Trials and Tribulations

Running a sporting camp is a tough job. We constantly need to work on providing the best experience for our guests that we can. To do that, we sometimes find ourselves needing to tackle tough jobs like taste testing lots and lots of desserts. For instance, tonight it was Boston Cream Pie. We hadn’t made a Boston Cream Pie yet this summer, and we hadn’t yet tried the recipe we used. (It came from one of the Betty Crocker cookbooks, I believe.) It came out pretty well, although we all agreed that it could use 50-100% more cream filling and a chocolate top that maybe wasn’t quite as stiff as it was. (Picture a nice thick layer of chocolate fudge.) Luckily, we found another recipe that we can try, one which (I just found out) uses thirteen eggs for one 10” pie. I have a feeling that there’s going to be some more taste testing in the future. It’ll be tough, but it’s for a good cause.

Lowes Makes Me Sad

While I was out on the pond admiring autumn and taking pictures this morning, the folks at Lowes were apparently also celebrating... By assembling and displaying their stock of artificial, pre-lit, pre-flocked Christmas trees.

*sigh*

Saturday Morning Photos

I woke up this morning, and a hard frost reminded me that I only have a couple of weeks left in the woods. I'd been meaning to get out on the pond for some "early dawn" photos all summer, but I kept putting it off in favor of a better day, more sleep, and a bunch of other excuses. It's sad how easy it is to put off getting out there and doing something until you're faced with not being able to do it again.


The thermometer said just under 30 degrees, so I bundled up in flannel and polypropylene and a couple of other layers. I wished I'd brought gloves up north with me, but you can't always get what you want. The kayak was white and fuzzy with ice crystals, and the mist was swirling like the proverbial pea soup. It was marvelous.

By the time the sun rose, I couldn't feel my hands, but I was determined to get some decent pictures.


I apologize that you don't get the feel for the mist in these; picture an army of ghosts skirting across the water. (Maybe not quite the caliber of the army of ghosts in the Lord of the Rings movies, but my CGI budget is somewhat smaller than theirs.) Every time the kayak moved a few feet, the world around me changed completely as the mist marched on and the sun rose higher and peeked through different trees.


The leaves are a little lackluster this year. There are a lot of oranges and yellows, but not to many reds. The reds we do have are more of a salmon color; I attribute it to a late frost last spring, all the rain during July, and the warm September.

Jack Frost has always been a good friend of mine; I'm one of the few people I know who wishes winter lasted longer. There's just something humbling and quiet about a world asleep. All thoughts of shoveling snow aside, winter lets you pause, take stock of things, and take a rest yourself. It's cold, calm, and mysterious, and oh, how I miss it when I'm down in Virginia!

Jack, it's good to see you again.

Frontline: Poisoned Waters

I’ll start with this disclaimer. My alter ego is a stream and wetland restoration engineer in Virginia. (I guess that would make this ego the mild-mannered reporter.) As such, I’m very focused on the problems plaguing the Chesapeake Bay, water quality, and the environment in general. I also think everyone has the responsibility to, if not actively focus on these issues, at least be well-aware of them. Why? Because every individual thing we do to impact water has a cumulative effect on our whole society. Only air pollution trumps water pollution in its ability to spread so far and impact so many people and ecosystems.

Therefore, I would recommend everyone take some time and watch the Poinsoned Waters documentary. You can access it at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/. It’s broken up into thirteen chapters, each about 10 minutes long, so you don’t need a two-hour block of time.

I can only watch it between 2AM and 7AM due to our satellite connection, so I started with the last four chapters, which focused on Puget Sound in Oregon and Tysons Corner and Arlington in Virginia (right near where I work). Commentary to come later; for now, I need to change into my bright-red alter-ego cape and get some work done.

OOOooooo...

We finished up dinner pretty early tonight, around 6:30, and decided to go for a walk down to the new bridge at Pushineer to take a look at the leaves while there was still some daylight left. The two campsites at Pushineer were empty, which isn't terribly surprising on a Thursday after it rained all day Wednesday. (As a side note, it's incredibly dry up here; even with about 3 inches yesterday, there was almost no water flowing under the bridge.)

As we were walking back up to the main road, we heard a call that was sort of a half-howl, half yell. It didn't sound like a coyote (who remind me a little bit of yappy dogs); it was somewhat more clear like a wolf howl, but higher (maybe a high-B down to G "OOOooo.") It also wasn't sustained enough to be a true howl. I'd say each call lasted less than two seconds. We heard it five or six times from the hill in front of us, and it was answered at least twice from back by Deboullie and once from farther west.

