The thing about Martha’s Vineyard is… (#3)

There are friggin’ berries everywhere.  Almost as many berries as there are poison ivy plants.

MV Berries Primer

• Lowbush Blueberry

These plants are pretty much anywhere that gets sun.  We have a lot of open grassland near beaches.  They’re common along the edges of forests, too.

We also have highbush blueberries, although they are less common.  The plants are shrubs and the berries are larger.  I was keeping my eye on one plant, waiting for the fruit to ripen, but someone cut it down when they were doing trail maintenance a couple weeks ago.

 

Huckleberry

Pretty much everywhere there are lowbush, there are huckleberries, although the huckleberries seem to do a little better in full shade than the blueberries.  Not sure if this is true, just an observation.  I’d never tasted one before today, they are just ripening.  The fruit strongly resembles a blueberry, but it’s larger than the lowbush and darker.  The berry is also shiny, not dusty like a blueberry.  The plants I’ve seen are about a foot high.

 Serviceberry

Also known as shadbush because they bloom when the shad are running in the spring.  The name serviceberry has kind of an interesting etymology, too, that I learned about in college while studying the cemetery in Old Jaffrey Center.  Before we had backhoes, graves were obviously dug by hand.  So when the serviceberry bloomed, it indicated that the ground had thawed enough to bury the winter’s dead.  It’s also called Juneberry, for obvious reasons, as well as Saskatoon which is the Cree word for the plant.  The fruit is not actually a berry but a pome, which is the same type of fruit as an apple.  The pomes are really valuable to wildlife, and they’re pretty tasty.  I had my first one of these this morning, too, although I had some difficulty finding a ripe one.  The dark pink in the picture is as ripe as they get, but the birds usually devour them before people get a chance.  

Dogwood

Dogwoods are common ornamental trees.  They’re sort of flowering right now but those big white things you see aren’t the petals- they’re actually modified leaves called bracts, similar to a poinsettia.  The berries are drupes, like a raspberry or a blackberry.  The gardener on our property told me they are edible and taste “kind of custardy.”  Wikipedia tells me that not every species is edible and that some are even mildly toxic, so I think I’ll stay away from that one this summer.

Strawberry

Yet another berry that isn’t a berry!  Actually, it’s a berry that’s not a fruit… or is it a fruit that’s not a berry?  Let’s just say it’s an anomaly.  These are growing all over my front yard, and probably the back, too.  Chances are that if you have a yard, you have wild strawberries.  They ripen quickly and are eaten just as quickly by wildlife, plus the berries are really hard to see as they hang down to the ground underneath the leaves, so you might not ever notice them unless you are on your hands and knees on the lawn.  Strawberries are ripe right now, and although they are only about the size of your pinky nail, they’re really sweet.  I think the most I’ve gotten at one time was about a dozen, which is less than a mouthful.  Still cool, though, that you can eat stuff you find in your yard.

Bearberry

This is a species I had never noticed before this spring.  It grows low on the ground alongside the blueberries and has a similar bell-shaped flower that blooms at the same time.  Bears purportedly love it, hence the common name.  I didn’t know anything about it, and when I tried to find this photo I learned that it’s also called kinnikinnick, which is an Algonquin word meaning “mixture” because the natives mixed it with tobacco.  Wikipedia tells me that “large doses may cause nausea, green urine, bluish-grey skin, vomiting, fever, chills, severe back pain, ringing in the ears” but that it is “relatively safe.”  I think I’ll taste a few when they are ripe just to say I tried them, then never eat another one until I am starving in the wilderness.  The plant is supposed to have a lot of medicinal uses, which makes me even more surprised I wasn’t familiar with it. 

Bilberry

I can’t really paraphrase this information, so here’s a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilberry

Grapes

Because, “After all, it IS a vineyard.”  I searched and searched for a good picture but this was the best one of a wild grapevine.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll go out and take a photo of the vines along the parking lot.  There are historically two species of grape on the island and I haven’t determined which one is growing on our property- maybe they both are.  You all know about grapes so I won’t bore you with talk of the benefits of red wine, etc. 

