Concord
but for a month or more,
March and April, when
the distance between houses
of two hundred miles, not two,
makes a double spring. (Or prolongs winter.)

***

I also walk, and in the yarded, tended city
I look intently for her spears
of purple, white, and yellow
pushing directly out of dirt
and stabbing the eye,
soft and hard at once.
Well, perhaps I have exceeded his joy.
He writes much of love, nothing of sex.

***

When I walk in Maine
he is at my side.
We don’t find too many signs
of the strife among people.
Nor will we find crocus for a while.
There’s not enough light and heat yet
to bud in her bed. Cold keeps her safe
until she’s ready.
But she will arrive, in April,
in the natural course of things.

***

For whatever reason
he could not (or was not allowed to)
find sexual love.
He did find love in general human kindness,
and of course in chipmunks and perch, orchids and trilliums.
Perhaps that’s a better way to understand death.

***

But nature is changing now, unreliable.
Spring comes earlier and earlier.
Our flowers bloom several weeks ahead of his.
A quarter of the plants he recorded
have perished from the earth,
especially the cold-loving wildflowers.
And now the crocus too is rare,
lunch for the mice and chipmunks,
who, nearly-tame, have colonized
our lawns and sit down with them like diners.

***

Plants in the northeast need winter,
a chilling period of rain and snow and ice,
as perhaps do I.
How many walks do I have left?
How many stabs of vigor?
Whence the thrill of emerging from February?
Will spring still “come to the window to wake me”
and climb into my bed?

 

Product

for Bill McKibben

The word was invented
when English was young:
from productum, Latin, something brought forth,
merely meaning, then, the result of x times y,
until the nineteenth century, full of iron,
disfigured life, nature, language altogether,
hard and brutally, but not yet ironically,
which the twenty-first neatly takes care of,
as vast wealthy hordes of us leave our fruitful careers,
but not our cultural training in being productive.
(can’t just rest, you know, must do stuff)
gardens, libraries, pools → the accounterments of castles
pickleball, golf, regattas → the proxies of one-upmanship
travel, shopping, dining → the mementos of consumption
painting, pottery, poetry → the redemptions of capitalism
charity, boards, memoir → the canonizations of birthright
One poor Dutch-American schmuck (me)
reviewing his output at age seventy-two,
still blames the Father (John Calvin)
who said, on his deathbed,
“What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when He comes?”
Yes! (I wish?) At least take a moment,
for (let me break it gently to you all)
the dark Lord is already burning up the sky,
and even the civilized things you plan to do
further consume Our Eaarth.

Breathe in now while we can.

Remember the Proto-Indo-European root –
per, forward, deuk, to lead –
and get out our checkbooks,
fill up our calendars,
and re-write Act Three
of the coming catastrophe.

 

Morning, Late February*

The sun is still low in the southeastern sky,
but slipping through ash trees an omen of May
alights on my pale winter face like a flame.

Remain still.

Don’t think it, don’t mull it, don’t chew it, don’t try

to foretell

the snow that will fall by the end of the day,
the doom of the carbon engulfing our realm,
the house on a ledge by the sea in my dream.

Remember that we get our manna of joy
administered only in crumbs, out of time.

 

*Morning, Late February has previously appeared inPanoply.

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/krosschell/feed/ 0 Art Series: Accumulation, Lobster Trap, Blue Wave I, Blue Wave II /spire/2023/04/21/coughlin/ /spire/2023/04/21/coughlin/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:35 +0000 /spire/?p=3974 By Erin Coughlin   Artist Statement Growing up and going to college in Maine, the coast has been an important part of my life. The shapes, colors, sounds, and atmosphere all resonate with me in different ways. As an environmental scientist, I have studied the coast and become even more familiar with its subtleties – […]

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]]> By Erin Coughlin

 

Artist Statement

Growing up and going to college in Maine, the coast has been an important part of my life. The shapes, colors, sounds, and atmosphere all resonate with me in different ways. As an environmental scientist, I have studied the coast and become even more familiar with its subtleties – what lives in the water, how pollution affects organisms as small as plankton, and how the rocky coast was formed, for example. Creating drawings, watercolors, and prints of the coast helps me understand, remember, and connect to the environment around me. My art takes the intangible feelings I experience and turn them into concrete ideas.

