In the Maine Woods

Multi-layered woodland

In northern New England the last glaciation bore down on the land so hard that no jagged peaks or fertile valleys remained; the whole area now consists of gently rounded mounds and valleys covered in mixed or coniferous forests, interspersed with lakes or intruded into by fingers of the sea. There is practically no soil and the rock is as hard as they come; mostly granite.

Each winter here seems like a mini Ice Age. In January you can see the sea begin to freeze at the edges and trees broken in half or uprooted by the sheer weight of ice in their branches. Lakes freeze so hard you can drive a truck on them. And the winters are really long.

The short Maine summer is a miraculous time. A great wealth of creatures and plants can be found during a short walk in the woods, or even a late evening drive home. Either way, you will need your bug-spray because the mosquitos here are particularly diligent in doing their work. More importantly, you need to guard against deer ticks that carry Lyme disease and nasty plants like poison ivy. But don't let me put you off; it's paradise.

Dogwood

The trees appear to grow out of bare rock and, even where there is some soil they tend to be shallow rooted. They are always falling down and this means that there is always space for more. The fight for light is constant, but even a small hole in the canopy can light up quite a large area below so these forests are typically multi-layered. Various oaks, cedars and pines dominate but there are hickories, elms and maples beneath them. Tall berry-bearing shrubs such as dogwoods form a layer below that and then on the ground there are ferns, mosses, lilies and other flowers still getting some light. Fungi don't need the light so you see more of them in the shady areas. Because the plants are not synchronised in their flowering and foliage cycles, some gain advantage by flowering early and others by flowering late. There is always something to find, even in the densest thicket.

Deer in the headlights

People barely scratch the surface to make a living here; an abandoned field turns back to forest very quickly and a wooden house rots away before your eyes. Often you come across a dry-stone wall in the middle of the forest. This will be a field or property boundary, probably from the 19th Century but it could be a hundred years older than that, or much younger. On some properties you can see the old house abandoned alongside its replacement. Gravestones from the 1800s are soon lost in the woods and their inscriptions are lost within decades to erosion and lichens.

Standing, dead timber is a feature of all truly wild forests and even of larger tracts of commercial forests where management is minimal. Dead "snags" provide you with the best chance of seeing birds but they also make homes for beetles, bats and even raccoons.

We stayed in the Maine Woods for just two weeks this year, and we fell in love. From our porch at all hours we heard a great number of calls and grunts that we could not identify. Humming birds and flycatchers paid us visits; evening safaris brought us skunks, raccoons, porcupines and white-tailed deer and we even had flying squirrels on our bird feeder. Out on the water we saw and heard loons, eiders and old-squaw ducks and in the sky we saw bald eagles and ospreys. We heard the two-note dog-whistle call of broad-winged hawks and the meow of red-tailed hawks above the canopy. In old fields nearby we saw bluebirds, tree-swallows, barn swallows and wild turkeys.

Wild turkey

Even the urban bits of Maine are overwhelmed by the woods that hem them in. In down-town Brunswick we saw bald eagles overhead and heard ravens calling. Wild turkeys sat sunning themselves on the rails tracks. In nearby Falmouth, a bear was seen this month.

These woods are rich in game but Maine is not a place for agriculture; there is simply no soil. So, where did it go? The prairie farms of Canada and the Mid-West lie on rich glacial soils, scraped from the northern "shield" but here in Maine the glaciers followed gravity down to the coast and dumped their sands, soils and gravels into the sea where they formed the huge barrier off the Gulf of Maine that we call George's Bank. This was bad news for farmers, but great for fishermen and whalers, at least for a time.

You can see more of our pictures here.