May in Maine

 Spring often feels like it takes forever to arrive here, compared to the rest of the lower 48.

Rains first appear in late February but, as if someone were aggressively cranking the faucets in a shower back and forth, it snows again, then kind of melts, then rains, then snows..... it goes on for weeks. In March, the snowdrops sprout, the snowpack mostly melts away with a couple of rains, but then it snows a little and then rains again, and with the last fleeting sleeting of frozen precip falling in early-to-mid April. Anyone here who puts their snow shovels away into storage before Tax Day is a fool.

Daffodils sprout up. Crocuses too. But where are the buds on the trees? Not here yet. Temperatures rise to the mid-40s during the day, then back toward freezing at night. It's April still, and people are still lighting their stoves at night to take the edge off. I keep light gloves in the pockets of my fleece, and a tuque within easy grasp in case I need it when I head out the door. The days are chilly. 

But as April shifts to May the dial noticeably starts to turn. The evening sunlight stretches past dinnertime now, and I can put away my thick winter-gauge pants in the back of the closet. The grass is getting fairly green but still the leaves on the trees have yet to flesh out. As the sun sets, I can see the glow through the woods on the west side of my house more easily than I will in the summer and early fall.

Then, finally, the peepers announce themselves. As twilight fades into night, their chirpy whistles pierce through the dark from the ponds and marshy wetlands of my neighbors. The rains are more frequent and heavy now, and the frogs and salamanders love it. I walk down the road in the murky mist, headlamp beaming from my forehead, and find them crossing the black asphalt like jumping leaves or waddling short sticks. If they have not already been flattened, I help them across, the whistles a few yards away almost deafening as the call of timeless amphibious migration propels them forward, out of my hands into the watery reeds. 

The days get warmer. I open the windows of my car more as I glide down the road, gleefully and finally free of the wintery slush that forced me to slow down. The temperatures climb above 60 and, if the sun is out for the day, it almost feels like summer's glory has fully returned, bringing with it some out-of-state plates and reopening roadside lunch takeout stands. And I already have seen some fog out in the cove.

I get out my flip flops and keep them by the door, though I can go outside barefoot if I want to. I test out the lawnmower to make sure it still works, and in my eagerness I clean up the gas grill, even if I won't use either for another week. Forsythia is blooming and plants are coming up in the garden now. We'll have to get on that pretty soon.

But no lilacs yet, and we'll have to fight our way through 3 weeks of biting black flies before the spring flowers arrive in full force. And still no leaves, though the green buds on the branches are visible now. And the peepers are still chiming at night. 

As much as I wanted February to fly by, now that we're here I want May to slow down. It's not too hot to need the shade of the trees just yet, and I'm good with the flowers we have so far. It's a sweet spot where winter is once again a memory but the heat of summer's creep from further south has yet to drive throngs of tourists and short-timers into our midst; the worst of those seasons are not upon us, for the time being.  

My window is open, yet I see nothing in the dark of night outside. The birds have gone to sleep, but the frogs not yet. I want to be awake, to feel the cool breeze through the screen and smell the hint of ocean and evergreens. Still, I am tired, and also feel the temptation to close my eyes and nod off by the window. And if I do it soon and get enough rest, I might wake with the dawn and the birds looking for their breakfast in my yard.

Orphan piano poses transport problem on remote Maine Island

NOTE: This story was originally published in 2002.

FRENCHBORO, Maine - In the film "The Piano" a 19th century Scottish woman, played by actress Holly Hunter, arrives by ship in New Zealand on an isolated beach and is left there with her belongings and her daughter. Her most prized possession, a piano, is left on the shore as her new husband insists it is too cumbersome to carry to their home through the forested, hilly terrain.

Technology has improved since the period portrayed in the film, but a similar problem exists today on Great Duck Island, a 262-acre piece of land located seven miles out to sea off Mount Desert Island.

There, a piano sits unplayed and nearly forgotten in a dilapidated building whose owner wants the structure torn down. A man who owns a seasonal home on Great Duck wants to have the piano but, with no roads connecting the properties and no boat dock on the island, there is no easy way to transport the instrument to his home.

No one lives year round on Great Duck, the vast majority of which is a nature preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy. The island is more than a mile long, about half a mile wide, and has few buildings on it. At the southern tip is a lighthouse owned by College of the Atlantic but operated by the Coast Guard. At the northern end, in an old log cabin built from trees on the island, sits the upright piano.

The conservancy, which owns the building, would like to demolish the structure to make sure it does not pose a threat to the safety of incidental visitors, according to Doug Radziewicz, the conservancy's Down East preserves steward.

