Bike Acadia!

Somehow I grew up in Maine without knowing about the Acadia Carriage Trails. I love biking so this was

an oversight of some significance! My husband mentioned them to me on our way home from a visit Downeast. I looked into it and it turns out they are a well-known hiking and especially biking destination. They are on the National Register if Historic Places, having been built by John Rockefeller in conjunction with the National Park Service, in the early to mid 20th century. 57 miles of packed crushed gravel roads wind between the ponds and mountains.

Acadia is not a compact park. It consists of several separate areas, and even the main area is an irregular lobed shape that winds in and out of the settled areas of Mount Desert Island. The town of Otter Creek is completely surrounded by parkland, for example. We entered the park at the Hull Cove Visitors Center. 

We took the Witch Hole Pond Loop, and the Eagle Lake Loop on purpose...and the Paradise Hill Loop by accident. I don't know which of the ponds was Witch Hole! But they were all beautiful. 

My bike (on the left) is at least 25 years old. I bought it used in 1994 for $200 - it seemed like an extravagant amount at the time but has earned its cost many times over. Doug's bike is also secondhand. One of the reasons I love biking is, you don't need fancy gear or special shoes or dedicated clothes. Any bike, any shoes, (almost) any clothes, and you are in business. 

We saw these two turtles basking together. They are Painted Turtles - the larger on about as big as those get, in Maine, the small one the smallest I've ever seen in the wild. 

When we found ourselves at the Duck Brook Bridge we declared ourselves officially lost. This was a little alarming - you can get pretty lost in 57 miles of road, and it was getting late in the day. Luckily there was a map kiosk at the bridge, that showed us where we went wrong. 

There's still so much of Acadia to see! Next time I will print a map, though. :)

On This Day: Portland Rum Riot

On this day in 1855, the Portland Rum Riot occurred, ending with one man dead and Mayor Neal Dow;s political career in ruins.

In 1851, Maine passed a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol, except for medicinal purposes. This is hard to picture in the Maine I know, land of 10,000 bars and home of Fat Ass in a Glass, a mixture of Allen's coffee brandy and milk.
Even at the time, the law did not go over well among Portland's large Irish population, They viewed it as an attack; Dow, a Quaker, devoted teetotaler and Abolitionist, saw the law as a social good, as much of the rum sold in the US at the time fueled the slave trade.

 Dow was not just opposed to imported liquor, though: he conducted raids on groggeries and drinking establishments right in the Munjoy Hill neighborhood of Portland. When a rumor spread that the mayor was storing rum in vaults under City Hall, the Irish immigrant population were enraged by what they saw as his hypocrisy. (The Mayor had authorized the purchase for medicinal purposes, but had not appointed a committee to do the authorizing, so was technically in violation of the law.)

At that time a judge could grant a search warrant if any three citizens requested it. Such a request was made to search City Hall, and a judge granted it. With warrant in hand, the men were nevertheless denied entry.

An angry crowd formed as men got off of work. They threw bricks and rocks, and Dow called out the militia with orders to shoot. One man, John Robbins of Deer Isle, broke and unlocked the door to the store of liquor. He was immediately shot by the militia. The crowd dispersed but the militia continued to fire, and more people were injured.

Dow was later tried and acquitted on charges that he improperly obtained alcohol. He lost his re-election bid handily and never again held public office, though he ran for governor and then for president.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Dad, looking so handsome in his uniform. 

I enjoy a long weekend as much as the next person - maybe more, if the next person is a curmudgeon! - but I do want to take a moment to recognize the people who risked all, and in some cases sacrificed all, to make the gardening and the barbecues possible. Thank you to our military service members, active and retired, past, present, and future. A special and heartfelt thanks sent to heaven for those who lost their lives defending our freedom.

My father was in the Air Force, before I was born. It was how he paid for college. He was stationed in Germany and though he came back well and whole and singing German songs, he enlisted during the Korean War. He didn't see combat, but he could have. He was willing to risk it, for his country.

My nephew is a soldier today. He is training right now for his specialty, and I fear in my heart he will be sent to Afghanistan, or some new war. He is a brave young man - they all are, to be soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in the first place - but I can't help but hope that his courage is not needed. I'm not much good at praying but I use whatever ability I have to ask that he be kept safe, that all our young men and women in the military be kept safe; that, if they should be forced to fight, let it be for a good cause and let justice prevail.

