Recognition of an irreplaceable gift - Acadia

Of the three primary founders of Acadia National Park, only two, George Dorr and Charles Eliot, have Mount Desert Island geographical features named for them. Dorr Mountain is located beside Cadillac near Bar Harbor. Eliot Mountain overlooks Northeast Harbor from the east.
The contributions of a third major benefactor, the man who helped fund many of the park’s land acquisitions and created the Carriage Road system, John D. Rockefeller Jr., never have been equally recognized.
Hiking trail benefactor Waldron Bates has an enormous plaque affixed to a boulder on the trail on Gorham Mountain. Rockefeller’s only monument is a comparatively small marker in an obscure spot along a path near Otter Cliffs. Defaced years ago by vandals, it still awaits repair.
In an age when folks are all about splashing their names on everything from airplanes to sports arenas, the Rockefeller family continues to go about its philanthropic work quietly. They have never asked for, nor expected, anything in the park to be named for John D. or the family. All the more reason now to consider doing so, perhaps in time to be unveiled as part of next year’s Acadia centennial celebration.
It would not even be necessary to rename a peak to recognize Rockefeller in the same manner as Acadia’s other founders. At the south end of the main ridge on Penobscot Mountain, where a trail recently was reopened, the path dips and rises to a modest independent summit. That summit overlooks the lands around Little Long Pond – the 1,000 acres recently gifted to the Land and Garden Preserve by David Rockefeller Sr. The National Park Service has time to apply to the U.S. Geological Survey to name that peak after Rockefeller. It would be the only mountain in the country so named.
Honoring Rockefeller in this way would appropriately recognize his contributions to the creation and preservation of one of the most beautiful places on the planet. 
More than likely there is nothing named for John D. Rockefeller Jr., in Acadia because that is the way he preferred it. The entire family is famous for its humility and he, no doubt, was no different. However, especially in 2016 on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the creation of Acadia National Park, his efforts deserve acknowledgment as imposing and enduring as the granite that underlies the hills he loved so much, and wanted to protect and share with others.

Finding the best path

Last week, proponents of a plan to create a new national park in the Katahdin region delivered a petition containing the names of more than 13,000 supporters to members of Maine's congressional delegation. Of the 13,580 signatures on the petition, only 2,750 were from residents of Maine. Even if all the Maine signers are voters, which is unlikely, they represent only .3 percent of the state's electorate.

Philanthropist Roxanne Quimby – whose desire to leave a conservation legacy in Maine, including on Mount Desert Island, is admirable – controls nearly 70,000 acres in the area desired by park proponents. But there are also landowners who control tens of thousands of acres of land in that area who oppose the creation of a national park.

Lucas St. Clair, Quimby's son, who manages some 120,000 acres she owns in Maine, has been praised by sportsmen for re-opening portions of her land for hunting, ATV and snowmobile use. But a national park designation could bring much of that to a halt. And federal control minimizes local input into management decisions that affect surrounding communities.

There has been some discussion about having Quimby's lands east of Baxter State Park designated a national monument as a preliminary move. While creating a new national park requires an act of Congress, a monument can be created by executive action by the president.

Before the president or Congress act, however, one question needs to be answered first. Are those lands east of Baxter State Park so unique, their scenic attributes so exemplary, their resources so threatened that only federal ownership would provide the proper protection? Does creating a national park justify the eventual usurpation of private property owned by unwilling sellers and does it warrant the wholesale displacement of the multiple-use culture that has protected and cherished that land for generations?

Certainly the lofty heights of the Katahdin massif and surrounding lands in Baxter State Park are extraordinary. But they already are protected and wisely administered here in Maine.

That park's founder, Gov. Percival Baxter, once wrote “No one feels more strongly against the federal government invading the state than I do ... whatever parks we have in Maine in my opinion should be state rather than national parks.”

Selling the idea of a national park is easy because there's no need to explain what that means to people. But the merits of protecting Quimby’s lands in ways that respect Maine traditions should not be unexplored due to the relative difficulty of explaining it. The challenge then is to find the wisdom and foresight to create a Maine-based entity to protect the culture, as well as the land in northern Maine.

Federal protection of Acadia on the coast, instituted in an era before the state was in a position to act, has been a tremendous success. But as Percival Baxter knew full well, that doesn't mean it is the best path to follow for the Katahdin region.

Hike your own hike

For those who make pilgrimages to the wilds carrying the essentials of survival on their backs, there is only rule – hike your own hike.

Even though as in life, you may for a time, spend part of that journey in the close company of others, ultimately, when you shoulder a pack and seek the solace of wilderness, you walk alone.

The Mecca of all long-distance hikes in the United States is the storied Appalachian Trail that stretches 2,185 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the lofty summit of Katahdin in Maine.

Granted the peaks of the Appalachian Range are mere hills compared to the Rockies. It is their advanced age, however, not youth and inexperience, that dictates their diminished situation. Atop these ancient mountains that pushed skyward 400 million years before the Himalayas began their geologic rise, the trail climbs the highest peaks and passes through some of the most scenic and wild areas on the East Coast.

While some of it features highly engineered switchbacks for ease of walking, other stretches are chaotic jumbles of ankle-biting rocks. There are heights to scale, streams to ford, bears to fend off, and extremes of heat and cold to endure, all while carrying 40 pounds on your back. The rewards are more sublime -- views out 100 miles, the embrace of unmanicured nature, and the satisfaction at being able to look up as the alpenglow fades in the western sky to marvel at how far you’ve come.

Those who accept its physical challenge come to understand the route wasn’t laid out to be easy on the feet. It was chosen to be nourishment and inspiration to the soul.

I was reminded of that last weekend when I spent three days hiking in Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness near Rainbow Lake. It was two years ago, while trying to route-find a new way into that stretch from the Golden Road to the north, on old logging roads, that I snagged a root in a skidder rut with my foot and dislocated my hip. Fortunately, it went back in when I landed on it. It hurt like hell and the two-mile hike back to the truck was agony. Having good friends who took turns hefting my full pack, filled with everything for a four-day trip, was a Godsend.

Sitting in the Emergency Room in Millinocket the doctor noticed no broken bones on my x-ray. "Boy, you do have a lot of arthritis in that hip," he said. It was news to me as I had never had any pain.

Over the next two months, however, things went downhill. The verdict nearly a year later -- I needed a new hip.

So last fall, I had the surgery with the winter to recover. Over the past summer I built up my day hiking endurance. That set up my determination to get back into Rainbow Lake, to finally reach my original destination.

An estimated 2,500 people set out to hike the AT end-to-end each year. Slightly more than 10 percent succeed. The woods near the first road crossing north of Springer are often littered with cast off gear, the detritus of poor planning, unreasonable expectations, and the premature evaporation of what at first seemed to be a boundless supply of perseverance.