There is great value in sitting with a place and immersing myself in it. Close observation helps me notice and document the change of a place, whether due to seasons, climate change, or weather. The images in my prints are often places and objects that I have spent a long time observing and appreciating, and although the final print may not look like the object, it captures the feelings and atmosphere I experienced in that moment.

While walking the coast of Allen Island, I found that much of it was covered in trash. These brightly colored pieces stood out from the gray beaches and dominated the scenery, so I found myself drawing the debris just as often as I drew the natural elements.

This is where my inspiration for Accumulation and Lobster Trap began. During my time living and working on Allen Island, I trained an AI model to recognize trash in drone images of the island. These drone images, along with days spent walking the coastline, inspired the two prints. Accumulation depicts various colorful pieces of debris (mainly plastic) as well as layers of driftwood in black. Lobster Trap highlights one piece of debris that I found particularly interesting. The colorful, twisted shapes of lobster trap fragments continuously caught my eye. Each piece was uniquely shaped and stood out from the gray stones of the beaches.

Blue Wave I & II were born out of my observations of the waves on the rocky coast of Maine. I was captivated by the strength and movement of the waves, as well as their textures and colors. I continue to struggle with representing the sheer amount of power in these waves, and the prints, to some extent, cannot do it justice. These two prints, to me, represent the playful waves I would watch in the summer. While they are still full of energy, they pale in comparison to the forceful waves of winter.

 

Accumulation

 

Lobster Trap

 

Blue Wave I & Blue Wave II

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/coughlin/feed/ 0 A Glimpse of Wilderness: Eagle Lake, Piscataquis County, Maine 1959/1960 /spire/2023/04/21/reid/ /spire/2023/04/21/reid/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:32 +0000 /spire/?p=3959 By Will Reid   This is about a “renewed wilderness” that existed only briefly as such and is now gone. Even though it is presently considered “preserved,” the area is too accessible and heavily visited for anyone to experience what we did in 1959 and 1960. Steve Bunker of Bucksport and I became good friends […]

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]]> By Will Reid

 

This is about a “renewed wilderness” that existed only briefly as such and is now gone. Even though it is presently considered “preserved,” the area is too accessible and heavily visited for anyone to experience what we did in 1959 and 1960.

Steve Bunker of Bucksport and I became good friends while at Bowdoin and shared many fishing and hunting adventures during 1956-1960. Two that stand out in my memory, however, are the fishing trips we took in May of 1959 and 1960 to Eagle Lake in Piscataquis County. Back then there was no I-95 to go north from Brunswick on nor were there any roads in Maine that we could take directly to the lakes at the head of the Allagash.

In 1959, we put a small canoe on top of the car, drove north through Jackman into Quebec and then back into Maine via either Lac Frontiere or Daaquam (don’t remember which crossing).No passports were needed back then! It was a rough drive over a gravel road still in the process of thawing out from the winter. Ours was the first 2WD vehicle that year to make it to Churchill Depot at the head of the Allagash. We were surprised to see that the dam had washed out (in 1958 as we found out later), but went ahead, loaded the canoe and paddled across Heron Lake to Churchill Lake, through Round Pond, and on to Eagle Lake (see the 1962 USGS Churchill Lake topo map). The water was low and the shore in places was a swath of mud and dry-ki (bare remains of dead trees lying on the former lake bottom that were killed many years ago by flooding due to the dam), Old peaveys were scattered here and there next to the lakes. We set up a canvas tent on the shore of Eagle at a site near Soper Brook and slept soundly. We awoke in the morning to a steady gale from the northwest and a lake of fierce whitecaps that continued day and night for four days. We couldn’t keep the tent up so we built a shelter out of the dry-ki on the shore. We had planned to live on the trout we caught but couldn’t get out on the lake to fish.

