tamarack

Today's mid-60s dews take it out of CoC for me, but it's looking like things dry out during the day tomorrow.

Reminds me of a parable in Luke's Gospel. Paraphrasing it very loosely, a man has crop yields too great to fit in his barns, so he decides to tear them down and build bigger. He thinks that then he'll be all set for years and years. But God says, "Thou fool!" and says the man's life ends that very night, "and whose will be your goods now?"

More likely the owners didn't want to be associated with the poor folks who can only afford $5 million mansions.

The Coplin address piqued my curiosity but when I read about Beaver Mountain Lake I knew they had the wrong township - Coplin is next to Stratton and north from Sugarloaf. To see that lake from there would require X-ray vision to penetrate Crocker and Redington Mountains. It's Sandy River Plt, as your earlier post noted. Looks like a nice spot though the driveway seems steep. (And both Coplin and Sandy River share the 04970 ZIP with Rangeley.)

"Safe" in this context is relative. The science says that wearing masks greatly reduces the chances of getting COVID-19 but I've not heard any science that says it totally eliminates the chances. Sitting in a poorly ventilated room (typical of many small-town voting places) for 8 hours while hundreds of people file by multiplies the "greatly reduce[d]" chances. Volunteers in our town are generally dedicated and will be there, but reducing the number of folks parading past the registry table can only help. Edit: 'Berg nicely describes the "lock the gate behind me" syndrome.

Depends on how one does it. When "phase 2" arrived in June, meetings of up to 50 people were okayed, with masks and/or distancing. Our pews are tape-blocked such that differing family groups sit 6+ feet apart and families with younger kids view the service remotely from a downstairs room to ensure <50. We do sing hymns, but those with louder voices (like me) mask up to sing. Choir has not yet resumed - we had hoped to present our Easter program for the church's 40th anniversary in June - no go - so now were looking at December and doing it as the Christmas program as the material works for either holiday. I'm not real confident it will go completely, maybe just the spoken parts w/o the choir. Just common sense.

With the new town hall just beginning to be built and no sizable place in town to vote, a social-distanced queue of more than 10 people will have most standing outside. November can be messy, even during the 1st week. Because of that and our ages, my wife and I will vote absentee but hand-deliver our ballots before the crowds arrive on election day. Killington folks gone wild And it may be just beginning. Less than 30 of the 65 guests at the infamous Millinocket wedding early last month got the virus, but with secondary/tertiary infections the total related positives is probably approaching 140, with 66 in the York County jail alone. When it was 54 the cases included 19 staff and 35 prisoners. Yikes!

The arborist bill might be more than what it cost (in 2020 $$) to build the pool.

Despite the SNE damage from Isaias, it was still a Cat 1, so the season to date might be called "Laura and the dozen dwarves."

Dec 1992 was just wind at my (then) home in Gardiner, nary a flake. PWM had 2" so I doubt IZG got much. Feb 1978 dumped 22" at the Farmington co-op, only 2" where I lived in Ft. Kent. We were marking timber near the south shore of Eagle Lake about 15 miles south of FK and had S- on an eerily steady north wind about 25 mph. I can't remember another significant wind that had so few gusts. In my 10 years in northern Maine we had only one decent snowfall that also tagged both CHI and NYC, the April 1982 blizz. Anything else that got both sites at 40-41N invariably kept heading east.

August numbers: Avg. max: 74.61 0.30 BN. Warmest was 86 on the 11th, coolest 55 on the 29th - tied with 8/29/09 for month's coolest max. Avg. min: 53.52 0.81 AN. Coolest was 38 on the 28th, mildest 66 on the 12th. Avg. mean: 64.06 0.25 AN. Was running +3 thru the 1st 2 weeks. Warmest mean was 74 on the 12th, coolest 52 on the 29th. Precip: 1.79" 2.18" BN. Greatest one-day: 0.90" on the 29th. Had 0.71" from Isaias on the 4th-5th, thus 0.18" for the other 28 days. 1 TS, tied for lowest Met summer: Avg. temp: 64.45 1.26 AN. 4th warmest of 23. Warmest: 65.78 in 1999; coolest 61.24 in 2009. Hottest day: 90 on 6/20; coolest: 27 on 6/1. Precip: 11.82" 1.37" BN. 8.33" (70%) fell June 28-July 14. Wettest was 23.82" in 2009 (of course), driest was 7.24" in 2002. Greatest one-day: 1.98" on 6/30