Some stop due to injury; others when the tangential tug of gravity from lives and loves back home can no longer be ignored.

Some run out of time. Some run out of money. Some run out of heart.

For others, vagabond dreams surrender to a new daily monotony and the reality of being at times cold, wet, bug bit, hungry, sore and tired – and often all of the above.

Others depart unable to accept the notion of themselves as sole confidante, needing more entertainment than is offered by the metronome of their own pulse.

Not all are comfortable with powerful rhythm, itself life’s primordial soundtrack. Its detection in the womb corroborates a new spark of existence – its departure at the end of life’s journey irrefutable evidence of entropy's inescapable silence. With acknowledgement comes acceptance that the number of our heartbeats is finite, some say fixed – as fleeting in the cosmic sense, as ancient mountains, as time itself.

Since it opened in the 1930s, slightly more than 10,000 people have managed to complete the Appalachian Trail. Few among them know that a Mainer is among those they are indebted to for showing the way.

Myron Avery was born in Lubec in 1899, graduated from Bowdoin and later became a successful lawyer. A friend of Appalachian Mountain Club founder Benton MacKaye, who first proposed the AT in a 1921 article, While MacKaye had a dream, Avery helped pioneer and build the actual route.

The original plan called for the trail’s northern terminus to be Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Avery persevered in his insistence it end atop Katahdin.

When the sign demarking Katahdin as the northern terminus of the AT reached the summit, Avery is reported to have made a very brief speech. “Nail it up,” he reportedly said.

Thanks to Avery, hikers have an additional 250 rugged miles to cover through the most remote wilderness found anywhere, including Mahoosuc Notch, considered to be the AT’s toughest mile, and the renown 100-mile Wilderness, the longest section that doesn’t intersect a paved road on the entire route.

Author Bill Bryson, in his classic “A Walk in the Woods,” tips his hat to Avery. “In under seven years, using volunteer labor, he built a 2,000 mile trail through mountain wilderness,” Bryson writes. “Armies have done less.”

Sadly, despite being thin and fit from a life devoted to life in the out of doors, Myron Avery died at the young age of 53, of a heart attack.

Last weekend dawned cold with muddled clouds overhead. It's always a good sign, while bumping into Nahmakanta and Rainbow over the Jo Mary Road,  when there are actual rainbows overhead. It spit snow as we hit the trail on the old logging road that cuts into the Murphy Ponds and follows the old AT path along the north side of the Rainbow Deadwaters.

It took a couple hours, some cursing at the mud and rocks, but eventually I was standing at the Dam, the spectacular view of a snow accented Katahdin looming large across the unfrozen water.

As I lay in my 20-degree sleeping bag that night, contemplating whether to don another layer as the wind blew steady and the temperature dipped to 19, I was warm in the satisfaction that comes from fulfilling a mission I had begun two years before. Fate had conspired to keep me from this remote and beautiful place on the AT. But it did not win in the end.

The Appalachian Trail Conference doesn’t keep records; it discourages folks from trying to set them. That is because there is nothing about the Appalachian Trail experience that requires or compels one hiker to compare themselves to any other. Doing so misses the point.

In the end, whether on the trail or off, there is only one rule in life. Hike your own hike.

The colors of nature in Acadia National Park

Nahmakanta Camps an Oasis of comfort

Deep in Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness, on the Appalachian Trail's longest section without easy resupply, there is little evidence of civilization beyond a dusty network of nameless gravel woods roads and the odd logging operation or two.

But tucked up on the beach at the northern end of Nahmakanta Lake, surrounded by state and federal protected lands, there is an oasis of convenience and comfort. Nahmakanta Lake Wilderness Camps have been a mainstay to travelers in these parts for more than a century.

With few impurities and a high dissolved oxygen content the waters of Nahmakanta Lake are prime for cold water fish species such as trout and landlocked salmon. The name itself is Abenaki and means "plenty of fish."

Nearly every major structure at Nahmakanta Camps dates back to the late 1800s when the camps began catering to sportsmen. All nine cabins, which can sleep from 2-8 people each, are composed, at least in part, from sections of the original log sleeping structures. Owners Angel and Don Hibbs have worked tirelessly over their nearly three decades of stewardship at Nahmakanta and you won't find a better maintained, or cleaner, sporting camp anywhere in Maine.

All cabins have been updated, have screened-in porches, some have their own bathrooms, although you won't find electricity in any of them. Gas lights, stoves and refrigerators get the job done. All sinks have cool, clear spring water piped in.

There's a place to recharge electrical devices, and limited access to wifi in the main lodge, which sports the original dining room that features moose and deer mounts, old maps, and other memorabilia.

For cabins that don't have full bathrooms, the owners have constructed modern private toilet, sink and shower facilities in a building just steps away. Each cabin gets its own private suite. Compost toilets back in the cabins provide facilities for middle of the night bathroom needs.

Even better than the welcoming facilities themselves, is the unparalleled view. All cabins sit just up the shore with an unobstructed ten-mile view straight down the lake. There is no other sign of civilization to be seen.

To the west, Nesuntabunt Mountain, where hikers on the Appalachian Trail get their last full view of their destination, Katahdin to the north, looms straight out of the lake. Loons sing with regularity, eagles and great blue herons fly about, and even the occasional moose wanders past.

Guided moose safaris can also be arranged.

Each cabin has a cozy woodstove and well-stocked woodbox as well as a grill and a separate campfire ring outside.

Canoes, kayaks (no charge) and Lund aluminum fishing boats sit on the beaches out front at the ready. There's a dock and swimming float as well. Fishing guide services are available.

Along with the camps, Angel and Don have created a network of nature and hiking trails that connect directly from the camps to the Appalachian Trail, and the trails in the adjacent Debsconeag Lakes Wilderness. They have detailed maps of the area and can advise on how best to visit the area's stunning waterfalls, remote Pollywog Gorge, or where the best swimming spots are where the AT follows the rushing waters of Rainbow Stream. The number of hiking, bird watching, canoeing, kayaking, fishing and photography options is endless.

Families love visiting Nahmakanta because of the spectacular natural setting and traditional atmosphere. There's so much to do, including, if you so desire, doing nothing at all.

Cabins can be rented on a housekeeping basis or on the American Plan that includes meals in the rustic lodge. A modified American plan is available which includes evening dinner while you cooking breakfast or fix lunches on your own. When the dinner bell is rung at 5:30 p.m. you can count on tasty, wholesome meals, fresh-baked goods, and good fellowship in the main lodge. Accommodating any dietary requirement is never a problem.