Soper Brook, however, was within easy walking distance because of the exposed shoreline, and we caught plenty of fine 10” to 17” brook trout each day from a pool below the falls not far from the lake. One day, while “searching for worms for catching our dinner” as Steve put it, he overturned a small rock along the shore near where we camped and found an 1846 penny! We still wonder who hid the penny there and why. Could it have been his grandfather who was a woodsman in that area in the late 1800s? Steve still has that penny. Finally, after sunset on the fourth day, the wind dropped and the waves subsided. We hastily loaded the canoe and paddled back to Churchill Dam where we slept on a small point between Round Pond and Churchill Lake. The wind came up full force again after dawn, but was of no consequence as we had made it back during the lull. We later learned that many others have also experienced the fierce wind and waves of Eagle Lake.

The following May we made the same trip through Lac Frontiere or Daaquam (again, don’t remember which crossing) and camped at the same spot near Soper Brook. This time we had a small boat with a motor, and with calm conditions we had no problem keeping the tent up. We had great fishing, catching lake trout on streamers right at the surface. We saw 50 to 60 deer and a few moose all at the same time in a meadow along Snare Brook across the lake. Some of the deer looked very weak, and a small one swam across the brook in front of our boat. We visited the south end of Eagle Lake where we were astounded to see two huge steam locomotives, a locomotive shed, and railroad tracks with trees growing up between the rails on the strip of land between Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes that was marked “Tramway” on our 1954 USGS Churchill Lake, ME topo map. The map (with our notes), which I still have, showed an abandoned railroad line going southerly to the north end of Chamberlain Lake, then continuing on the other side of Chamberlain along its west shore.

During those two trips we had only two visits from the outside world by people. One was a single engine plane that circled over us after we had built the dry-ki shelter in 1959, presumably to see if we were OK. The other in 1960 was by three Canadian fishermen in a small aluminum boat who landed hard on the shore, stayed briefly, and then departed.

I have done some research regarding the history of that area, especially about the railroad, to learn if things have changed in what seemed to us to be wilderness in 1959/1960. The following is what I found, including some conflicting information from different sources.

Extensive cutting was underway in that area as far back as the 1830s. Henry David Thoreau visited Eagle Lake (which he called Heron Lake or Pongokwahem) in July 1857, camping on Pillsbury Island, about five miles south of where we camped. By then there were logging roads, a farm (Chamberlain Farm), dams, and a canal (Telos Cut). By 1882 there was a road easterly of Churchill and Eagle Lakes all the way from Heron Pond to Chamberlain Farm that crossed Soper Brook. Thoreau also encountered high winds and waves on Eagle Lake. The flow of the uppermost lakes in the Allagash watershed, which originally included Chamberlain, had been diverted to flow into the Penobscot drainage. The dam at the northern end of Heron (not the Heron Lake of Thoreau) and Churchill Lakes had been built in 1846 to facilitate the passage of logs.

Eighty years later Edouard “King” Lacroix rebuilt the original dam at Churchill Depot at the outlet of Heron Lake in 1926 (or in 1925 by Great Northern Paper?). That dam raised the water levels in the upstream lakes, including Eagle. It was reconstructed in 1967 (or replaced 300 feet upstream in 1968?) and replaced in 1999 (or 1997?). The locomotives, tracks, and sheds we saw at the end of Eagle Lake were remnants of Lacroix’s Umbazookskus and Eagle Lake Railroad which replaced the tramway built in 1902. Great Northern Paper bought Lacroix out in 1927 and renamed the railroad the Eagle Lake and West Branch Railroad. It operated from 1927 to 1933. Lacroix also used Lombard Steam Log Haulers, which were also eventually abandoned in the woods.The Log Haulers were invented by Alvin O. Lombard of Waterville (patented in 1901). Haulers looked like a locomotive with a lag tractor tread. They replaced the four-horse teams typically used to move heavy sled-loads of logs. Lacroix’s Madawaska Land Company headquarters was at Churchill Depot at the Heron Lake/Churchill Lake Dam, where we left our car in 1959 and 1960. The road we traveled from Lac Frontiere was built by Lacroix in 1927 and was used by Helen Hamlin in 1937 to reach the then active village of Churchill Depot in order to teach school for three years. She, too, visited the “trout pool on Soper Brook for the May fishing”. Chief Henry Red Eagle (Henry Perley) mentions all of this in an article he wrote in the early 1950s – the strong winds, the Lac Frontier road, Soper Brook, the remnant of a small community, the dams and lumbering, LaCroix Lumber Co., and the remains of the railroad.

