By Tina Wood
Maine Master Naturalist
Upstream founder, president
Is there a wild spot, a quiet park, an empty overgrown lot, a secret path in your village that leads to a forgotten stream, vernal pool, or a place to sit on a wide river or the grand ocean? What if you visited this place throughout the year and sat? Dedicated some time to be still or stroll through silently to observe the wildlife that calls this treasured or forgotten spot home.
In this year of the virus, this quieting of our lives, it is a good time to discover the hidden gems close to your home.
This is how I fell in love with Cobbossee Stream five years ago. As part of the Maine Master Naturalist Program, we were instructed to choose a place to record phenological changes on a plot of land for a year. I reluctantly selected an overgrown, abandoned city lot wedged between a dam powerhouse and an industrial warehouse hugging the bank of Cobbossee Stream. It was just a hop down the hill from my home of 25 years. It provided easy access, which was necessary with my busy life of teaching and caring for my family. I had visited the lot in past years, mostly feeling discouraged with the reckless use of our natural assets.
I did not expect much from this deeply disturbed gravelly, weedy field. I had not at that time had my eyes opened to the power and possibilities that nature has to renew and rejuvenate itself from clear cuts, chemical poisonings or rivers being filled in, rerouted or used as garbage dumps.
It was a shock to record the deer, muskrat, beaver, fox, otter, snowshoe hare that left their winter tracks through the abandoned lot right in our downtown. The arrival of the winter ducks to feed on Cobbossee’s open waters, the mergansers: hooded, common, red-breasted, along with black, golden-eyed and mallard ducks surprised me. The unbelievable surge of the alewife in the spring! I was bewildered. Didn’t things need to be restored perfectly for the ospreys to soar and the fawns to be born?
Cobbossee taught me no. Life is not perfect, often it is deeply interrupted but life continues as it may. This changed my life forever! The stream and its seemingly junk lot became a constant source of inspiration and renewal that continues today especially with COVID-19 lurking around every easy corner.
I encourage you to fall in love and dare I say, maybe with the most forlorn place in town! I wonder what you will discover and how it may lead to new thinking and wonder. Please let us know. We would love to hear how the power of nature has changed your life!
PHOTO: Natural beauty abounds right outside your door. (Upstream Facebook photo)