While the camps are not accessible by road in winter, that doesn't mean their are empty. Don, a champion dog sledder with CanAm victories under his belt, offers half, full and two-day dog sled excursions out of their winter quarters in Millinocket sometimes using the camps as an overnight destination.

When it comes time to surround yourself with unbridled nature, and creature comforts, Nahmakanta is the place to go.

Reconnect with nature, and yourself, at Nicatous Lodge

When it comes to really escaping the hustle and bustle of daily life there's no better place than a spot far from where the pavement and power lines end. One such place is in a corner of Hancock County that's so remote it doesn't even have a name, just a number, – T3 ND.

That's where you'll find Nicatous Lodge at the north end of Nicatous Lake. For more than 50 years, the lodge and cabins have been a home base to a mix of visitors that can include fishermen, paddlers, hikers, hunters, ATV riders and snowmobilers. And many folks like to do nothing at all. Head down to the screened gazebo at the shore with a good book and see how fast the afternoon disappears.

The Native American name for the lake is Kiasobeak, which means "Clear Water Lake." With just a handful of private camps on the edges, the lake boasts some 34 miles of shoreline, numerous sandy beaches, and 76 islands devoid of evidence of human occupation.

Some 22,000 acres of the surrounding forest is now a preserve that allows rustic camping at established sites.

Established as a camp for boys in 1928, the lodge today features the authentic log main building containing a spacious lobby, small library, the dinning room and restaurant-quality kitchen. Out front, a broad porch sports views miles down the lake. A large field stone fireplace is the building's centerpiece. There are several guest rooms located on the second level.

Out front are the docks that service fishing boats (bring your own or you can rent one or arrange for a guide), a handful of small pleasure craft, and the lodge's fleet of canoes, kayaks, a sunfish sailboat (free for use by guests) and the swimming beach and float.

Surrounding the main lodge and nestled in the trees are nine housekeeping cabins, in a variety of configurations.

Most overlook the rushing waters of Nicatous Stream which arcs around the camp in a broad, sweeping curve where trophy trout can often be coaxed from a cool, deep eddy.

The decor is a unique blend of one part estate sale and another part L.L. Bean – with a pinch of grandma's attic. The floors creak and you can see all the pipes in the bathroom(the better to keep them from freezing in winter). Winter woodstoves are removed by summer so that the fireplaces can function.

In the cupboards are coffee cups that don't match and pots and pans that didn't begin life as part of an expensive set. What you will discover is that the sheets are crisp and clean, the blankets warm and anything you prepare in one of their vintage cast iron frying pans will be delicious – in short, utility and authenticity. There are no radios or televisions in the cabins although there is a satellite dish in the lodge.

When it comes to nightlife you'll have to settle for the calls of barded owls, the breeze whispering in the tall pines overhead and the haunting cries of loons out on the lake.

Be forewarned, however. The one thing you won't find anywhere, no matter how hard you look – is pretention.

Folks renting cabins can do their own cooking, although meals can be taken in the dining room which is also open to the public at various times of year. Electricity is provided by the camp's quiet generators that also charge a giant battery bank so no motors can be heard running at night or at times during the day.

While there are plenty of comforts at Nicatous Lodge, it's what they don't charge for that folks value the most. Waves lapping at the shore are the traditional way of marking time. Peace and solitude abound as sunlight filters through ancient pines to dance and play on the ground. At night, the brilliant arc of the Milky Way high overhead is the only bright light you'll see.

Cell phone service is spotty at best. But, for those who can't stand being off line for too long there's free wifi in the lodge.

The only guaranteed connection you'll find at Nicatous Lodge, however, will be with mother nature.

Following in his own footsteps

Carey Kish of Hall Quarry got back onto the Appalachian Trail (AT) here last week after a quick visit to Mount Desert Island. As he crested Bear Mountain and prepared to cross the Hudson River on a soaring suspension bridge, his pace was quickened by the sight of familiar ground – the friendly hills of New England, looming just 25 miles ahead in the haze.

Starting on Springer Mountain in Georgia in March, he's already walked some 1,400 miles. Everything he needs to survive in the wilds he carries in the backpack on his back.

Now, he's got just 800 miles to go to get back to the northern end of the trail in Maine. There's still Mount Washington and the rest of the Presidential Range to tackle. And Mahoosuc Notch, the AT's toughest mile, awaits just over the border from New Hampshire.

Once through the 100-mile Wilderness he'll be standing at the foot of Katahdin, the finish line in sight. That's all tough hiking. But for the 56-year-old veteran outdoorsman, hiking guide book author, and outdoor columnist it's all familiar ground. In fact, for Kish, that's doubly true. This is his second hike along the AT. He first was nearly four decades ago.

"I hiked the Appalachian Trail at age 18 and it ruined me for life," Kish jokes during a chat while back on MDI. That was in 1977 when he was fresh out of Bangor High School.

"I think the freedom of the trail, that hiking DNA, got instilled in me," he explains.

Although his older body may take longer to adjust to the insults and indignities of hiking 15 to 20 miles a day over mountaintop after mountaintop, the lightness of gear now, and its quality, is way ahead of where things were in the 1970s. "Back then there really wasn't that much available," he adds.

Preparing for this AT hike went smoothly, Kish says. "I already had most of the gear," he explains. He says it took about 20 hours of preparation. He put together an Excel spreadsheet. Reference materials such as detail section maps and the "Appalachian Trail Data Book," are indispensable aids. "Basically I sketched it all out on the back of a beer napkin," he adds.

Each year, approximately 2,500 people set out from Springer Mountain in Georgia to hike the entire AT. Around 250-300 actually finish.

The rush to get going often leads to as many as 100 people beginning on the same day. They form a fluid wave heading north, often crowding the shelters and the best tent sites. "I started on March 18," Kish says. "Lucky for me I seem to have missed most of that."

Especially on sections below New England, chances to resupply and to divert into a nearby town to rest, shower, and eat other than backpacking food, are plentiful. Kish's Facebook Page and blog "Six Moon Journey," often mentions copious consumption of food and brew, along with the progress of other hikers (all known by their trail names), the natural wonders, and how places have changed in the 38 years since he had seen them last. Still, despite eating all he can, Kish has managed to drop 30 pounds so far on his trek.

While some worry the AT is getting too crowded, Kish says there's ample opportunity to connect with nature. "There's still a lot of solitude to be found. I find it especially during the day. There's company at night around the shelters but you can always tent elsewhere if it gets to be too much," he adds.

Every year sections of trail get improved, moved away from development or rerouted. Back in 1977, as much as 200 miles of the AT involved walking along busy roads. Today that is down to less than 20 miles. "It continues to grow and improve," Kish said.

Kish, who retired from his day job with the Portland Council of Governments last year, is a well-know Appalachian Mountain Club guide book author. Among his titles are "AMC’s Best Day Hikes Along the Maine Coast."

