The Wrack

In 1989, after a few years away, my wife and I moved back to Maine. Just a few months earlier, the Maine Supreme Court had handed down its Moody Beach decision, confining public use of privately owned beach property to the colonial eras permitted uses of fishing, fowling and navigation. As someone with a profound love for the Maine coast, I read the courts decision with great personal and professional interest.

For most of my career, I have worked to conserve special places in Maine  to protect natural resources and to provide the public with access to the coast. Realizing that 2014 would mark 25 years since Moody, I organized a public lecture series so people could better understand and appreciate the legal issues surrounding public access and private ownership of coastal lands.

This summer and fall the Reserve hosted four evenings that involved all the key players from Moody and subsequent court cases dealing with coastal access in Maine. Each time, we filled the auditorium to capacity.

It was a great experience for all of us. Together we learned that Maine is not an anomaly; other states have access conflicts and must also contend with legal ambiguities over shoreline use and ownership.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 11/2/2014.

From reports, it sounds like this years midterm election is a doozy, money-wise: across the country, campaigns are spending record sums marketing their candidates and causes.? So I read, anyway: I do not watch broadcast TV, I have an ad blocker on my computer, and I only listen to satellite radio and MPBN. Voluntarily [and gratefully] deaf to the din from most of the marketing wars, I rarely hear about the latest advances in breakfast cereal, let alone the biannual election season onslaught.

About the only political advertising I do see are ads in newspapers (bless you, candidates, for feeding our starving print publishers), and outdoor campaign signs.

On September 26, 2013, the Wells Reserve invited a team of ghosthunters from New Hampshire, the Seeking the Unknown Realm Society, to spend a dark and eerie night poking through the basements, barns, attics and outbuildings of the Wells Reserve.

Accompanied by [skeptical] Reserve educators Suzanne Kahn, Kate Reichert, and Caretaker Ed, the ghosthunters deployed their electromagnetic field (EMF) detectors, infrared cameras, and flickery flashlights across "old Laudholm Farm."

What they found surprised and shocked them.

Three hundred and fifty million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea floated where you sit today. It was a warm, wet world, bathed in oxygen and soupy seas. The Carboniferous period was a time from which we get a lot of the fossil fuels we now use to power our society.

At the New England Estuarine Research Society Fall Meeting in Avery Point, Connecticut.

This article by Dan Marois, titled "Wells Reserve Seizes Golden Opportunities to Become 100% Solar-Powered by 2015," appeared in the October 2, 2014, issue of the Tourist News and is reprinted here with permission.

Wells Reserve at Laudholm has set a goal like no other organization in Maine.

We are well underway in securing solar power to run our operation, said Paul Dest, director of the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. Our goal is to become 100 percent self-sufficient on solar power.

For those who know the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, it is no surprise that it would chart such ambitious goals. It has a rich history of development and progress.

Bright and beautiful at the seashore today. People were out. A few of them even talked to Vivien Leigh, reporting from Wells. We know at least a dozen folks took pics and imagine many more will send to the contest.

Email your best one or two before October 15 at 11:59 pm to:

contest@gulfofmaine.kingtides.net

See the winning entries, finalists, and additional images from around the region.

Several of us scattered across estuaries stretching from Ogunquit to Kennebunk, documenting the sea's level and considering the consequences.

We'll start sharing our thoughts with a collection of photos from the day. Up top is Sue Bickford's shot of a submerged crab play set. Below will be&

1. Drakes Island Road by Nik Charov
2. Mile Road shoreline by Kristin Wilson
3. Mile Road, Wells by Sue Bickford
4. Webhannet Drive, Wells by Kristin Wilson
5. Welcome to Drakes Island by Nik Charov
6. Little River Estuary by Suzanne Kahn
7. Barrier Beach Overlook by Annie Cox
8. Ankle Deep by Sue Bickford
9. Laudholm Beach walker by Scott Richardson

Figure 1: A chart of the scientific consensus on climate change (97% of scientists agree that humans are driving global warming), and how much attention the minority opinion seems to receive in the media. Or is it a graph of the amount of America's wealth controlled by the top 3% (54.5%), vs. the bottom 97%?

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The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 10/5/2014.

Two weeks ago, my family and I were perched on the steps of the grand fountain in Columbus Circle, Manhattan, watching 300,000 people march past. They sang, they shouted, and they carried thousands of messages, all communicating one thing: world leaders, its time to do something about climate change. A week of action followed. Further protests spread around the world, corporations declared carbon reduction goals, and even presidents and prime ministers frankly spoke of addressing the need to revise a framework for negotiation.

Thats some progress, anyway.

The Yankee Woodlot Trail & Demonstration Forest was dedicated with a ceremonial watering of a newly planted American Chestnut seedling and a guided hike along the trail.