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.