Tithing for conservation, a tangible response to climate change.
They lie down next to each other in a companionable sort of way, like two lichened old gravestones in an ancient peninsular cemetery, “Tamarack, April 20, 2018, her relict, Hemlock, December 18, 2023.”
One has lain there for five years or more, her branches more or less gone, her trunk moss-covered and softened in places. She shapes herself to the undulations of the earth beneath her. The remnants of her root ball long indistinguishable bits of duff. Her friend, more recently fallen, bears the scar where her tap root was cleaved, her root ball still smells of freshly splintered wood and raw earth. The fungi have not yet begun their work in earnest.
Nearby, their manmade companions, an old boathouse and a small tilted fish house have survived another tide. The wrack line pushed up into the shrubbery is littered with artifacts of older times scrapped by the storm from the very bottom of Middle Bay. Lots of old glass and rusted cans of a great age accompanied a Clynk bag’s load of more recently abandoned containers: twisted tea, white claw, and the ubiquitous woke Bud Lights.
The eradication of iconic structures like the Five Islands Cook House or the Fish Houses at Willard Beach stir contradictions. Destruction porn caught on phones accompanied with impromptu narration is compelling. The ruinous power of water captivates. On the other hand we brood on the acceleration of a once slow moving cataclysm. Even hide-bound ideologues wonder what is next? Their subdivision? Their livelihood? Their insurance policies?
The postcard tidy man made structures at the shore line contrast with the messiness of the woods. Blow down stays down. Dead trees stripped of bark stand as long as they can endure against woodpeckers and other boring critters. There is no cleaning and raking of the forest floors. The only cutting is minor to clear trails and eliminate widow makers.
This is how I first joined the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust. In 2020, I spent inordinate time in land trusts traveling to Blue Hill or Castine solely to check out some new trail in the woods. I picked up the habit of sending along ten dollars as a sort of gate fee. After a storm several years ago brought down some trees, I walked Skolfield Shores Preserve and wondered at the costs of trail maintenance. I sent my $10 with a note suggesting they use it on a can of gas for their crew’s chainsaws. They called my bluff and made me a member.
Why do conservationists, and other land managers, leave the standing deadwood and the blowdown?
It provides habitat for all manner of living creatures. As the insects, moss, lichen and fungi move in it provides food for others. The standing wood serves as look out spots for crows and birds of prey to scout from; others hide out, store food, and find shelter. Along with the moss, lichen, and fungi, microorganisms return vital nutrients to the soil. Blow down becomes nurse logs for their progeny and other plant species looking to exploit the new gap in the canopy.
Succession doesn’t just take place on HBO
Phototropism is thought to provide plants with an effective means for increasing foraging potential, maximizing photosynthetic opportunities. Positive phototropism is the bending of stems and leaves toward the light, particularly toward specific wavelengths. Negative phototropism is the movement of other plant organs, like roots, away from light and presumably toward water and soil nutrients. In short, phototropism s a survival mechanism.
Foraging in this case is an excellent word and not my own. I like it because it gives sentience to the yellow birch, like a dryad.
Three winter storms in six weeks trashed the coastline and left river front communities and businesses reeling. Just this past summer we watched the same dreadful weather borne watery power leave communities in Vermont, and to a lesser extent, Western Maine, bereft and devastated, dependent on bottled water as they pled for federal money to put roads back in place, buildings back on foundations, and to restore public water.
At the moment it seemed that there was a common explanation as to why what happened in Vermont wouldn’t happened here in our part of Maine. You see it was the hilly and mountainous communities drained by narrow gorges and narrow valleys. Picturesque and quaint, these gorges caused all the damage by magnifying the force of the heavy rains. Vermont which used to be immune to major flooding, tornadoes and other perils that afflict the middle parts of the country was different than most of Maine. Vermont had been a lot like Maine—able to endure cold weather and snow because even at their worst winter storms they generally leave structures intact, roofs on and basements dry.
If Vermont was special Maine was even more special.
Until, that is, our winter wonderlands changed. Atmospheric rivers dumped biblical rains. And we recalled that while Maine has fewer gorges and canyons than Vermont, we have tides, and tidal surges.
Where we should have had a blizzard, a snow day, and fresh powder on the piste and in the woods, we had a deluge. What should have been snowpack to replenish aquifers in spring instead scoured the shores of vegetation and livelihoods. We watched the water rising, sand bags being deployed, and our post card scenes disappearing before our eyes.
Like wandering around outdoors, making photographs is a reflective pastime. I find a consonance with natural objects and creatures when I see them through the lens, even rocks in the mud or fallen tree trunks. It brings me closer—it may be just a construct, my imagination—but I feel it. I can be a part of it. The same is true when I look through the lens at a goal being scored, a competitor being chased down the back-stretch, a victory celebration, or the intensity of eyes in completion.
For an instant I understand it.
Perhaps the land trust needed a few cans of gas because the trails were impassable for some folks. There were dangerous branches or whole trunks hanging like a guillotine over trails. Some maintenance would be done so more could enjoy the restorative power of the outdoors. Concrete thinking like this leads me to spells of abstract thinking.
Reflecting on climate change, my role in it and my reaction to it, the only tangible way for me to engage in climate advocacy—without suffering the frustrations of engaging with government—is through contributing directly to land conservation. I feel it is the only real thing I can do. The rest is just noise.
There is plenty of science on carbon sequestration in forests, the importance of salt marshes as ocean levels rise, and the role connectivity between parcels plays in the preservation of species diversity.
But more important for me is the resilience of that yellow birch.
Ripped from the ground when its much larger coniferous neighbor fell some years ago, left clinging to the apex of a disk of earth circumscribing the fallen trunk and torn roots, the nymph found its trunk, just a sapling at the time, perpendicular to the sun. Its own root system, extirpated from all it had known, flailing in the air. But its roots pivoted ninety degrees toward the earth, while its stem lengthened cells on the side away from the sun and bent its spindly stem ninety degrees to reach the light.
Now its trunk is five inches in diameter and the tree rises twenty feet above the edge of the old root ball. It may not reach old age; its weight may surpass the capacity of what earth remains in the root ball of its host.
But for the time being it is a tree, foraging.
Last fall during senior portrait season one of the land trusts put out a call on their social media channels. They had noticed the abundance of photos shot on their properties and asked for a #hashtag, just a little hat-tip to the organization that keeps all these beautiful spots. Spots so memorable that a 17 year old can imagine themselves 40 years hence saying that’s who I was and that’s where I wanted to be.
10% of any fee for portraits—senior photos or any location portraits—will be contributed to the land trust or any public entity that manages the property where the photos are made.