Rubus species are also pretty common here.  This genus includes raspberries, blackberries, and dewberries.  There are hundreds to thousands of species and of course many of them hybridize.  I have never taken the time to learn the difference between the plants, I just eat the berries when they come out, red, black, you can tell when they’re ripe!  I suspect that most of what I’ve seen are actually blackberries but I won’t know for a while.

 

 

Standing up

The first time I was stood up was in high school.  I was doing stage crew and had a huge crush on this boy in the band.  I don’t really remember the details but we finally made plans to hang out.  I called him as I was leaving and his dad went to get him, then came back to the phone and told me he wasn’t home.  Riiiight…  As I recall, I went to the tea room that night, and never spoke to this kid again.  However, one of my friends sort of pushed him down the stairs.  Also, I made sure that every time we were walking down the same hallway, I was in front of him, just far enough in front of him to slam the doors closed in his face (our high school had a lot of doors).  Satisfied me!

Obviously nobody likes to be stood up.  Especially when you never find out what happened to that person.  It was clear that this little twit didn’t want to hang out with me for some reason and wasn’t mature enough to tell me that.

I started dating Mark Blake in the spring of our freshman year of college.  We were instantly inseparable.  During the couple months following school, we talked on the phone, I sent him postcards, there were e-mails and AIM conversations.  I visited him a couple times in VT, he came to MA to see me.  Then I had a Friday off from work so I was going to leave for his house in the morning.  I got up, showered, got my stuff together, and called to tell him I was on my way.  His mother told me he wasn’t home.  How could he not be home?  He was in CT.  Connecticut?  WTF?  He didn’t answer my phone calls or emails for the rest of the summer.  Finally, at some point over the next year, we got back in touch.  It wouldn’t be the last time that Mark pulled a disappearing act on me.  We remain friends, however, I never did get an explanation for this one.  I do have a theory, though, ask me about it sometime.

Mark Bennett used to somehow stand me up all the time.  Which is interesting, because he actually lived with me.  The boy would just not come home at night.  Was he out carousing?  I really don’t know.  It’s possible he lived a double life but I doubt he was cheating on me and he was pretty anti-drug.  The only explanation I have for this one is that he got really drunk and didn’t want to be that way around me.  This is pretty likely.  And you know how when someone doesn’t come home, you worry, and you think they’re in trouble?  Maybe they got hurt!  Maybe they got arrested!  Yeah, Mark tended to get in trouble, and his friends did, too.

The most well-known story of me being stood up is the one of Tattoo Face.  He and I were no longer actually dating (once the fact that he had twins came to light… with a stripper… and waited three weeks after we started seeing each other to tell me he was a father) but were definitely friendly.  He had a great dog and I had a dog and we were going to take them hiking on my favorite trail.  I spoke with him around noon, gave him directions from his apartment in Worcester to my parents’ house, and waited.  And waited.  After an hour, I called him, no answer.  No answer to my texts.  Finally, I went on the hike by myself.  The boy never showed up, never called.  About two weeks later he sent me a text, but by then I had already started dating Eric.  Tattoo face didn’t drop off the face of the earth, though.  He was seen shopping in Brooks while I was working (yes, he knew full well that I worked there) and also on the streets of Holden.  I, of course, honked and gave him the finger when I saw him and that was the last contact we ever had.

Eric… of course.  Of course he stood me up.  Called me one night from his house and told me he would be at my place in fifteen minutes.  Never showed.  I called him the next day from work at 11 and woke him up.  Somehow, between his house in Winchester and my house in Keene, he ended up at a party in Troy.  I’m still mad about this one.  First thought is that he cheated on me but I really don’t think so, although I accused him of it up and down.  Even after we broke up, though, he claims he never cheated.  He told me he didn’t call me that night because I would yell at him.  This is a perfect example of his selfishness- better to not be yelled at than to let me get a good night’s sleep not worrying my ass off and be all stressed out at work the next day and possibly kill someone.  I think it was about a week later that Mark came up from CT and picked me up at work, and I spent the night at his parents’ house in Vermont.  Yes, Eric worried and drove to my house in the middle of the night to find that I wasn’t there.  He actually got jealous and of course accused me of cheating.   I let him think whatever he wanted about me being alone for the night with the ex-boyfriend I was still in love with- I was a good girl, though.