I can't fault you for disagreeing. BOX depth reached 31" in Jan 1996 while 150 miles north we never got past 28, as the big KU was a fringe job there. That was somewhat AN for max depth in Gardiner but peanuts compared to BOX's anomaly. My "affection" for deep pack was born in my Fort Kent years. The monster pack in 1961 in NNJ is a strong memory, but that winter was almost the only incidence of significant pow-pow. Usually the snows fell on bare ground there, or on a bit of whitish crust. In the years once I became interested in snow records (began about 1956) until moving to BGR in 1973, my area in NNJ averaged 50-55", which is about 15" above the long-term average, and the Feb 1961 storm is the only one that brought a 10"+ storm atop a 10"+ pack. Even the snowier locations in NW Jersey at 1000+ elevation did that only the one time. Where I live now it occurs in more than half our snow seasons, even this past BN one though barely - the 10.3" on 3/23-24 fell atop a 10" pack.

The classic big snow/no retention was 1995-96. At Gardiner the snow got to 28" deep 2nd week of January then 3 torch deluges cut it back to 5". In Farmington, 40" went down to 8" - takes some incredible thaws to drop the foothills pack by 32" in January. Feb saw the Gardiner pack go up to 12" then squash back to just 2. 16" in early March again lifted the depth to 20" and 17 days later it was all gone. 23" in one April week produced only 21 SDDs. For my 13 winters in Gardiner that winter is 30" snowier than any other but only 5th in SDDs, way behind 86-87, 89-90 and 93-94. Fun watching the stuff fall, not fun slogging thru the slush a few days later.

Actually quite a lot has changed since "Paper Plantation" though perhaps the legislative clout less than most things. Back then most of the large landowners also had mills; Seven Islands and Prentiss & Carlisle were the major exceptions. The "earthquake" began when Great Northern sold its 2 mills and 2.2 million acres (about twice the next largest landholding) to Georgia Pacific in 1992. Over the next 15+ years the land/mill vertical structure essentially disappeared, with the land ownership going to Timber Investment Management Organizations (first was John Hancock, deciding that their funds would earn more that way than in the stock market) and Real Estate Investment Trusts. Whatever one thought of how IP, Scott, GNP managed the forest, those companies' biggest investments were the mills so they managed the woodlands for the long term. The newer entities generally looked at a 10-year horizon (plus/minus) and would often cash out at the end of that period, with establishment of desirable forest regeneration beyond their investment time and thus not on their radar. The land still grows trees but a short financial horizon is unlikely to produce a diverse forest.

What I'd like (as would anyone here) would be another Feb 1969,when Farmington got 43" over 3 days that built the pack to 84" - was the state's tallest pack on record until 2017 when 94" was measured at Chimney Pond. Pales next to Pinkham Notch's 164" after that same '69 event., undoubtedly the most east of the Rockies. Mansfield is 2nd, 149" that same winter.

Those plus red and sugar complete the eastern natives (and some taxonomists break the latter into sugar and black maples.) Whether any of the exotics look like that I don't know - the dendrology class didn't get into those.

In the early 1970s, Ralph Nader's group published a book called "The Paper Plantation" which portrayed Maine's mill owners as acting like antebellum slave-holding plantations in the south. ironically, the stumpage contract the authors chose as one evidence of logger "bondage" was one from Seven Islands, which then had no mills - Maine Hardwoods in Portage was 30 years in the future. Pretty standard contract stating the responsibilities of landowner and logger, including that the landowner had full right to determine which trees would be cut. Not sure why that would be objectionable.