He is editor of AMC's "Maine Mountain Guide." His hiking column appears in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. A Registered Maine Guide and wilderness first responder, Kish has also done long-distance hikes in Canada, Europe and other places in the United States.
He tried to repeat his AT trek before, both in 1989 and in 1994. Each time, he had to cut it short for various reasons.

Along with retirement that gave him the time to repeat his AT adventure, Kish credited his wife Fran for serving as support crew and understanding his need to hit the trail. "My wife has been a trooper," he says. "She's been wonderful."

According to Kish, finishing the AT a second time has been a very long term goal.

"It's been in the works since the day I finished the other one 38 years ago. It has been my major influence."

'A Walk in the Woods'

After getting back on the trail in New York, Kish posted a passage on his Facebook Page that he called "my favorite passage, from Bill Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods,'" about the Appalachian Trail. The movie based on the book, and starring Nick Nolte and Robert Redford, is due out in September.
Bryson writes:

"Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception.

"The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret. Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really. You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, 'far removed from the seats of strife,' as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it.

"All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge. There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle.

" In a way, it would hardly matter... Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, 'Hey, I did sixteen miles today,” any more than you think, “Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today.' It’s just what you do."

Mile-high Katahdin

Consider the time-honored quote from Shakespeare — “What’s in a name?/That which we call a rose/By another name would smell as sweet.”

That line kept popping into my mind recently as I pondered repeated references to Maine’s tallest mountain in the media as “mile-high Mount Katahdin.” Few people realize that the famous edifice’s highest point on Baxter Peak, which also just happens to be the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, is actually just short of that mark.

That fact came home to roost not too long ago when a team of University of Maine scientists re-measured the mountain using satellite and electronic technology and discovered that Katahdin is actually about seven inches higher than originally thought.

It seems that way back in 1941, the folks with good, old-fashioned surveying equipment (which didn’t need batteries, laser beams, solar arrays or a high-speed connection with the Internet) calculated that Katahdin was all of 5,267 feet high. Those of you who are familiar with measurements will note that this is exactly 13 feet shy of a mile. But even on Katahdin, man could not leave nature alone.

Legend has it that someone – perhaps a troop of industrious Boy Scouts or maybe some bored backwoods traveler in search of enlightenment, or maybe the legendary king of Katahdin rangers, Roy Dudley – piled up tons of rocks at the summit cairn to elevate Katahdin to the lofty mile-high club.

Now, while there is a pretty big pile of rocks at the top, I doubt it’s 13 feet high. But who cares? And that’s exactly my point about the most recent measurement – which added .6 of a foot (which by the way is 7.2 inches, not six inches as reported by the Associated Press) to Katahdin’s total.

I’d hate to be the guy who has to go up there and scratch the new total onto the little bronze surveyor’s benchmark.

Funny, though, driving in from Millinocket, Katahdin (That's right, not Mount Katahdin as Katahdin means "Greatest Mountain," and to say "Mount Greatest Mountain" makes no sense) does not look any bigger.

I wonder if the Native Americans who lived in the area and dare not tread on Katahdin for fear of angering evil spirits, would have cared if they knew it was really a tad taller than their ancestors thought.

For the thousands of people who trek to the top of Katahdin each year, I doubt the extra seven inches will matter. No one will throw up their hands in disgust and give up plans to climb “the mountain of the people of Maine” upon learning they will have further to go than they originally planned.

Percival Baxter, who personally assembled and donated the park that bears his name and saved Katahdin for all time, would probably, if he were alive, find the extra height interesting in an academic sense. But that would be all.

For sure, the people who each day work and play in the shadow of this magnificent mountain won’t notice much difference. Pilots flying overhead won’t have to adjust their altimeters to keep from making an abrupt final touch down on either side of the Knife Edge Trail.

Whether Katahdin is 5,267 feet or a mile high really makes no difference. Its grandeur and ability to inspire remain intact, from the early days when Thoreau described its majesty to this day and long into the future. The thrill of having climbed Maine’s highest peak, to stand at the top and look out upon what seems to be the rest of the world, will not be diminished by this recent addition to the sum of humanity’s knowledge.

According to the scientists who made the recent measurements, they will probably do it again at some time in the future if there are sufficient technological advancements which, unfortunately, there always are.

I guess all we can ask is, Why? To steal a perfectly good line from Shakespeare: “What’s in a height? That which we call Katahdin by another benchmark would be as steep.”

Corporate logos set new Appalachian Trail speed record

Ultra marathoner Scott Jurek, (Photo above from Scott Jurek Facebook) just set a new unofficial record last week for the fastest transit of the 2,200 mile-long Appalachian Trail. I have two thoughts about that.

One – Good for him.

Two – What's the point?

Notice I didn't say he hiked the trail. Far from it. He scurried from Georgia to Maine with an entourage larger than a logistics division for a platoon of Navy Seals. Their weapons of choice: cameras, laptops, cell phones and other gear to provide constant updates to legions of desk-bound followers.

They travelled in a custom van, splashed with manufacturers' logos, containers brimming with swag. He carried no pack – didn't make or break any camps. Anybody who fancies themselves as somebody, who has already exhausted their 15 minutes of fame once, twice, or even three times, seemed to jump on for the ride.

No one is allowed to advertise on the AT. Unless, of course, like Scott Jurek, you turn yourself into a human billboard. In nearly every photograph Jurek is wearing a headband with corporate logos. I guess capitalism's scarlet letters don't equate with lifting your metaphorical skirts – providing you can hide behind the fig leaf of "sponsorships."

Personally I think he would have been much more comfortable, particularly on humid days, if he had just had the logos tattooed on his forehead.

The AT was created to be a place for personal journeys. The Appalachian Trail Conference is to be congratulated for refusing to maintain speed records for the trail. They understand there's a big difference between being able to claim you've completed the Appalachian Trail and bragging you did it faster than anyone else. It's there for taking measure of yourself. Fast or slow, all at once, or in sections, how you do it is up to you.

The only clock that counts is the beating of your own heart.

When you turn a trip into a global media event supported by a cast of thousands, however, it is not only the tradition of the trail that is diminished. The inability to see that as a subversion of purpose diminishes the individual's personal accomplishment as well.

Those who actually do the Appalachian Trail adopt, find, or are bestowed with "trail names." Some bring them from past lives or adventures while others wait to discover it as part of the journey. I don't know if Jurek had one for his trip but I would like suggest one that fits – both physically and spiritually: "Been there – didn't see that."

Particularly disappointing was the disrespect shown to Baxter State Park, here in Maine, portions of which were turned into a circus by this Spandex speed record carnival. In fact, the park issued three violations notices to Jurek including drinking in public, littering and hiking with an oversize group.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out this Facebook post on the park's page. Nice to see that common sense is still in ample supply in the shadow of Maine's highest mountain.