Standing someone up is mean.  It’s also rude, disrespectful, and immature.  If you are afraid you will be yelled at, well, chances are you deserve to be yelled at.  When someone doesn’t show up and I am left waiting, not only do I get angry and hurt, but my stomach starts to spasm.  This happened every time Mark didn’t come home at night.  I would actually feel physical pain for two to three days, as the spasms and the worry kept me from sleeping and perpetuated the bad belly cycle.

Why do men do this?  I don’t know of a single instance of a woman doing this to a guy, or to anybody for that matter.  We have cell phones.  If you get lost, if you change your mind, if you decide you don’t want to snuggle or hike or go out… we’re just a couple button-pushes away!  And don’t tell me your phone died, because every other person in America has one you could use.  Christ.  There’s really no excuse.

Ooooh!  I’m still so mad at Eric!  I’m going to send him a message right now and tell him, just in case he has forgotten that he is an asshole.

 

Regrets

In the pharmacy you are taught to speak to each patient as if they have a fifth-grade education.  Of course in some cases this is a generous assumption, but generally it’s a good rule to follow.  Not just in the pharmacy, but in daily life.

I’m so sick of dumbing down what I say.  I shouldn’t have to feel relief every time I can have an intelligent conversation with an adult.  While I was working the other day a woman came by and asked me what I was removing.  “Wow,” I thought, “She said ‘removing’ instead of ‘cuttin’ down’!”

I fear my vocabulary has suffered.  I went four years without writing anything aside from an occasional letter or long e-mail.  I wrote one short story, which has now been disposed of.

I type half a sentence, then sit here with my fingers poised, trying to…  see?  See?  It happened again!  Where have all my words gone?

I guess part of it is that I constantly have to prove that I’m not sixteen years old and a pothead.  I can get really defensive about that.

When I speak I have an even more difficult time.  I stammer, stutter, and forget words.  I transpose words.  Whatever happened to grammar?  Syntax?  Even my spelling has gone downhill.

I think it’s time to get off the computer and read some books.  I bought seven at the thrift shop, plus I brough about ten with me.  Right now I’m rereading Lamb.  I haven’t returned to Moby Dick yet, or The Innocents Abroad, but they’re on the shelf behind me, waiting for my brain to start functioning again.

 

Greek yogurt

What an awesome food.  Safe for the lactose-intolerant, creamy and delicious.  So far I’ve had it with honey, with peaches, and today for lunch I dipped naan in it.  Oh.  My.  God.  Who knew something made from milk could be so wonderful?

It’s like eating a tub of sour cream, except I don’t have to feel guilty and I won’t get sick.  Also, it has cultures!

 

The thing about Martha’s Vineyard is… (#2)

People here follow their own rules.  Some of them don’t follow any rules.
Upon leaving Massachusetts I learned that everything fun isn’t illegal everywhere.  For example, when I went to college you could not legally tattoo in Mass.  And everyone knows that in New Hampshire an adult doesn’t have to wear a seat belt, or a helmet on a motorcycle.  We also don’t have to wear a PFD when kayaking mid-September through mid-May like you do here.
Now I’m back in Mass and I expected people to be obeying the many, many, many laws.  Not only do they ignore most of them, they also ignore rules, regulations, and suggestions.

Hospitality is pretty much unheard of here.  I don’t want to say that every single person I’ve encountered has been rude, but the majority of them have been less than friendly.  There are a couple people, including five different people who work in three different coffee shops (no poetry slams yet!), who have actually been nice and entered into conversation with me.