Enjoy the weekend, and thank those who made your enjoyment possible.

Be well.

Below: The Story of Flagstaff Village

In 1950, the towns of Flagstaff Village and Dead River Plantation, established in the 1800s, were submerged when Central Maine Power constructed the Long Falls Dam on the Dead River, creating Flagstaff Lake. I've been to Flagstaff Lake - it's a nice spot - and never thought twice about the people who lost their homes so it could exist. Kind of creepy, thinking about all the history below the surface.

Songwriter Slaid Cleaves, who grew up in Maine, put the story to music.

The View Across the Scarborough Marsh

I grew up in Scarborough. The marsh with all its attendant wildlife was ordinary to me; cormorants and heron and egrets were just birds. I didn't know what an amazing place it was until I moved away.

My first awareness of environmental issues came because of it. I was six, and my family had just moved to Scarborough from Brewer, an inland city in Central Maine. One we drove by an abandoned building - more of a shack, really - bordering the wetland. Someone had painted this graffiti: Save the Marsh! - The Gull.

My mother explained that there were people who wanted to fill in the marsh, to build houses and businesses. I pondered on that: houses and business were good, right? But where would the thing that lived there go? Some other marsh? What if that one got filled in also?

This was before environmental laws protected areas like the Scarborough Marsh, but blessedly the marsh survives. I visit it frequently; my father's ashes are scattered here, and I go to smell the salt air, watch the birds and think of him.

An Old Craft is New Again: Making Soap

Not me, thank goodness!

In the Colonial era, when the Province of Maine was a part of Massachusetts, the making of soap was a household chore and thus a commonly known skill. Soap was made by boiling animal fats with lye obtained from wood ash to produce the saponification reaction. Women, mostly, were the producers if soap for their families; there were also tradesmen called chandlers (because they also made candles) or soapboilers from whom one could purchase pre-made bars.

These days, of course, soap is readily available and affordable, but handmade soap is, for some a creative hobby or business, and for others a delightful luxury. We can luckily skip the smelly and unpleasant boiling of wood ash step, and just purchase lye at the hardware store, or online. What happens next looks different but is essentially the same process that the colonial inhabitants of Maine utilized.

Winter is soaping time for me, since gardening is out!

I make soap in a slow cooker, purchased at Goodwill for the purpose. I needed a number of smaller tools as well: a metal spoon and a wooden one; an immersion mixer, to blend the lye mixture without splashing it; and a big measuring cup - glass, not plastic.

Here's my recipe for Cold Process Soap. If you want to try it, you'll also need rubber gloves, protective goggles, and a soap mold lined with freezer paper.

Crisco 272 oz

Canola Oil 272 oz

Lard 181 g

Coconut Oil 181 g

Water 345 g

Lye 126 g

Weigh out the fats & oils and place them in the slow cooker on Low. When they have fully melted, turn slow cooker to Warm.

Weigh out the water and put it in a glass container. Put on your gloves and goggles and weigh out the lye. I go outside for the next bit, to release the fumes there. Always add the lye to the water, not the other way around. Slowly and carefully pour the lye into the water. The mixture will turn cloudy and get hot. Still with a metal spoon until it clears - should be just a couple minutes.

Still wearing your gloves and goggles, slowly pour the lye solution into the melted fats in the slow cooker. Stir briefly with a spoon and then begin using the immersion blender. Blend for a few minutes, and then stop, to keep from burning out the tool. Keep this up until the mixture reaches trace.

Wait, what's that mean? you may be thinking. Trace is a state of the lye/fat mixture in which the material thickens to the point that your stir marks will remain on the surface for a few seconds. If you dribble a bit of the mixture onto its surface, it will take a few seconds to sink back to level. Once the mixture reaches trace, you can be confident that your fats and lye mixture will not separate.

Soap at trace

At trace, I add the fragrance and colorants.This batch is called Stormy Night, for which I used a purple soap colorant, in two different concentrations, for a lighter and a darker shade. I poured the two together, but just barely mixed the batch, because I wanted the two colors swirled together. This batch I layered with some gold mica - sorry, not enough hands to take a photo of the layering process! 

A dusting of mica on top, and then the mold is covered and wrapped in towels to hold the heat in, aiding the saponification process.

The following morning, the soap can be unmolded and sliced, but it will still be a few weeks - at least four - before it is usable. The longer it cures, the harder and longer lasting your soap will be.