"It's a beautiful building," Radziewicz said last week. "It was well put together, but it has deteriorated so much that repairs would be astronomical. It is a hazard right now."

The cabin, and a few smaller ones on the property, were built by George Cloutier, a psychologist who bought the island in 1963, Radziewicz said. Cloutier opened a Gestalt therapy clinic on the island in 1975 and had the piano brought out to Great Duck for the enjoyment of the clinic's visitors. The piano was left behind when Cloutier sold his property to the conservancy in 1985, according to Radziewicz.

Most of the contents of the cabin have been removed but because of its size the piano remains in the building. The conservancy does not want to destroy the piano with the building, Radziewicz said, nor does it want to keep the instrument, he said.

"We have no use for the piano," Radziewicz said. A piano tuner has inspected the instrument and determined that it is in "OK shape," he said, though it could stand to have its finish restored. He added that he does not know who manufactured it or how much it is worth.

A Massachusetts doctor who knew Cloutier and owns 5 acres on Great Duck would like to have the piano, Radziewicz said. Dr. Rich Borofsky declined to be interviewed, but according to Radziewicz the summer resident has the right of first refusal to the instrument.

"We're happy to let him have it," Radziewicz said, "but there's a lot involved in getting the piano from one point to another."

Andrew Peterson, COA's marine superintendent, said dense forest separates Borofsky's house, which is also near the island's northern tip, from the conservancy cabin. The college keeps a tractor with a trailer in tow on the island to help maintain the lighthouse and the other buildings on the 12 acres it owns, Peterson said. Though there are some paths wide enough for the tractor between the conservancy buildings and the college property, no such paths lead to Borofsky's place, he said.

Carrying the piano there by hand would be a formidable task, he added.

"The thing must weigh 600 pounds or so," Peterson said.

Radziewicz said that Leach's storm petrel, one of the protected species of birds that summer on the island, burrows underground to build its nests. Carrying a 600-pound instrument across anything but a well-established path could pose a crushing threat to the birds and cause the people carrying it to trip, he said.

"We would not alter the landscape in order to get the piano from our property to [Borofsky's] property," Radziewicz said. Because of the seasonal presence on the island of the petrels, black guillemots, bald eagles and other birds, the nature preserve on the island is closed to visitors each year from Feb. 15 to Oct. 15, he said.

Peterson, who travels to the island by boat in the summer and hitches rides on a Coast Guard helicopter in the winter, said there is no good place to land a boat on Great Duck.

"The island is too exposed to build those kind of facilities," Peterson said. It might be possible to get the piano onto a barge beach near the conservancy cabin, but there is no place by Borofsky's house where the barge could safely unload the piano, he said.

"You'd have to pick optimal weather [to even try a barge landing on the island]," Peterson said. "There aren't too many days where you could get a wheeled vehicle ashore."

It is more feasible to transport the piano by barge to the mainland than it is to take it to the doctor's house by water, he said. A cargo-capable helicopter is another option, but they tend to be expensive, he added.

Because of the lack of activity on Great Duck in the winter, the piano does not have to be moved anywhere within the next couple of months. One option is for the college to transport the piano in the spring to one of its buildings at the southern tip of the island so that the conservancy can dispose of the cabin, Peterson said.

In the meantime, the parties will continue to work together to determine the piano's fate.

"We shall see," Radziewicz said.

Acadia visits topped 3.96 million in 2024

                           

Acadia National Park had its third-busiest year ever in 2024, according to the National Park Service.

The park had an estimated 3.96 million visits last year, according to park service data. That total topped the 3.88 million visits it had in 2023, but trailed the 3.97 million visits it had in 2022 and the 4 million visits it had in 2021.

Before 2021, the park’s highest number of visits in any calendar year was 3.5 million visits in 2017. Since 2016, when both the park and the National Park Service celebrated their 100th anniversaries, visitation to the coastal national park has soared above 3 million visits per year.

The exception is 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited the number of visits to 2.67 million. Since then, the number of people visiting the park has increased even further, as people have avoided crowds more and sought to spend more time outside.

This past October, when conditions in the park were fairly dry and balmy, the park had a record number of visits for that month with nearly 568,000.

The annual crush of visitors, however, has turned into a divisive issue in Bar Harbor, which is the primary service town for park visitors and has a population of only 5,000 people. 

Despite objections from the local tourism industry, Bar Harbor voters have adopted limits on vacation rental properties and twice have decided to greatly reduce the amount of cruise ship traffic that the town draws each summer and fall.

Town officials also are exploring the possibility of imposing limits on hotel development in order to ease the pressure on residents, and on public infrastructure and services.