There’s really no reason to offer good customer service, especially if you don’t have $100 bills dribbling out of your ass.  You’re just another nameless faceless tourist, there will be hundreds to thousands just like you throughout the day.  People are making great money and good tips without being nice, so why bother?  an example of this is The Heath Hen Quilt Shop, the only shop in this town to sell yarn.  They also sell quilting supplies and cross-stitch kits.  I went in during my second week here, that was six weeks ago.  They are the only place that sells these beautiful cross-stitches with Vineyard themes, designed and packaged locally.  “Great,” I thought, “I can support local craftspeople and craft business owners and make my mom something really pretty and special for Mother’s Day.”  Of course, the pattern I wanted was the cheap one.  $25 for a photocopied pattern and some thread in a bag.  Steep, yes, but it’s not easy to design a cross-stitch chart so I felt it was well worth it.  Guess what?  They’re out of that pattern.  But they have plenty of the $45 ones!
Too bad I just didn’t like the $45 ones.  I was only going to have a few weeks to work on this and I wanted the smaller, simpler, cheaper one.  That kit also happened to be the one I just liked better.  So I asked when more would be in and the shop owner kind of avoided answering the question.
“When will you get more in?”
“Oh, we get them in all the time.”
“So, next week.”
“They could be in at any time.”
“Could they be in tomorrow?”
“Well, let’s see… oh, the phone!”
While she was taking the call I wrote my name and phone number on a piece of paper, along with “Please call me when the Martha’s Vineyard map cross-stitch kits come in.  Thank you,” so that there would be no confusion.
A week later I went in again.  Still no kits.  “Any day now!”  I had already told her that I needed it in time to finish before Mother’s Day and she assured me that I would have plenty of time.  I took a second look at the kits that were in stock, but didn’t want to pay twice as much for something that didn’t really appeal to me.
Two weeks later, no phone call.  I stopped by because I had seen on the web site that they would be closed for vacation.  Keep in mind that this shop is open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, from 10-2.  Because, you know, nobody who actually works might want to buy something crafty.  So anticipating that she would be closed for ten days, I asked her directly when they would be in.
“Well, if I order them tomorrow, they should be here by the first.”
IF?  Why WOULDN’T you order them?  When you were supposed to order them for me THREE WEEKS AGO?  SHOULD be here by the first?  That’s in TEN DAYS.
OK, what can I do but wait?  It’s been sixteen days since she was SUPPOSED to order the goddamn kit for me, for the third time.  I have five days until Mother’s Day and no gift.  Asshole.  What difference does it make to HER if I boycott her shop?  Incidentally, I did buy a knitting magazine while I was in, and she overcharged me.  I think she did it on purpose expecting me not to notice, but I was going to just ask her to take that amount off of the cross-stitch kit I had planned to buy.

I feel really bad that the island is like this.  As much as I dislike the state in general, I have always felt that the people here are more friendly, aside from when driving.  Of course I’m forgetting that Martha’s Vineyard is “different” from Massachusetts.  Because, remember, there are no laws here.

 

 

The thing about Martha’s Vineyard is… (#1)

One of the many things I learned on our road trip this spring is that beer bottles on the side of the road are universal.  In every state, on every highway, every rest stop and pull-off, broken bottles litter the shoulder.

Here in Martha’s Vineyard, there aren’t so many beer bottles.  Nope, the people here throw wine bottles out their car windows.  I wonder if they had a Stan’s Market here if the shelves would be full of expired caviar.

 

T-shirts that 12-year-olds should not be wearing

Lookit me… up on my high t-shirt horse.

Just looking for some cheap clothes, I happened upon these beauties marketed to juniors (ages 12-17 or so).

…but I’m fucking the drummer!

I’m not fat, I’m pregnant!

I Swallow

I have the pussy so I make the rules

Buddha belly

It’s not going to lick itself

I’ll be using THESE to my advantage

 

And finally…

 

Birth control is for sisses

 

Three movies I’ve watched this week

Danger!  Spoilers!