In 1966, the State of Maine established the Allagash Wilderness Waterway (AWW), which included where we camped and explored, “to preserve, protect, and enhance the wilderness character of this unique area.” Log drives were ending in the mid-1960s and road systems were expanding, resulting in an increase in recreational traffic. From 1967 through 1973, the number of AWW visitors doubled. An organization called the North Maine Woods (NMW) begun as an association in the early 1970s, developed into a non-profit corporation, and increased the size of its managed area. The development of the NMW was caused by an expanded road network and a greater demand by the public for recreation land. The NMW region is nearly three million acres belonging to over 20 owners and completely surrounds the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. The NMW does not consider the region to be a wilderness as there are over 2,000 miles of permanently maintained roads and several thousand additional miles of temporary unmaintained roads. Many roads are plowed in the winter for hauling wood. Areas once accessible only by foot, canoe or plane were opened up. The result was overcrowded campsites and even traffic jams. The Tramway area with the locomotives was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Over 4,300 people visited the AWW in 2018, with more than 1,600 of those visiting the Tramway Historic District. The AWW total of visitor days in 2018 was over 34,000.

Our 1959 and 1960 “adventures” are important to me because when I returned to Maine in the late 1960s after serving in the Air Force, I came to realize what we experienced no longer existed in Maine. The logging road network throughout the north woods was being greatly expanded, and cutting was taking place on a much greater scale and in places where it had not occurred before. Accessibility to the area had become much easier. There were roads on both sides of Eagle Lake and even a bridge (John’s Bridge) crossing between Round Pond and Churchill Lake. One did not have to go to Quebec to get there, and there was now I-95. More people were taking advantage of that easy access to visit the waterway.

The impressions of our fishing trips still remain very clear over 60 years later; the total darkness at night, no planes or satellites, and the stillness, other than the wind. Then it was a true wilderness, accessible only with effort, and with the remnants of a mysterious abandoned railroad having been taken over by the woods once again. Steve and I had previously camped out on Moosehead and Square Lakes and on the Moose River, but those places were much more accessible and heavily visited than Eagle Lake. None of those experiences gave us the same feeling of remoteness. I treasure more and more over the years how very fortunate we were to have seen that wilderness which existed only for a few decades between human disturbances. Neither of us has ever been back to Eagle Lake. All we have are recollections of what it was like over 60 decades ago (and an 1846 penny!).

Information Sources:

Appalachian Mountain Club. 1986. Allagash Wilderness Waterway, p. 156-170. In AMC River Guide: Maine, AMC, Boston, MA. 292 pp. + Appendix & Index.

Bennett, D. B. 2009. Nature and Renewal. Wild River Valley & Beyond. Tilbury House Publishers, Gardiner, ME. 223 pp.

Bennett, D. B. 2001. The Wilderness from Chamberlain Farm: A Story of Hope for the American Wild. ISLAND PRESS / Shearwater Books, Washington. 440 pp.

Bennett, D. B. 1994. Allagash: Maine’s Wild and Scenic River. Camden, Maine: Down East Books.112 pp. .

Colby, G. N. 1882. Atlas of Piscataquis County, Maine. George N. Colby & Co., Houlton and Dover, ME. (online image from atlas)

Eagle, Chief Henry Red (Henry Perley). 1952. The Thunderous Wonderous Allagash, p. 26-35. In In the Maine Woods (booklet), Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Company, Bangor, Maine. 80 pp.

Hamlin, H. 1945. Nine Mile Bridge. Three Years in the Maine Woods. Down East Books, Camden, Maine. 233 pp.

Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, Bureau of Parks and Lands. 2020. Allagash Wilderness Waterway Guide & Map. https://www.maine.gov/dacf/parksearch/PropertyGuides/PDF_GUIDE/aww-guidepdf. 02/29/2020.

Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, Bureau of Parks and Lands. 2020. Allagash History.

McPhee, J. 1975. The Survival of the Bark Canoe. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. 114 pp. + A Portfolio of the Sketches and Models of Edwin Tappan Adney (1868 – 1950).

North Maine Woods. 1992. Sportsman’s Guide Map Regulations and Information. North Maine Woods, Inc. P. O. Box 421, Ashland, Maine 04732.

