PEREGRINE IN PROSPECT

On Friday, I went to the Penobscot Narrows Observation Tower with my pal, Shirley. The tower is in the top of the bridge that crosses the Penobscot River from Prospect to the island of Verona. There is a parking lot under the old bridge and the new bridge. It's impressive to look upward to the bottoms of those two incredible structures. I was just thinking, "Geez, this looks like perfect nesting places for Peregrine falcons," when I heard a hawk-like vocalization in the trees. It wasn't a hawk sound I recognized. The source was this fantastic Peregrine falcon, the first I had ever seen. It was tearing at a bird kill which can be seen in one of the photographs with the feather in it's beak. Handily, the bird was over the cinderblock restroom building as I was nearly peeing my pants to see this incredible bird and to have the camera around my neck! I got more great shots than any one person deserves, but I'll keep them ALL! As if I wasn't high enough from that, then I got 470 feet high in the observation tower! I'll post photos of that after I've caught my breath.

FORT KNOX

I went to Fort Knox on Friday. Fort Knox sits on the Penobscot River in Prospect, Maine overlooking Bucksport. I had never been there before. Growing up, when my parents were referring to someplace heavily secured, they'd say "It's locked up tighter than Fort Knox." I always thought they meant this Fort Knox,
not the U.S. Treasury Mint. Both forts were named after Major General Henry Knox, America's first Secretary of War. Maine's Fort Knox was built between 1844 and 1864 from locally quarried granite. The dandelions were blooming, the sun was shining and it could not have been prettier. One of my fondest memories of nursing school wasn't about nursing school at all: it was of making dandelion wine with my classmates. This was not a sanctioned past time for young nursing students. However, on a bright, sunny day just like this one, we walked the median strip of Route 295 picking dandelion blossoms. We stuffed trash bags full until we could hardly drag them back to our car. Then we concocted the elixir that would become wine in a month or so. We were seventeen with loose, flowing hair and cut off denim shorts. We had ample attention from passers-by who honked wildly. I'm sure that there weren't any dandelions at Fort Knox when it was garrisoned. It was probably packed earth and not a green thing to meet the granite. But I would rather think of those seventeen year old soldiers making dandelion wine than loading guns with cannon balls.

Beef or Chicken?

This is a Hamburg chicken. No kidding. That's the breed. They were developed in Holland before 1700. He's a rooster and very showy. Seeing him running around in this field of dandelions was quite cheerful. He was crowing up a storm too, which was kind of annoying. I was working near where he was and it got a little hard to take. The golden weather vane is at the public library in Camden, Maine. The field is at Fort Knox in Prospect, Maine. It looks like a place a chicken would want to hang out.