“Frogs” (1972)

Don’t let the title fool you!  There are only a handful of frogs in this movie, almost all the amphibians are toads and there are plenty of assorted reptiles, too.  Smith is canoeing around an island doing a pollution photo shoot for an ecology magazine.  A speedboat capsizes him and he is taken to a crazy old man’s July 4thbirthday party.  The “frogs” are taking over the island and even banging at the window, trying to get in.  You might wonder what, exactly, the frogs are doing to the people.  Are they sucking their blood?  Swallowing them whole?  No, they are annoying the family with their incessant croaking.  The geckos, however, and other sorts of lizards and snakes, take it upon themselves to poison people whenever they get the chance.

Somehow, the frogs have murdered the maintenance man and cut the phone lines.

Amphibians are full of mystery.  Don’t let their thin skin and sensitivity to environmental changes be misleading.  Let “Frogs” be a lesson to you- pollute their island and they’ll fuck you up.

“House of 1000 Corpses” (2003)

Rob Zombie being one of my original hair inspirations, it was about time I got around to this.  I’ll never be what you’d call a horror fan, but I do enjoy the occasional scary movie.  I’m always reluctant to watch something violent but I guess I need to learn to trust my friends’ judgement.  So I put my severe fear of clowns aside and watched it.

Two couples take a road trip to write a book about “offbeat roadside attractions.”  They come upon Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen.  Captain Spaulding being a clown, but he has no big red nose so I was somehow OK with it.  I happened to be craving fried chicken already when I watched this, by the way.  So the kids look around the museum and take the Murder Ride, which brings up the subject of Dr. Satan.  This local legend supposedly tried to create a super-race by fucking around with brains of people from the town hospital which resulted in his hanging.  Needless to say, a quest for the hanging tree results in four dead kids.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I had expected.  At no point did I have to avert my eyes.  The violence was less-than-realistic but not gratuitous.  Just enough carnage to carry the story.  My reaction to this film made me wonder if I am finally becoming as numb as the rest of you.  My favorite part was the carved-up cheerleader in the trunk, as it reminded me of someone I know who is into that sort of thing, who I miss dearly.

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2001)

Netflix has been suggesting this for weeks and it finally arrived on Tuesday.  My new favorite.  Sex, communism, rock’n'roll!

Hedwig is an East Berliner who falls in love with an American soldier.  In order for them to marry and return to the States, he must submit to a full medical exam, so he gets a sex change first.  The operation results in Hedwig possessing a one-inch mound of flesh that is neither male nor female genitalia.  After her husband leaves, she takes up with a Jesus freak that she babysits named Tommy, and they begin a musical career.  He leaves her, of course, and enjoys fame and fortune as she follows his tour around the US performing in whatever Bilgewater Inn is nearby.  She wants to confront him about stealing her songs and finally gets the chance.  I won’t spoil the ending.

This is a musical.  Pay attention to the songs.  Which are great, by the way.  It’s a musical movie of a stage musical of a book, apparently.  And Hedwig’s fans… they’re called Hedheads.

 

And I said it would never get here

OK, I admit it.  Spring has arrived.

I spent the morning at Long Point, our property on the south shore of the island.  After passing the road twice, a five-minute ride brings me to the locked summer entrance gate.  I have two keys, neither of which work.  I travel what I secretly and facetiously refer to as “Adventure Road.”  There are dips deep enough to snuggle in and still be below the average road height.  The trees close in and scratch down both sides of the truck with that nails-on-a-blackboard sound.  I arrive at the winter entrance and go inside to see what kind of keys they have.  I’m given a lesson in opening a lock with a key.  Because not only am I just a girl, but also a stupid asshole.  “Oh, you have to wiggle it?” I say.  I take a spare master and return to the summer entrance with my keys.  Just for the hell of it, I try both of mine again, no luck.  The master works, however, and it’s five more minutes before I am actually at the parking lot.  It has now been one hour since I left the office.

