Maine Walking Tour For Mid-January

Since yesterday was sunny and warm, we decided that it would be wise to get out of the house for a while. Ever since the arrival of this ice, we’ve been kind of trapped. You can’t really walk on the stuff. It’s just too slippery. Even after the application of sand.

We made it almost to the top of the road when we had to turn around. One of us was going to fall. The odds weren’t favorable – we had made it that far and pushing it wouldn’t have done any good. Especially since I had planned on crawling through the snow to the back of our property later on. I wanted to see if the big river was overflowing. To let you know, it wasn’t. It looked like the river on any other day, except it was dirtier because of all the ice and snow.

The snow, then rain, then snow, then rain again has made it extraordinarily difficult to walk through the woods. Laura and I left at the same time. She stopped for a while to take some pictures (below) and I plowed ahead to the back of the property. After my river disappointment, I plowed back and told her the trip wasn’t worth it. And by that point, I was sweating. If I haven’t mentioned already, sweating in the Winter is horrible. There’s not much you can do once your shirt is wet. If you take off your jacket at that point, it’s too cold. If you put your jacket back on, it’s disgusting. The trick it to not sweat in the first place. At the first sign of heat, remove your hat and jacket. Keep that temperature steady. One of these days I’ll follow my own advice.

When I came back, I decided to relocate my chainsaw and some gas mixture to the back shed. That’s where I do all my cutting, so walking it back and forth each time is pretty silly. And since I had the chainsaw so close, I decided to start cutting and splitting some wood, which made me sweat even more. But, I got another row done. Not bad for just a few minutes of chainsaw/axe work. I’m almost up to a full cord.

Here are the pictures of our walk yesterday. Laura is responsible for all these. I didn’t have my camera on me so all I was able to do was to model for one of them. Enjoy.

This is the very bottom of our road. They sanded pretty heavily here and the sun hits it well, so it was the safest area along the entire road. The ATV in the background belongs to a kid who lives pretty far up. He rides it down in the morning, parks it and gets on the school bus. After school, he hops on it and rides it home. Only in Maine.

This is a quick pic of the horses in the sanctuary across the street. I think they’re enjoying the sun because we’ve heard them whinny on a number of occasions.

I believe this is woodpecker tree damage. I guess there are insects in there, otherwise the woodpecker wouldn’t have wasted his time. There were two other trees we found that had the same damage, which was pretty interesting to look at.

Where there are deer prints, there are droppings. We have some pretty decent deer activity on this property. I guess all the water is pretty handy for the deer. I found a few tracks in the snow all the way back to the river. Some marks were larger than others.

Just a quick picture of the stump of one of the Cherry trees I took down in the woods. The lengths of wood are still laying under the snow. Right after I took this tree down, it snowed and I haven’t been able to get them out. It somewhat annoys me to know there is wood that needs splitting that I can’t split.

I’ve always been somewhat amazed at how well moss grows through the Winter. For years, I’ve watched this stuff retain its softness on the coldest days.

We have a number of wild blueberry bushes here, and I think all of them have a disease called, “Witch’s Broom.” From what I can gather, this is caused by the bushes being too close to pines or something like that. I’m not as sure of that as I am that it’s really difficult to get rid of. The previous owner told us that the bush usually stops producing berries and the Witch’s Broom takes over. What a shame.

We have ice on top of snow all over the place. If it were totally frozen, it wouldn’t be that bad. But having it half frozen, half slush makes it horrible to walk on. You go a few steps on top and then fall through. Not very good for the spine when you suddenly fall down a foot. It’s sort of like walking off that bottom step you didn’t know was there.

The water has somewhat broken through parts of the ice in the stream. Now, we have water running beneath the ice and above the ice. It’s making for some pretty high water levels.

Laura found this horseshoe hanging in a tree yesterday. I never noticed it, but I think it’s a pretty cool picture.