On the Maine Woods Discovery Facebook page this week, Jurek is hailed as a shining example of Northwoods spirit. I can't begin to express how disappointing it is that whoever is making those posts thinks that's the case. He's a good example, maybe, of the spirit of getting a bunch of frat guys to book a cabin, grab two kegs of beer, and scream like pantywaists while running Cribwork Rapids on a rafting trip.

But a true representative of spirit of Maine's Great Northwoods? Not so much.

Make no mistake, running some 50 miles a day for 46 days is an impressive accomplishment. He should be proud. If I met him face-to-face, I'd shake his hand. There's no way that I could do what he did, a fact several of those critical of this communication will no doubt point to in an attempt to divert attention away from the fundamental truth of these words.

Even at the top of Katahdin, Scott Jurek didn't remove the headband, undoubtedly contractually-bound to leave it there especially when cameras were present. The end result is that a man didn't make it to the top of the mountain. His 'brand" is what everyone was celebrating on top.

Last week, news stories should have announced that a headband, with prominently-placed corporate logos, set the speed record on the AT.

In selling his prime facial real estate to the highest bidders, it's obvious that those corporations own Scott Jurek. Sadly, by extension, they now own his accomplishment as well.

www.earlbrechlin.com

Small engine repair, taxes done

Like fiddleheads in soggy woods, spring in Maine also brings a fresh crop of roadside signs advertising home businesses.

Small stands selling cucumbers, squash and corn on the honor system have been around for years, but lately the proliferation of at-home professions has branched out and now often takes on a decidedly high-tech or mechanical spin.

What is more amazing, though, than even the fact of how many people have little businesses on the side is the combination of skills these roadside signs betray.

Near Norway, Maine, a while back I saw a sign offering “Live bait, worms, computer service.”

You have to wonder if one day some old fisherman came in, noted the night crawlers he used the week before had caught a wicked “keepah” togue, and matter-of-factly asked the proprietor if he thought he could do anything with a balky 340ZX 50 terrabyte hard drive.

Recently I saw a sign advertising “Small Engine Repair — taxes done.”

In Gardiner, a fellow just opened up a hair salon/television repair shop. I guess the idea there is to tinker with the set and get a wicked shock off the transformer which causes the hair to stand right on end, making it easier to cut.

The hair angle has repeated itself in Ellsworth where a salon in the Mill Mall notes it has 14 chairs and is also a dry cleaning drop-off. Make sure when they ask if you want any conditioner that you read the label carefully.

Down East off Route 1, I once spied a sign looking for customers interested in “DVD movies/slab bacon.”

They have probably branched out into popcorn and farm fresh eggs, toast and automatic transmission repair by now for all I know.

In addition to the above, you often see the words, “custom sawing, doll hospital, llama wool, small engines fixed, worms, bait, crawlers, piglets, chickens, rabbits, goats milk, gardens tilled, fresh cheese and palms read, all in league with the word, “crafts.”

I have yet to fully understand exactly what “crafts” are except I know it often involves beads, yarn, gallons of white glue and ridiculously long hours on the part of someone who doesn’t get cable.

I don’t know why “crafts” always seem to be sold out of converted garages. No doubt the person responsible started out simply with a sign at the end of his or her driveway advertising “Poodle grooming/garages converted to ‘crafts’ shops.”

The signs, themselves, reveal a lot about the proprietor. The neater and more cleanly lettered the sign, the older the proprietor.

The absolutely neatest ones are those of the retired guys who sell “camp wood.” Lumber at the home center isn’t stacked as straight as the neatly-tied $3 bundles of firewood set out to the side of the road by a retired guy. The best examples of this can be seen right here on Mount Desert Island in the displays put out seasonally by members of the Otter Creek Camp Wood Cartel. They may protest, but I don’t think it is any accident that everyone there charges exactly the same. In such a competitive environment, neat stacking becomes the only way for the consumer to differentiate between suppliers.

The whole roadside sign practice is reminiscent of the humor shown by the first convenience stores that innocently advertised “Eat here, get gas.”

The Hulls Cove General Store in Bar Harbor honors this fine roadside tradition with clever slogans that change each week.

Some of my favorites include “Summer people, some are not” and the Fourth of July standby, “Welcome to Lubec, maps inside.”

During the controversy over whether tourists were welcome in Mount Desert, the sign suggested “Be sure to visit Northeast Harbor.”

The truth is that home business roadside signs are testimony to the fact that Mainers are in general an industrious lot and that most folks, particularly in rural areas, just can’t get by on what they make in a 40-hour work week alone.

I think to be really successful, some backyard businessperson might try a new combination for which there should be a huge market. All they have to do is put a small sign out by the road advertising “lawn mowers fixed, crafts, taxes done, roadside signs painted - while you wait.”

Solar storms produce Downeast lightshow

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK — Strong solar storms on Monday set off a chain of events leading to one of the strongest displays of the Aurora Borealis over the Northern Hemisphere on Monday night.

For a handful of hopeful visitors atop Cadillac Mountain, the tallest point within 50 miles of the ocean from Maine to Rio De Janeiro, the Northern Lights appeared as a series of pale patches of light and streaks above Bar Harbor and Frenchman's Bay.

It was an unusually warm night atop the mountain. The temps were in the mid 50s and there was no wind. There were even a few mosquitoes buzzing about.

The lights moved almost imperceptibly behind patchy clouds. The light show appears when charged particles ejected during solar storms on the sun are captured in the Earth's magnetic field. These particles are pulled towards the poles and cause gases in the upper atmosphere to fluresce and glow, similar to what happens in a neon light.

In the Southern Hemisphere the display is call the Aurora Australis.

X marks the spot

On dusty old treasure maps, “X” always marked the spot. Or so we thought as children.

Granted, some people don’t have the foggiest idea of where they are even with a map, but I have always been fascinated by them. There’s a little piece of the world right before you, albeit in only two dimensions. The lines and markings, however, allow the mind to easily upgrade the image to three. This, of course, gives us distance and topography which then allow us to estimate the fourth dimension involved in navigation time.

Maps are manly. We all know that any self-respecting guy would rather die than violate the secret code prohibiting American males from asking directions from a stranger. But that same individual will eagerly consult a map.

Holding that magic paper, peering out intently, and uttering an occasional harrumph or growl while chomping on the stub of a cigar creates a take-charge image for the holdee, even if someone else has to bravely note that the map’s upside down.

In Maine, those seeking a definitive guide to the back country have few choices. For years, there were mostly out-of-date government-produced U.S. Geodedic Survey (USGS) topographical maps.

