... this fall john's going to hike hadrian's wall, and awhile back he asked if i'd like to take a ride with him down to the quaint picturesque village of freeport where he planned to look for the "right" backpack ... monday morning he picked me up and we were off ... after shopping and a fabulous lunch at "pedro o'hara's" in brunswick, we headed out to wanderabit ... at first we thought to go to the "road you can only travel at low tide," but decided that was too long a drive ... then we searched the maine gazetteer for someplace along the coast we "hadn't visited" — right, no luck with that ... then john said, "let's see if we can find the butler head preserve on merrymeeting bay" ... soon, not all that far off route 1, surrounded by $20,000/acre land, we came upon this most remarkable place ...
... little things: i knew it was a pine cone, john taught me how to identify the tree from which it fell ... evidence of hard-working woodpeckers, i explained that while space shuttle astronauts undergo 3-5g's at liftoff and "the right stuff" fighter pilots black-out at 8-12g's, a woodpecker's brain suffers no damage as it undergoes 1000-1200g's twenty-two times per second ... !!! ... very unusual fact, this biological shock-absorber was extensively studied in the designing of the "lay-down" option mechanisms of several nuclear weapons ...
... they've been around for 300 million years or so, photographers have been snapping pictures of them since the very beginning of the art form ... this picture is the result of eight individual frames, each focused at a different point, being merged into a single image ...
... having lived upon dry land for perhaps two-billion years, the 20,000 known varients of lichens are of the very oldest of living things ... lichens are neither plant nor animal, they are algae or bacteria in symbiotic relationships with a fungus ...
... deep in the woods i came upon one of the earth's more recently evolved creatures, punctis magnis lens - inde trahit (cut me some slack, please, all i know of latin is what google translate tells me) ... otherwise known as the super-duper-lens-photographer ...
... it took a short hike, but we finally found a way to descend from the headland to the shore of merrymeeting bay, known to abenaki as chisapeak and quabacook ... of course, it's not really a "bay," but that's another story ... the polished flat surfaces of the incredibly hard bedrock contained these parallel gouges, all aligned ne-to-sw ... question: do you know what caused them ... ??? ...
... after walking past many broken or tipped over trees, we came to the conclusion that at some point in the recent past a tremendous blow-down must have occured on this point ...
... with more than two-million species of which only 120,000 have been described, i wonder if anyone has named this rather frightening looking fungus ... if not, i'd like to dub it fungi sanguinem crocodilum ...
... trees, plants, even the rocks, in time all will surrender to these little colonies ...
... we didn't know what this was, but since john posted a picture we've learned it's rattlesnake plantain, which is a traditional herbal medicine ...
... walking back to the car, in the middle of the road we came upon this seemingly exhausted little creature ...
... john, of course, thought to record the other somewhat exhausted creature laying in the dirt ...
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| COURTESY JOHN MEADER |
... upon picking it up john exclaimed, "i can feel it grabbing on" ...
... while he went up the hill to get the car i continued getting acquainted with the dragonfly ... the likes of these fascinating aerialists have been around for over three-hundred million years ... they have four different methods of flying, which they can combine as desired ... there has never been designed and flown either an airplane or helicopter that comes even close to performing as do dragonflies with great ease ...
... twelve individual frames, aligned, focused stacked ...
dragonfly and i
eye-to-eye
i don't think it can blink
but i swear it gave a wink
eye-to-eye
dragonfly and i
... as i worked on this picture, more than a half-hour effort, i should add, my initial thought was, "damn, what a lucky shot" ... as is my nature (read that "sometime curse"), however, i then began to reflect much deeper upon both the photographs i took and the day itself ... i decided that my pictures are from a day filled with luck because john and i made it so ...
... we took a little pause on the ride home ...
There is no glory in star or blossom
till looked upon by a loving eye;
There is no fragrance in April breezes
till breathed with joy as they wander by.
WILLIAM C. BRYANT