Any ideas? Do we have wolves in our woods? Sophisticated coyotes? Ghosts? Mischevious campers? I'm sure we'll find out at some point, but right now I need to stop playing .wav files of wolf howls from the internet, because I think the cats are beginning to contemplate smothering me in my sleep.

Just Another Day...

We woke up to a beautiful morning today. The tree by the boathouse has turned red, and the ridges are starting to follow suit. (Gloria tells me that the trees out to town are in full swing; I’ll get to see them when I head out to pick Joe up from the airport Saturday.)

Jim is working on shingling the lodge gables. We’ve been looking at bare plywood for so long, the shingles are a welcome change! It’s not a fast process by any means, but we should be able to get all four gables done by the time we leave for the winter. Our list of “things that need to be done to the Lodge” is actually getting pretty short.


Gloria is canning some tomatoes and homemade bread-and-butter pickes. A few days ago, we did salsa, and she’s done jam several times this summer. It’s awesome being able to have the homemade versions of things that are usually bought in the store. (I’d love to have time to do it myself; I may have to juggle my winter priorities a little. Now that I’ve seen it done and had the mystery removed from the process, it shouldn’t be quite as intimidating.)

As for me, I’ll be working on some edits to a wetland mitigation plan down in Virginia, doing some website coding, and taking care of a few little tasks around here. We had an old (1949) handpainted map of the township over in Togue- it’s been there ever since I can remember. I always thought it was a shame it wasn’t in the Lodge, so we brought it over. We’re going to encase the painted portion in Plexiglas so folks don’t wear it out. (We had a large USGS map on the wall in the old Lodge- over the years, the constant attention wore a hole right where Red River should have been.)

So all told, it should be a pretty routine day here.

Comprehensive Land Use Plan Hearings

The Land Use Regulation Commission's (LURC's) Comprehensive Land Use Plan is, in essence, the playbook for Maine's Unorganized Territories. The Plan "guides the commission in developing specific land use standards, creating zoning boundaries and guiding development." (http://www.maine.gov/doc/lurc/reference_new1.shtml)

The Plan was adopted in 1976 and was last revised in 1997; since then, the Unorganized Territories have come under heavy pressure from many directions; fragmentation, the downturn in Maine's forest products industry, and the upturn in renewable energy have all played large roles in a changing landscape, for better or for worse. The new Plan will address these issues, among others.

The Plan is scheduled for revision in 2010; the draft version is complete and currently in the public comment period (September 9, 2009 to October 21, 2009, with an additional week for written rebuttal of prior comments). In addition, LURC is hosting three public hearings to solicit testimony from the public. Hearings will be held in Augusta (September 28), Bangor (September 29), and Presque Isle (September 30). Live audio broadcasts of the hearings will also be available for those who cannot attend in person.

The draft Plan, as well as more information on the hearings, can be found at http://www.maine.gov/doc/lurc/reference/cluprev/PublicHearings/september_public_hearings.html.

I would urge everyone to take a look at the 2010 Plan and get involved. Send LURC your thoughts. Testify at the hearing. Ask questions. More people looking at and critiquing the Plan will only make it stronger. If you think you're too small to matter, you've obviously never been in a dark room with a mosquito.

It's almost autumn

Today is the fall equinox. (Okay, tomorrow morning at 5:40 is technically the fall equinox. It's darn close.) So why in the world am I working from our front deck in shorts and a t-shirt? This summer has been pretty crazy, weather-wise. June was fine, but after I got back from Virginia at the beginning of July, it was nothing but rain, fog, and 50-degree mornings until the beginning of August. (Ironically, it finally cleared up about two days after I got back from Virginia again. Coincidence?)

Now, in late September, we're finally having July. It's about 85 degrees in the sun, the sky is blue, and there's no wind to speak of. I know there are still quite a few people who don't give credence to the concept of global climate change, but I'd feel more comfortable with this Indian Summer if we'd actually had summer in the first place.

What the Heck

If you're reading this, you probably already know who I am, and you probably already know a few things about the Red River Camps. Like the fact that my husband and I took them over this year. That we're rebuilding the main lodge that was hit by lightning last May. That we're working through our "maintenance and upgrades" list for the cabins, keeping up with the guests, and learning all those little things about running a Sporting Camp that you don't get a sense for just because you grew up there, thank you very much. Oh yeah, and we're working full time as engineers in our respective fields (computers and ecosystems) while we're at it.

So I figured that, with my copious amounts of spare time, I'll also keep the world updated on the view from T15-R9. What the heck.