Anecdotally, I would say the average freshness date for Maine topos is about 1942. The Cherryfield quadrangle, which includes the Narraguagus River, undoubtedly is among the oldest, having been updated as recently as 1902.

Sure, the mountains haven’t changed that much in the last 91 years, but the roads and infrastructure have. The best example of which is the fact that the large dam and lake shown on the Cherryfield map are long gone. A new, much smaller dam and extended marsh with a  winding stream bed now take its place. Look for a large lake at the end of that river, and you may be there awhile.

And then, lo and behold, it came unto us: the gospel according to Delorme.

Delorme Mapping is a small company in Freeport that produces the bible of how to get there from here — The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer.

If actor Karl Malden did commercials for Delorme instead of  American Express, the slogan would still be the same: “Don’t leave home without it!”

On a recent trip to the environs north of Moosehead Lake, I did not fail to see a single party without one. They were folded up and battered on the seats of dusty pickup trucks, tossed casually on dashboards of sedans, and rolled up in back pockets. Along Interstate 395 in Bangor, I saw a state cop standing with a woman on a median strip consulting an Atlas and Gazetteer  as to which exit might be best.

You can bet that when Delorme shows the road turning to a line of dashes it’s time to put your vehicle in four-wheel drive, as it will be little more than a skidder trail.

Personally, I keep one in the truck, one in the office, and still another near the phone at home, so that when I’m discussing upcoming expeditions the people on the other end, who of course have their own, know exactly where we’re going.

The Atlas  divides Maine into boxes, with each one in effect its own map. There are 70 in all, with number one being Kittery and number 70 being a triangle of unorganized townships along the northwest border with Quebec. You are getting into the middle of nowhere when you get into maps with the high numbers. Most paved roads stop around the lower 40s; into the 50s, you are out there. Tell me you’ve been north of map 66 and I’ll shake your hand.

My problem is that it seems whenever I’m planning a trip the area I want to visit invariably is smack-dab at the intersection of four maps.

With the Atlas, you can flip the page or skip ahead. With the USGS maps you need to buy a slew of them and, except for the University of Maine at Orono Bookstore or L.L. Bean in Freeport, few places stock them all.

Thinking about pages of maps and navigation reminds me of an old “Bert and I” story, penned in the days before Delorme, about being lost in the fog. The chart for the bay they were in had unfortunately  blown over the side of their boat.

After hours of pondering, Bert finally seizes on a plan. Cigar, no doubt clenched firmly in his teeth, he announces that he has the solution. They’re going to weigh anchor, put up the sail, and run straight ahead until they get to the middle of the map on the next page. “Then,” says Bert, ”we’ll know exactly where we are.”

A survivor's story

Up on Acadia’s summits bare granite bedrock only grudgingly gives up its grains of feldspar and quartz to form small crumbling patches of hardscrabble soil. The summer sun bakes the ground into a dusty gray amalgam which crunches underfoot, sending puffs of dust racing away on the ever-present wind.

Little grows here: desperate patches of blueberries, withered tufts of grass, a stunted birch and the bonsai-like skeletons of spruce and fir, kin to their more lofty cousins the krummholz of Mount Washington and Katahdin. Compared to the lush forests just a few hundred feet below, this is a primitive place, the domain of lichen and moss, where only the occasional mountain hiker savors the sweet song of the white-throated sparrow or bears witness to a hawk gliding silently overhead. 

Among the hardy survivors here blooms an extraordinary plant. Although not considered endangered or even rare, it is nonetheless uncommon. Overflowing in semicircular depressions in the rock which hold precious moisture for a day or two longer than the surrounding terrain, Mountain Sandwort colonies form tiny islands of uptown lushness in the scattering of hard-bitten, industrial-zone vegetation. 

Dancing on the breeze, clusters of tiny five-petaled white blooms barely the diameter of a pencil stand proud on delicate yet sturdy green shafts — themselves not more than an inch or two high. Slender leaves paired on the stalks seem too small to support themselves and resist the elements, much less convert enough sunlight into life-giving energy with which to grow.

Yet despite its diminutive blooms, this plant can divert attention from all that surrounds it, luring eyes away from spectacular distant horizons to focus much closer at the miniature world close at hand.

Mountain Sandwort exists in Acadia at the southern fringe of its habitat. The northern edge of this herbaceous alpine plant’s range extends to Greenland. Flowering throughout the season it bides its time, repeatedly blooming when conditions are just right. It prefers thin soils disturbed by frost action or erosion as the perfect spot to first send down roots.

In a place where many tiny plants can die from the slightest disturbance, Mountain Sandwort thrives on upheavals on a microgeological scale. From sedimentary chaos bursts forth a miracle of exquisite miniature organization.

It is a Darwinian dichotomy born in the knowledge that to survive on a mountaintop, anything — plant or animal or bird — must be resilient. Yet that resilience comes at a price. These organisms live almost constantly at the edge of tolerable limits. Even the slightest push can upset the balance. Too long without rain, a little too much wind, a few careless footsteps and even the most stalwart survivors become casualties.

The poignancy of a tiny flower’s ageless struggle to bloom against the odds lends an ephemeral air of hope to an otherwise unforgiving place: high on a mountain in Acadia, where the fragile beauty of Mountain Sandwort or the lilting song of a white-throated sparrow will too soon fade with the memories of high summer.

Fight or flight

Evolutionary biologists point out human beings are hardwired to display two primary reactions when confronted by danger or an imminent threat. It’s called the fight-or-flight response. Will you stand your ground and confront the challenge head-on, or will you run away?

From an evolutionary standpoint either option is appropriate when survival is at stake. Having evolved through eons of natural selection, the fight-or-flight response was great for bands of stick-wielding cave people dealing with those pesky saber-toothed tigers.

However, in modern times where it is no longer considered polite to go around bonking things on the head with clubs, the suppression of the fight-or-flight response only results in increased stress.

Perhaps one situation where this evolutionary Hobson’s Choice is still very evident in modern Maine is in how people deal with winter. The cold and snow and dark offer everything one could want in the way of primal threats to individual survival, although with petrochemical furnaces, cable television and Shop ’n Saves it is not always so much physical survival as mental soundness that the majority find ultimately at risk.

Some people approach winter Down East with the classic flight response. They retreat every fall to Florida, or at the very least take several weeks or a month off and travel, usually to warmer climes. That’s great if you have several million frequent flyer miles, or an upper-middle-class income. But that in truth is beyond the means of many Mainers.

Most, it seems, choose to fight — but not in the literal sense. I know of no one who can wrestle away snowstorms or bat away below-zero temperatures.

Instead, people wage a mental battle to adapt their own minds until they embrace and look forward to the snow instead of being repulsed in horror at the thought of another icy storm.

