Geology 101 opened my eyes. A childhood spent in a Chicago suburb didn’t spark a lot of curiosity about the world under my feet. The streets were predictably gridded, the trees that lined them were evenly spaced, the lawns were mowed and flat, oh so flat. Though, of course, there was Lake Michigan, the one natural feature my fellow townsmen couldn’t tame, though they tried their best.

Great steel barriers – breakwaters – jutted out from the shore, purportedly to hold in the nice, soft sand that made lying on the beach so pleasant. I ought to know, as I spent my teenage summer afternoons alternating between a dive into the chilly water and racing back to my towel, toasting under the sun, gossiping and giggling with my friends.

The last time I visited my hometown the trees that arched over the streets were gone. They were elms and were probably dying, unbeknownst to me, even as I heedlessly made way through their cool tunnel to and from the beach.

The beach itself, last time I looked, was gone too, replaced by a narrow, gray and rocky band. It must have been winter, because Lake Michigan was gray too, the dismal, gloomy look it gets under an overcast sky in February. I suppose the sand had migrated back where it had come from, breakwaters be damned, those ugly barriers the only familiar feature of my summer beach.

Yes, Geology 101 taught me so much. It certainly helped that my college laboratory was in Maine and not Illinois, where leaving out the lake, there wasn’t much to see. Eight feet of rich, black topsoil under your feet, with nary a rock in sight, doesn’t, on its face, tell much of a story. Instead, I learned new words: drumlin, glaciation, sedimentary, metamorphic, igneous, erosion. On field trips around central Maine we learned to spot the trail of the glaciers that shaped Maine’s current topography.

Anytime I drive back from Augusta, on 17 or up to Bangor on 1A, I admire the telltale slope of the hills, steep on one side, sloping on the other, sure signs of the long-ago glacial ice sheet moving across the land. Do you ever wonder why so many of our hills are bald, in actuality or in name? Those bald tops are where the glacier scoured them down to the bedrock, taking up the soil into its icy grip, then depositing it further on when it melted. Gravel beds, well known to road builders, now or then, are the result of this removing and depositing of hill tops.

But the real geological drama right under our feet can be seen in the rocks. And that drama is best seen at the shore. It’s where I spent Sunday morning (when I should have been, meant to be in church!) splashing our way down through a very wet field to the rocky shore of Penobscot Bay. The waves were crashing onto the rocks, throwing spray and debris up onto the land, waves that come in day and night, sometimes nearly imperceptible and yesterday, wildly.

Since I never progressed beyond 101, I can only marvel at what I’m seeing, not explain it. But I know enough to understand why things are never nice and flat in Maine.

That rock formed of layers was once horizontal, but is now tipped crazily to the side, was lifted up when mountains were formed. That we’re probably standing on the guts of a former mountain worn down to sea level. That those scratches on the surface of a smooth outcropping were made by the glacier, full of stony debris, moving over the rock on its way to the sea. That the islands dotting the horizon are the tops of hills, mostly drowned when the melting glaciers raised sea level. That our very hills are the remnants of once tall mountains.

Mountains are built up by deep earth forces – think volcanic, the melted magma under the earth’s crust. And then they’re worn down by erosion. Erosion, the other huge geologic force, constantly undoing, was fully evident yesterday morning. Water is erosion’s biggest tool, and the reported 5-6 inches of rain, depending where in Lincolnville you live, that fell Saturday night, made a mess of our roads and driveways.

Great gouges show the route the water took, running down hills and slopes, wherever we’d put gravel for a road. If the road was asphalted the water went under to the gravel bed and like on the Turnpike near Maidens Cliff undermined the asphalt surface.

Sheets of water poured over lawns and fields where the plant roots held firm, saving the topsoil. Normally placid little brooks widened out over their banks, flooding fields. Wherever a culvert diverted water into a narrow tunnel, the result was a powerful gushing stream. You could watch erosion at work there, carving out a wider channel for that once quiet trickle of a brook.

As the rain stopped Sunday morning and the sky cleared, people got out their shovels and rakes, and where the damage wasn’t too great, got busy putting the gravel back where it belonged – in the driveway or along the road shoulders. Unfortunately, much of the wreckage can only be repaired with heavy equipment. MDOT workers and the guys with excavators and bulldozers and dump trucks will be busy for weeks putting our town – and our state – back together again.

I found this when looking back through Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine: 1900-1950:

All the roads that were ever built are still here. The main, numbered routes—1, 52, 173, 235—follow original roadbeds in most places, though some bad corners and steep hills have been eliminated. Grass formerly grew clear to the edges of the traveled way and down the middle as well; many remember that grass grew in the middle of Atlantic Highway—Route 1. The practice of bulldozing stone walls right into the roadbed helped to fill low spots, while decades of paving have substantially raised the surface. Rosey Gerry, who lived on the Greenacre Road as a little boy in the fifties, swears his father’s old car was pushed into the muck of that road along with most of the rock walls that once lined the sides. 

Though I wrote that book, it was some twenty years ago. Every so often I have to look through it to remember what I said!

And there. I’ve told you all I know about geology.

Halloween

By all accounts, from Facebook and from my upstairs family, Halloween was a real hit in Lincolnville again this year. Thanks go to Briar Lyons of the Lincolnville General Store, who first showed us here in town how to do Halloween. Delineating Main Street in the Center, from the store to the Library, as the place to go for trick/trunk and treating to a photo contest for best costumes, has made it traditional. The Library, the Fire Department, and the Boat Club all get into the act. I understand there were some special treats at Drake’s as well for the moms and dads escorting their children up and down the street. It sounds like a lot more fun than the way we did it with our kids, driving them around to stop at the houses of people we knew. Wally, who did that chore while I manned the candy basket at our door, managed to stop at the houses where he got a treat too, or was it a nip? He came home happy and so did the kids. Still, there’s nothing like wandering up the street in the dark, in a stuffy costume and a scratchy mask, and knocking on doors, a little scared and a little thrilled.

Election Day Tomorrow

The polls will be open tomorrow in the school gym, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. With only three referendum items on the ballot voting will likely be light.

I intend to vote. As I’ve written hundreds of notes this past year – handwritten notes for Vote Forward, a project that encourages infrequent voters in various states all over the country to go to the polls – “voting is the one way I can choose people who will work for the issues I care about. And besides, voting is our right as citizens!”

Advent Calendars

Shameless promotion here: I have Advent calendars for sale again this year, three different ones I painted years ago, and which a friend had printed at the Ellsworth American. They had a metal template made to stamp out the little doors, and then assembled the two parts of each calendar, the front design and the back with all the little scenes behind the windows. It was a fun project for both of us; we sold them through L.L. Beans and other places, but eventually they ended up in my shop where I still have some left. They’re $15 each, come in an envelope that can be mailed, and are called “Christmas in a Maine Farmhouse.”

One woman came by the other day to get one for her 93-year-old mother, living in a facility in Illinois. The two Zoom every day, and last year they shared one of these calendars, opening a window together each day. I can mail them out for you, or pick one up here at Sleepy Hollow or at the Holiday Gift and Craft Show at the Community Building on Nov. 20.

Condolences

Deepest sympathy to the family of Ken Weed Jr., son of Doris and Ken, father to Julia and Jarica. There are no words to express the loss of a son or a daughter except to hold them in our thoughts, in our prayers.