I park where we burned a couple weeks ago and stake out the area for possible box turtle habitat.  I see one goose and one male mallard on the pond.  I see one caddis fly larvae in the pond.  There is a roasted dead bird by the pond- did anyone smell fried chicken at the burn?  I find a big purple bottle labeled “Phenix Nerve Beverage Boston” that turns out to be about 80 years old, at least.  Yes, that’s “Phenix” with no “o.”  As I make my way from east to west around the pond, the duck has disappeared but the goose remains, and he looks unhappy.  I approach the south end and he moves toward me.  He leans forward, honking quietly and looking quite menacing.  I guess I am nearing the nest.  I look around, keeping one eye on the goose while I walk slowly and carefully through the grass, looking for his mate.  It’s like a game of Hot or Cold.  Warmer….. the honking increases in volume and he swims closer to me.  Colder… he quiets down and stops paddling.  He doesn’t want to confront me but will do what it takes to protect his progeny.  The honking is loud and consistent as I step onto the sand shore of the pond and suddenly the female bursts out of the grass about three feet away.  She joins him in the pond and they both move quickly toward me, honking and leaning and becoming a little more terrifying every second.  Have you ever been attacked by a big bird?  It’s not funny.  It’s scary and pretty painful.  I get the hell out of there.

I drive north past the osprey pole.  I can see the female on the nest, poking her head out over the edge to watch me.  I park what I feel is a safe distance away from her and begin to search for burnt turtle carcasses, I mean, shells.  She whistles when I am near but quiets down as I walk further north.  I find an intact skeleton, a few scutes, and a broken skeleton from painted turtles.  My hands full, I start to return to the truck and see the male osprey approach from over the forest.  He’s carrying a fish, but when he sees me he makes a wide arc.  He won’t go near the nest.  He circles and circles, and I fear that he will drop the fish or abandon the idea of feeding his mate altogether.  Again, I’m a little afraid that a bird is going to hurt me, but what I am more scared of is the female.  She gets up on the edge of the nest and whistles frantically, then takes flight.  I assume there are eggs in there, otherwise she wouldn’t have been sitting.  So I jog to the truck with my turtle remains and leave the property. I look at the rearview mirror as I go and see both osprey returning to the nest.

On my way back to the office I see people everywhere.  Bikes in the road.  Guys working outside… shirtless… at an elementary school.

After lunch we go to Seven Gates to look for vernal pools.  Massachusetts offers protection to these temporary bodies of water as they provide breeding habitat for some rare or threatened species.  In order to be protected, it first has to be certified.  The criteria are 1) proving that the water body supports no fish and 2) proving that certain species are using it to breed.  Some species are obligate, meaning they breed specifically in vernal pools and their presence alone is grounds for certification.  Some examples are my favorite species, Ambystoma maculatum, the yellow-spotted salamander, and fairy shrimp.  If you don’t have obligate species then you have to provide evidence that two different facultative species are there.  These include wood turtles, spring peepers and certain invertebrates.

We drive through Seven Gates until we hear spring peepers, then we find a pull-off and pull on our waders.  Greg leads the way through the ever-present briars and we start poking around this isolated pool of water.  I almost immediately locate the first fairy shrimp I have ever seen.  This immediately proves that this is a vernal pool, but we keep hearing frogs so I am determined to find one.  I’m slogging along the edge when Greg spots a frog.  I catch it in the net, only to find that it’s not one spring peeper, but two.  Mating.  The proper description here is “in amplexus.”  This means that the male has mounted the female and is gripping her tightly just below the arms.  When she releases her eggs, he’ll top it off with some sperm and babies will happen.  Greg is more than a little turned on holding these sex frogs in his hand, and takes lots of pictures.  I am triumphant at immediately IDing this pool as well as capturing the first peepers of the year.  Have I mentioned that they don’t call them “spring peepers” in Martha’s Vineyard?  No, they insist on referring to them as “pinkletinks.”  This is completely stupid as anyone who has ever heard them calling can only imitate the sound by saying “Peep!  Peep!  Peeeeep!” in a shrill voice.  I just want everyone to know that giving them this insulting name in no way changes the sound of their voices.