The real secret, of course, is toys — lots of toys. Skis, skates, snowshoes, snowboards, sleds, ice tents and any number of snow-throwin’, two-cyclin’, quick switchin’, all-wheel-drivin’, blue smokin’, ice-augerin’, noise-makin’ fuel-guzzlin’ toys.

I saw ample proof of this last past winter while stopping by Eagle Lake on my snowmobile. Everywhere I looked there were people ice fishing, cross country skiing, snow shoeing and generally having a good time outdoors even though with the wind chill it was well below zero.

I’ve seen the same thing up north and in the Midcoast area. Contrary to the stereotypical image of Mainers locked away in drafty cabins reading Jack London novels by candlelight, most people here like winter, and get outside a lot and stay active.

Winter is, in effect, a huge excuse for Mainers to play with cool stuff we cannot use the rest of the year.

Want more proof? Just look at those macho guys in jacked-up four-wheel drive pickups who can’t wait for a storm so they can skid recklessly around corners and bull their way through drifts four feet — no wait — eight feet deep! Ask anyone who plows snow and they’ll tell you seriously it’s a business. But the real reason they love it is that it’s wicked fun to snap on that flashing yellow light, pass Saab Turbos from New Jersey stuck in snowbanks and send all that snowy powder flying hither and yon.

If there is a “winter-as-evil” cult in Maine, television weather people have to be the high priests. Cue the urgent staccato soundtrack it’s time for Panic Center.

With the first hint of a flake they don heavy sweaters (quite foolish, actually, under those hot studio lights) and blurt dire warnings about ferocious “near-record-breaking” conditions outside. People’s stress levels invariably and artificially rise.

To prove how bad it is rookie reporters stand out on the back porch in a gale or on Portland street corners in a blizzard without hats or gloves and warn everyone to stay inside “if you are smart.”

Where’s that leave them?

The fight-or-flight response of viewers is unconsciously activated by this oh-so-serious soundtrack and endlessly repeated predictions of frosty white doom. Like lemmings, people run to the nearest grocery store buying all the milk, bread, Diet Pepsi and Little Debbie Nutty Bars in sight just in case they can’t get out of their driveways afore noon the next day.

If these television folks dislike winter so much, or believe Mainers’ panic threshold to be so low, maybe they ought to take off those ridiculous sweaters and head south themselves. Or maybe we could get a few of those guys in the 4-bys to bonk ’em on the head with a club so they’ll shut up and the rest of us can just relax and enjoy the snow.

Running in Dreams

From the time he was a pup, Jake loved the mountains. Sure, you’d have a tough time getting him out of a lake or a stream or even a puddle, for that matter, but on a height of land, where the wind always blows, is where he liked best to be. 

On a summit, he would lie in the sunshine as close to the edge as possible, his face directly into the breeze, chomping endlessly on a stick or just looking out at the horizon sniffing the fresh, clean air.

Jake loved the idea of mountains. For more than a decade, he would pester endlessly as soon as the backpack came down off the coat rack or hiking boots made their appearance from the closet. In the truck on the way to a climb, I’d ask him if he was a mountain dog. He would look at me out of the corner of his eye and give a howl of approval.

Each time we’d climb he would race ahead on the trail. Every now and then he would stop and turn around and stare as if to see what was holding up his human companions. There was no excuse, he was sure. There was a mountain to climb, and there was no time to waste.

His heart was strong, his senses keen, and his spirit of adventure high. Back and forth he would run, covering twice the distance in half the time.

Jake was not reckless in his eagerness. Much to the dismay of more than one hiking companion, he would not hesitate to pass on a narrow ledge, keeping to the inside, nudging people closer to the drop. Later at night, as he would doze by my chair, his legs would sometimes explode in motion as he continued to run through doggie dreams.

Four strong legs gave him an advantage on the flat but, when things were hand-over-hand, he would wait impatiently for a boost. Up he’d go with no idea of what he would find above. His trust was absolute.

People too often try to ascribe human emotions to their pets. I think the unswerving loyalty and trust of a faithful old dog is the true expression of those virtues. The human version of those qualities, I believe, are not the original, and too often, a poor imitation.

Over the years, Jake enjoyed many sections of the Appalachian Trail in Maine, numerous summits Down East, and every mountain on Mount Desert Island, most more than once.

But slowly and surely, Jake’s back legs succumbed to arthritis. It hurt him, I know, to be left behind when the backpack came down off the hook and the boots came out of the closet. He would come over and nuzzle my hands while I tried to lace my boots. I never could make him understand why I had to leave him behind.

Still, there was snow to romp in, squirrels to chase out of the birdfeeders, and plenty of cars turning around in the driveway to bark at. Life was slower, naps longer, and there was less and less running in dreams. But overall, it was good; that is, until this spring.

At first it looked like a simple lame paw, maybe a sore elbow. The reality came to be bone cancer in his shoulder. For a dog with two bad legs, a third becomes the last straw. He tried his hardest for two months, managing pretty well on three legs. But the unflappable squirrels no longer excited him. His eyes made it clear that the pain was increasing.

Finally, on Monday, with the help of close friend who is a veterinarian, Jake lay down in sunshine on the front porch, and his strong heart was stilled.

I have Jake’s ashes now. I promised him long ago that, when the time came, we’d go for one last hike. I’m going to wait for a day when the conditions are right. Alone, I’ll get the backpack down and lace up my boots. I’ll climb to the top of Jake’s favorite mountain and stand close to the edge. I’ll say my last goodbye to a faithful old dog, and I’ll let him run again in dreams on the wind.

Somewhere in "Eastern" Maine

Just where in the hell is Eastern Maine? Now, before anyone writes in to say it’s just to the right of Western Maine when you are standing and staring to the north, let me say that place, not direction, is my problem.

You see, in the last week or so, the U.S. Postal Service opened a new high-tech mail-handling center in Hermon or Hampden or somewhere north of here that begins with an “H.”

It used to be that in the old days each and every post office cancelled mail individually. Looking at a postmark before opening a letter was half the fun. “Oh, look, it’s from East Overshoe. Must be from Cousin Edweena.” You catch my drift.

A few years back, some bright star in the nighttime decided that all mail from these parts would be sent to Bangor (44 miles north) to be postmarked and sorted before redistribution. Bar Harbor mail for delivery to Bar Harbor, even to someone down the block, went to Bangor first.

Residents of Down East, Maine, a place which for the record is not so much a quasi-official geographic area as it is a state of mind, just shook their heads. It didn’t make much sense to folks to try and improve mail service by loading it into a truck, hauling it to Bangor, and then carting it back here before having someone walk 20 feet across the post office from the “IN” slot to put it in a post office box. Common sense apparently went south as our mail headed north.

