If you're on Mount Desert Island tomorrow (Saturday, Oct. 9), stop by The Naturalist's Notebook between 2 and 4 p.m. to learn more about wild plants, primitive skills and a new MDI-based plant organization called Anaskimin (a Native American word for acorn). New England Wild Flower Society botanist Arthur Haines, who has written a number of plant books, including Flora of Maine and Ancestral Plants, will be demonstrating friction fire-making, cordage making and other skills and answering all your questions about plants.
For a little more about Arthur, you might want to look back at my May post about a plant walk Pamelia, I and a group of other people took with him:
http://www.thenaturalistsnotebook.com/our-blog/tadpole-buddies-a-plant-genius-and-my-yellow-warbler
Though of late I've been absorbed with Sports Illustrated work, Pamelia went out and took advantage of yesterday's huge tidal shift. Western Bay was super high in the morning (with sizeable waves) and super low in late afternoon. Among other discoveries, Pamelia found a starfish (or sea star, for purists) of a different color. We've encountered deep red ones, but this one was more of a pinkish red.
I'm tempted to say that the sea star was waving hello, but you should have seen the range of contortions it went through over the span of a few minutes. One pose reminded me of a 1989 Sports Illustrated cover of Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham leaping through the air with his arm cocked back to throw a pass. Look for cool shots of this echinoderm at the Notebook next year.
This is what our bay looks like at super-low tide, an event that happens several times a year because of the gravitational pull of the moon. Six hours earlier the water level was almost 14 feet higher and the bay was chock-a-block full.