Their form is like those of the maples but smaller, and no doubles - often there are a few twins that make it to the ground attached. The asymmetrical shape is like seeds that once were part of a pair, however. Single samaras like ash have the seed in the middle. Boxelder? One of the understory maples, striped/mountain? What's growing near where you find them? Those types of seeds usually wind up within 100' or less of the parent unless there are strong winds. The Dec 1992 monster was just wind in Gardiner, where we lived at the time, and the abundant white ash seeds were everywhere.

Maybe Nov-Dec 2018? The cold began to take over 2 weeks into October and storminess for the last week or so. Nov brought storms of 4", 6" and 7.1" - we've had only 7 snows of 4"+ in 22 Novies and 2018 is alone in having more than one - then Dec laid a rotten egg. Farther south, NYC had its earliest 6"+ snowfall, more than a week earlier than the next one, then had "T" for Dec and 3.7" total for Jan-Feb before bagging 10" in early March..

Given the 4x4x2 dimensions, he's charging the equivalent of $640/cord. Probably hopes unknowing flatlanders (meaning, anyone not from where he's from) won't know anything about firewood prices.

Both the bridge and the camps/farms were history when we moved to Fort Kent in 1976, though I think it was about then when Robinson Lumber salvaged the bridge steel. At one time the settlement at Seven Islands was sufficiently large and prosperous that, looking back in the late 1970s, the state held that the township (T13R15) had once been organized. If so, the 1,000-acre public lot would have gone to the town and with de-organization, back to the state. The PL was unlocated with the timber and grass rights long since sold to the Pingree heirs - forests managed by Seven Islands Land Company. If that org/de-org had indeed occurred, the Pingrees would've owed the state one-23rd of all timber revenue for the years following the organization of the town. At first 7-I was told to cease harvesting on 13-15, at a time when spruce budworm was killing millions of trees. Instead, the budworm-salvage revenues from there were placed in an escrow account pending the result of research on possible organization. The state-Pingree trade in 1984 made it moot, with a bunch of public lots both located and unlocated going to the Pingrees and large acreage going to the state, including what is now Parks and Lands' Eagle Lake and Richardson tracts.

The Depot-to-Round Pond fracas was nearly 40 years ago. You're the first person I've read about on this forum who worked in that country, making me a bit curious. Used to be no thru roads from the Blanchet Road to Reality west of the St. John, so I've not seen that burntland country.

Probably less hazardous than that but still risky, Public Lands had new cabs placed by helicopter atop 3 existing fire towers in northern Maine, Allagash Mountain (near Allagash Lake), Round Pond Mountain and Deboullie. Folks on the towers had to help guide the placements and do the fastening - glad I wasn't one of them. When the next Parks and Lands newsletter comes out, probably next week, it will include pics. The Round Pond tower has an interesting (and kind of silly) history. Some users of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway objected vigorously to seeing that manmade object as they crossed the pond. So Maine Forest service was tasked to get rid of it and did so the easy "redneck" way - remove the hold-down bolts on one side, place a stick of dynamite next to those 2 corners, easy-peasey. Of course, the next year other AWW travelers said that it was terrible that a piece of history had been destroyed by those dumb state people. That resulted in the no-longer-used Depot Mountain tower on T13R16 (a border twp 25 miles to the west) being carefully disassembled and moved to Round Pond, at slightly more expense than was needed to blow the original tower off the summit. (There's an old fable about a man trying to please everybody but ending up by pleasing nobody.)

We had 2 days in Iceland on the way to our time in Norway, though we never got farther than the Golden Circle tour. Spectacular scenery but in a different way than Norway and this forester would chafe at the scarcity of trees taller than 5 feet. On that GC tour the host said, "If you're lost in an Iceland forest, stand up!"

Started out interesting, with my warmest May daily mean since moving here in 1998, followed 3 days later by my coldest June daily mean. Then we touched 90 later that month, only the 2nd time since 2005. The late-June/early-July rains were gratifying but managed to arrive without a single decent light show - only one strike within 2 miles. Since then - mehhhhhhh!