Next we meet a black pug named Beano, who is walking with another dog, a couple humans, and two goats.  Someone is living my fantasy life…

I realize it’s me, as we check more murky water for shrimp and frogs.  No more pools are identified, but we catch a bunch of green frogs and Greg randomly nets another peeper in an insect sample.  We do a little stream exploring on the way back out, but don’t find anything particularly fascinating.

I set out to blog on harbingers of spring.  So we have the shirtless men.  People being outside, in general.  The spring peepers.  Also, flowers.  Lots of flowers!  Grape hyacinth, daffodils, forsythia, magnolias.  I have some sort of giant daisy tree in my front yard.  Interestingly, one of the most important signs of spring to me was one of the last ones to appear here.  The maples are finally flowering.  A little more subtle than those other plants, but proof to me that winter might just be over.

 

“He tells me to burn things!”

The purpose of today’s prescribed burn was to help transform some scrubby brush area back to grassland, I guess in hopes of creating more diversity in the environments on a property called Long Point.  Combined with mowing in the fall, it is intended to eradicate small pitch pines, huckleberry, and god willing some of the poison ivy so that native grasses can populate the area again.

In order to take part in a prescribed burn, you need to be certified.  This entails a 40-hour class with a written test and some field training.  I am not certified, so I went along expecting to simply observe and take pictures.  I had never been to this property before and had never witnessed a burn so I had no idea what to expect.

Greg and I got to the barn and office at about 9:15.  I stapled some packets of maps together and Chris Eagan, the superintendent of the property, showed me on the aerial photo where the burn would be taking place.  He asked me if I was comfortable driving through the proprty and into town and observing the smoke, then reporting back to him if it was causing any problems.  If everything went right for the burn in terms of wind direction, all the smoke would blow at an elementary school and to the airport.  Obviously there is a visibility issue there, as well as the fear factor, that everyone panics when they smell smoke and don’t know where it’s coming from.  If we’re causing problems for the surrounding community, obviously it’s going to become difficult to get permission to have these burns in the future.

We drove a golf cart down to the southeast corner of the burn area, which they call the “unit,” and returned to the barn which is on the west side of a long pond that almost splits the proprty.  We took the truck over to the east side and waited for the crew to show up.

There were about a dozen people from The Nature Conservancy whose full-time (seasonal) job is doing prescribed burns on the island.  They had super jumpsuits or fire-resistant pants, cool equipment, fuel, hoses, rakes and shovels.  It was amazing how organized they are, of course they have to be.  Everyone was really nice and enthusiastic, but how could you not be when it’s your job to set the world on fire?

There is a lot of preparation and familiarizing yourself with the day’s procedure.  Everyone has to know what their job is, who their crew is, who has a radio, what and where the hard breaks (like bodies of water and parking lots, things that can’t burn) and soft breaks (mowed strips across the field, woodchip trails) are, and of course what the weather is doing. 

We waited all morning for the clouds to clear and the conditions to be right for the burn.  If there is no sun, then there isn’t enough lift to get the smoke up off the ground and it will just kind of crawl around instead of blowing and dissipating.  We also needed the wind to be blowing in a direction that wasn’t directly at the airport, and the relative humidity needed to be low enough.  All morning, everyone kept looking at the sky, trying to will the sun to come out.  There was very little wind, and what we did have was from the east, which apparently is too damp.  Finally, around lunch time, they had almost decided to call off the burn.  The group was really patient and took a walk around the border of the burn area, waiting for the sun.  Eventually they decided that conditions were right to try burning a small area between the large pond to the west and a very small on to the east.  If this went well they would continue north through the whole unit.

At this point, I could no longer see what was going on.  I wasn’t permitted to be in the unit because I’m not trained, so I sat in the truck in the parking lot and watched from the closest point.  People walked around setting points on fire, but I couldn’t see how, exactly.  Just as the line started to move close enough for me to make out the details, Chris sent me into Tisbury to see if the smoke was affecting anything.  I drove through the town and back, didn’t see or smell anything at all.  By the time I returned the small section was done and the crew had decided to continue and moved to the northwest corner.  They would begin there and work south toward the area they had just done.  Again, right as things started to get going I was sent out in the truck.

