The Wrack

Before the holidays came we hosted our eighth and final climate game?workshop at Litchfields Bar and Grill. The workshops, part of the?New England Climate Adaptation Project, simulat…

Compare these two snapshots from the South Cascade glacier official USGS long-term monitoring site in Washington state:

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 1/5/2014.

Quite possibly the best movie l saw in 2013 didnt open in 3,000 theaters, didnt have a Morgan Freeman voiceover, didnt follow a hobbit and his ring.

As 2013 comes to a close, so too does the Reserve's pilot preschool story hour program for Head Start centers in Biddeford and Sanford. In October, November, and December, children and their parents visited to listen to a reading of Giving Thanks. This beautiful story written by Jonathan London tells of a father and son who take a walk in the woods, giving thanks to the trees, birds, insects, mushrooms, and all the other wonders of nature they observe. The words and illustrations on each page convey the importance of appreciating and respecting those with whom we share this world.

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The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 12/15/13 ?(and may also appear, with other goodies, in members' mailboxes shortly...):

Normally, I do not talk to dead opossums. But since Id watched this one keel over right in front of me, I felt I had to say something.

Last week, nearly 60 community members filled Mather Auditorium to learn from visiting speaker Dr. Drew Barton, professor of biology at the University of Maine at Farmington. He used his new award-winning book, The Changing Nature of the Maine Woods, as a platform to speak about how Maine's forests have changed over time and how they are predicted to change into the future with global warming. Below are some highlights from my notes!

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Fire fascinates, so it's hard to resist a catching up with this "old" news in December.

Worn down after many years, the farmhouse north face gets new siding and a fresh set of steps.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 11/24/13:

Many of the staff of the Wells Reserve at Laudholm were in West Virginia this past week for the annual conference of the 28 national estuarine research reserves. Researchers, educators, conservationists, land managers and even evangelists like me pulled ourselves away from our coastal homes to share ideas, hammer out new projects for 2014, and do some good old-fashioned colleague schmoozing.

I flew out of Portland on a sparkling, "unlimited visibility" Monday afternoon. My Southwest flight passed three miles above the Wells Reserve, giving me the rare opportunity to get a live bird's eye view of our little corner of the Maine coast. Looking down, I smiled quietly over how beautiful and tranquil the place looked.

In early November, we wrapped up the last of our fall school programs here at the Reserve. The season was packed with field trips, with students from all over visiting to learn about our estuaries, plankton, water quality, forest ecology, and much more. We couldn't provide these programs without the dedication of our enthusiastic crew of volunteer docents who lead them, so thank you, thank you to all of them! Cong…