North Maine Woods, Inc. 2020. History of the North Maine Woods (NMW). . 02/29/2020.

Parker, E. L. 1996. Beyond Moosehead. A History of the Great North Woods of Maine. Moosehead Communications, Inc., HC 76, Box 32, Greenville, Maine 04441-9727. 197 pp.

Pike, R. E. 1967. Tall Trees, Tough Men. An anecdotal and pictorial history of logging and log-driving in New England. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York. 288 pp.

Thoreau, H. D. 1857. The Allegash and East Branch. In The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. The Maine Woods. 2004. Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford. 347 pp.

USGS. 1954. Churchill Lake, ME 15 Minute Topographical Map (annotated with our notes).

USGS. 1962. Churchill Lake, ME 15 Minute Topographical Map.

Warner, K. 1967. The Allagash. Maine Fish and Game – Summer 1967, p. 8 -11.

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/reid/feed/ 0 Poetry Series: Grade 7 | Science | Unit 8 | Dissecting a Frog; Turkey Crossing; Undocumented /spire/2023/04/21/lagasse-2/ /spire/2023/04/21/lagasse-2/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2023 05:00:31 +0000 /spire/?p=3787 By Tom Lagasse   Grade 7 | Science | Unit 8 | Dissecting a Frog A sour fog permeates the entire second floor of St. Ann’s School and lingers with foreboding. Is this what death smells like? Several classmates gag and bolt. Under banks of cold fluorescent lights, Sister Theresa pries open the white plastic […]

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]]> By Tom Lagasse

 

Grade 7 | Science | Unit 8 | Dissecting a Frog

A sour fog permeates the entire second floor

of St. Ann’s School and lingers

with foreboding.

Is this what death smells like?

Several classmates gag and bolt.

Under banks of cold fluorescent lights, Sister Theresa pries

open the white plastic buckets.

Lifeless frogs are layered

one upon the other

skimmed from a pond and packed,

now preserved in pungent formaldehyde

for a stable shelf life.

The smells of pond or swamp or decay

are stifled, gone.

 

We work in teams

like pre-teen surgeons.

Sister Theresa gives each group:
 frog,
 tray,
 scalpel.

First: pin the legs, expose the soft underbelly, measure the length.

Then: record the data on a sheet of paper secured to a clipboard.

Next: I offer to make the first cut.

With the scalpel – so small and sharp – I slice

the thin epidermis, which peels away

like a plastic wrap stretched across a rack of ribs.

The second slice: the dermis.

We pin back the layers, exposing

the inside cavity,

like the workings of a clock or laptop:

here are the frog’s perfectly packed organs.

Sister Theresa tells us where to cut,
 what we see,
 how it works (or worked),

the seven systems orchestrating in concert.

It is not the flayed frog that makes my stomach churn, but thinking

Of the tuna fish sandwich I will have for lunch in forty-five minutes.

For once I am grateful for an empty stomach.

All these years later, I wonder:

instead of treating the frogs as things

to be sliced and studied,

wouldn’t we have learned more

taking a field trip

to the pond, removing our sneakers and

stepping into the cold black water,

where the primordial ooze cements us

to the pond floor,

where tadpoles dart around us,

where we feel the sunlight caress our skin,

and we listen

for the frogs’ mysterious croaking music.

A splash of pond water,

free from fog.

 

Turkey Crossing

Early morning. Mid-week. End of January. I am
driving to work and running on the fine edge of being

punctual or tardy. Punching the gas,
I race towards the bottom

Of the hill which spills into the fenced-in reservoir.
Speed downshifts to caution. In the middle

Of the road a single turkey, armored in acorn
brown and regal bronze plumage, confidently

Stands anchored, like a crossing guard, and
shepherds the flock of six across to safe passage

Into what is left of the wooded wild. This ancient way
interrupted by the pavement of human convenience.

 

Undocumented

The icy silence cracks.
The great horned owl’s
solitary call echoes
through the snow-
laden woods
meandering to
the stars.
Who needs to
record this truth,
to place it
on a Cartesian plane
or on a measure
to prove its worth?
Undocumented flurries
of song for audiences
increasingly alien to us.
We are not alone.

 

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]]> /spire/2023/04/21/lagasse-2/feed/ 0