The move ranked right up there with making the cost of a first-class stamp 29 cents or some other God-awful odd number, whereby understanding Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity seems child’s play compared to the job of figuring the total for multiple stamp purchases.

Rerouting messages the long way may be fine for long-distance telephone calls where sometimes it is faster to go from point A to point B via Pittsburgh. That medium runs at the speed of light. However, this (insert cheap shot here) is the U.S. Postal Service we are talking about.

Still, despite this foolishness, at least the postmark we got was for a real place. Most of us have been to Bangor, if not out of some primordial need to patronize stores full of gimcracks and thingamabobs we don’t need and really can’t afford, at least as a pit stop on the way to or from somewhere else.

There was at least some comfort in knowing, “Hey, that’s where my mail is sleeping tonight.”

Now what we have instead are the words “Eastern Maine” and one of those funky little computer-generated bar codes across the bottom of the envelope. This insures that no human being will actually read the address and understand where the letter is headed. Now the new, near-fully automated mail-handling facility located somewhere in “Eastern Maine” will continue to send you someone else’s mail by mistake even when you write, “Return to sender” or “Wrong box” on it. It will never reach the rightful owner until you scratch the hell out of the bar code with a crayola crayon, which forces the machine to kick it out and holler for a low-tech human attendant.

Now, remember, this is not the fault of your local, hardworking post office employees and postmasters. They are not any happier about having to follow this screwball system than anyone else.

What I want to know is why, with all these high-tech gizmos, can’t we have a more personalized approach to the mail instead of the cold, impersonal designation of “Eastern Maine”?

Try addressing a letter to “Joe Anybody” in “Eastern Maine” and see how fast the post office rejects it. There is in fact no such place as “Eastern Maine.” In truth, the new service center is on the “west” side of the Penobscot River and not even actually in “Eastern Maine” — if we knew for sure where that was.

The rest of Maine, I’m told, gets mail stamped “Western Maine.” See, it just goes to prove there are two Maines, separate and yet apparently equal in the geographically insensitive eyes of the U.S. Postal Service.

Ultimately, we haven’t made mail service any better by spending these millions of dollars; we’ve barely arrested it from getting progressively worse. And, along the way, we’ve lost a real measure of community identity. What’s that worth?

It just goes to show you that, if you give the government the latest in computers, millions of dollars, and some multiple of 44-cent stamps, that, and a trip to Bangor and back, will get you a first-class letter delivered to and from somewhere in “Eastern Maine.”

Agents of Entropy

Some say the universe will come to its end with a whimper, others say a bang. I think the last sound will be a dog barking somewhere in the distance.

You see, dogs, I have recently come to realize, are the agents of entropy. Chaos is their name, disorder is their game.

And you don’t have to be Albert Einstein or Steven Hawking to know that this is true.

Both those respected scientists understood exactly what German physicist Ludwig Boltzman was talking about in his second law of thermodynamics which states that disorder in the universe always increases with time. The measurement of the total of that disorder is called entropy.

Boltzman, I theorize, must have had a dog. Maybe even a German Shepherd.

One moment Boltzman is leaning back in his lederhosen quaffing a fine Bavarian brew and contemplating the mysteries of the universe when “bang” — a totally-wired dog covered with mud and panting with breath that could put extra rings around a couple of gaseous planets does a controlled crash into his lap. “Eureka!” he undoubtedly shouted, as his hypothesis took shape.

Using Boltzman’s logic you can predict that if you leave a young dog alone for a time in a room, or a pickup truck for that matter, you will return to find that entropy has indeed increased as evidenced by the advanced state of disorder you will surely discover.

A part of the second law offers that when you combine the entropy or disorder of two systems, the total will be greater than the sum of the parts. Right again.

Leave two puppies alone in same said room or truck and you will indeed find more than twice as much destruction when you return.

Although I’m no rocket scientist, I think I understand exactly how Boltzman arrived at these far-reaching conclusions. I, too, have a German Shepherd. Her name is Shadow.

After observing her behavior for the last year or so, I’ve developed a few not-so-universal laws of canine thermodynamics of my own. None of these theories, I might add, seem to contradict the pioneering work of Boltzman or even Einstein or Hawking, for that matter. Shadow, who is sitting on the stairs and watching over my shoulder as I write this, agrees. She double-checked the math.

So, here goes:

            1. Nature abhors a vacuum. Therefore, dogs instinctively track mud, leaves, snow or just about anything else onto any newly-vacuumed carpet.

            2. What goes down, often comes up. You don't have to be a hairball to figure this one out.

            3. Complex systems tend to shed their parts — ergo, dogs shed hair ­— usually nonstop. See number one.

            4. What happens when an irresistible object comes up against an immovable force. Translation: a dog's willingness to obey a direct order is inversely proportional to your insistence and desire that it do so.

            5. Pups are the protons of the macro world. In quantum mechanics, scientists cannot pinpoint where an electron or proton in an atom is at any given point but only calculate the probability of its location at a given time. Anyone who has tried to find and corral a frisky pup who is gleefully bounding about the neighborhood after sneaking between your legs as you go out the door knows this first-hand.

            6. Puppies never chew up anything that costs less than $50 to replace. (There is no scientific allegory here but it does seem to be some sort of unwritten natural law. It is similar to the rule that almost any non-traumatic injury to a dog can be cured by a $50 visit to the veterinarian and a $35 envelope of those little orange pills.)

            7. Nothing, not even light, can escape from a dog’s food dish. Try putting anything remotely edible into the black hole that is the supper bowl and see if it ever makes it back.

            8. E=MC2. Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that energy equals matter times the speed of light squared. Dog energy equals Milk Bones times the amount you spend on crates, leashes, collars, pull toys, chew bones, tennis balls and trips to the doggie timeshare condo (boarding kennel) in Ellsworth — squared.

            9. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In physics this deals with the transfer of energy but it holds true with dogs. You must expend at least as much energy keeping up with them and picking up after them as they burn trying to stay ahead of you. That is a lot of energy.

Any garden-variety physicist will tell you that the only way to slow entropy is by the application of more and more of the above said energy.

Still, it is psychically, and indeed scientifically, impossible at this point to reverse the process.

The universe with its billions of galaxies, millions of exploding stars, and scores of class M planets covered with houses full of puppies, is gradually, inexorably succumbing to chaos.

So take comfort in knowing you are up against cosmic forces the next time you come home to find your magazines shredded, the furniture upset and a smiling, lovable puppy jumping and jumping excitedly in the middle of the room, waiting for you to come join the fun.

Stop whimpering. Take Rover for a walk. Pause and look up at the stars. Then listen closely and you, too, may hear the bark of a dog echoing faintly in the distance.