This time I could smell it, and there was a slight haze in some lower elevations.  As I sat in a parking lot, I could see a valley to the west slowly growing hazier.  The school bus came and as it emptied I could hear all the kids saying, “I smell smoke!”  I watched the valley fill to the point where I could no longer see the other side, and then the smoke began to creep up the hill to where I was.  I called Chris, and he told me everything had been lit so we should see a decrease in smoke from that point on.  I went back to the site just as everyone was finished, so I basically missed the whole thing after the initial ingition.

After a burn everyone has to sit around and talk about it, how it went, what they learned, etc.  I told the group I was really impressed by how easy they made it seem and that I was glad to be a part of it, which was true.  After this began the mopping up, which is extinguishing anything that still smolders.  I got to take part in this, which involved walking across freshly burnt field and through poison ivy up to my armpits with a tool I don’t have a name for, and whacking at anything that smoked.  The first thing I came across that was smoking?  Two goose eggs.  Fully cooked.

Which brings me back to the ecology aspect.  Theoretically, this burn was going to eliminate the shrubs from the area so that the grasses could grow again.  During the mopping up it was painfully clear that this is not going to be effective.  For instance, the pitch pines and oaks were seemingly unaffected by the fire.  Even a lot of the huckleberry was barely damaged.  What did burn?  The grasses.

Another thing that burned was turtle shells.  A girl on the crew pointed one out to me, and when I picked it up I found it to be an eastern box turtle shell.  Box turtles are a “species of special concern” in Massachusetts and probably the rest of New England, partly due to overcollection for the pet trade.  It’s also suspected that breeding with introduced subspecies has weakened their genetic stock.  If someone finds a box turtle on the island, they are supposed to call our office and Greg and I get to go see it.  There has been no record of box turtles on this property, so the shell was an exciting find.  It’s possible that the turtle itself was killed in another location, and the predator somehow carried the shell to this location.  I find this unlikely, as when I showed our find to the rest of the group someone said, “Oh yeah, I saw like three of those over there.”

You’re probably wondering if the fire killed the turtle, and the answer is no.  There were no bones or any other remains around the shell, and it wasn’t singed inside, so the turtle didn’t ignite or anything.  The man who saw the other shells told me they were old and bleached out so they had probably been there a while.

The question now is, did we just destroy prime box turtle habitat?  Who knows!  None of us know that much about the species, so I’m going to make it my job to become an expert.  If there had been evidence of turtles before the burn it’s really unlikely we would have allowed it to happen.  It’s not like they can run out of the fire to safety.

One species that could escape the fire was the osprey.  Right near the eastern edge of the unit was a pole with a pair of ospreys building a nest at the top.  We watched them all morning, bringing tufts of grass and arranging them.  Nobody knew what would happen after the fire was lit.  Would they return?  When?  Would the pole burn?  Would the fire climb it and destroy the nest?

Just as I came back from smoke duty, the pair of birds came flying in over the pond.  The circled the nest repeatedly, and finally landed.  They stood on the edge and looked around and finally one of them seemed to settle in.  I was really relieved because I was thinking about how much energy went into building that nest and how bad it would be if they had to find another location and start all over.

I’m really curious to see the results of this burn.  What’s going to grow first, other than poison ivy?  Did we clear the way for box turtles or destroy their habitat?  I also had questions about the effects on other species, like rabbits and mice.  There weren’t any stampedes out of the line of fire, so I assume there wasn’t much in there or they were safely underground.  If underground, though, are they safe or do they roast in their burrows?  Could a box turtle survive a fire?  Probably not, since the goose eggs were cooked firm all the way through.

Apparently ecologists have a reputation for killing things.  I plan to delve into this a little further as the summer goes on.  Remind me to tell you about the dragonfly larvae from yesterday.