COA THE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Volume 12 . Number 2. Fall 2016 INTERCONNECTED: COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC & ACADIA NATIONAL PARK Cover: Students in the Summer Field Institute course Wonder of Acadia, one of several COA programs for high school students, join Christie Denzel Anastasia '92, Acadia National Park's deputy chief of interpretation, on the fire tower of Beech Mountain. From left they are Christie, Lily Schaeufele, Camryn Branch, Ingrid Sant, Leanna Laws, Oscar Garcia Maldonado, and Tony Perez. Above: The view from the tower, looking south-southeast toward the Cranberry Islands. On the left, near the horizon, is Great Duck Island, where COA has a research station. Photos by Donna Gold. COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine Interconnected College of the Atlantic & Acadia National Park Letter from the President 3 News from Campus 4 INTERCONNECTED 10 Changing So what? to Aha! 12 Seeking Acadia's Bats 15 In Their Own Words Alumni & the Park 18 Poetry . The Stepping Stones 25 Acadia Through the Ages 26 Recent Research 29 Acadia's Nature Center 30 Drawing the Forest & its Leaves 32 The Wild Gardens of Acadia 36 Donor Profile Neva Goodwin & the Rockefellers 38 Leave No One Behind . Barry Lopez 39 Alumni Notes 44 Farewells 50 Community Notes 52 In Memoriam 55 Our Back Pages . Moving the Dorr 56 HELIO Creating a "New-versity" 57 COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine Autumn has come. There's a fire in our woodstove, an orange glow beneath Volume 12 Number 2 Fall 2016 the maples, and our pears-gnarled but still edible, as pear expert Henry Hunt '15 promises-are ready to be picked. Houseplants, lush from a summer of light outdoors, now overtake our windows inside. Yet it's still Editorial warm enough that students are sailing off the pier. Editor Donna Gold The nestling of College of the Atlantic among Acadia National Park's Editorial Advice Heather Albert-Knopp '99 John Anderson hills opens glorious vistas for our students, along with opportunities for Lynn Boulger research and exploration that are quite possibly unprecedented. But Dianne Clendaniel Ken Cline there's something even more crucial. Within this surround of nature, our Darron Collins '92 students gain the option and expectation of developing one of the most Sarah Hall Jennifer Hughes essential of human skills: knowledge that comes from observation, from Maxim Lowe '18 sensory awareness. Whether it is the careful examination of leaves and Stephen Ressel Editorial Consultant Bill Carpenter bark by the students in Catherine Clinger's class Drawing Mineral and Botanical Matter in the Forest; the dogged search by Erickson Smith '15, Design Art Director Rebecca Hope Woods night after night, so as to possibly assist Acadia's bats suffering from white- nose syndrome; or the careful counting of species, from fungi to insects COA Administration to salamanders to birds, this acquisition of knowledge takes patience, President Darron Collins '92 Academic Dean Kenneth Hill confidence, and trust in one's own eyes, hands, ears. To make sense of Administrative Dean Andrew Griffiths what one has seen and heard is about as valuable a lesson as one can Associate Deans Chris Petersen Karen Waldron earn from four years of college. This gift of listening, of seeing, smelling, Dean of Admission Heather Albert-Knopp '99 reflecting, and doing enlivens these pages. It is one that has propelled Dean of Institutional Lynn Boulger Advancement Barry Lopez, our 2016 commencement speaker, throughout his writing life. Dean of Student Life Sarah Luke We are honored to publish his talk. We are equally thrilled to present the beautiful vision of Acadia's geology created by Maxim Lowe '18. COA Board of Trustees As with each thematic issue, my most torturous task as editor is to Timothy Bass Jay McNally '84 Ronald E. Beard Philip S.J. Moriarty choose who and what to feature. We would have loved to expand this issue Leslie C. Brewer Phyllis Anina Moriarty to highlight the current exhibit at the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural Alyne Cistone Lili Pew Lindsay Davies Hamilton Robinson, Jr. History, Exploring Acadia: Our Best Classroom, and additional extraordinary Beth Gardiner Nadia Rosenthal alumni, such as Meg Scheid '85, site manager at Saint Croix Island Amy Yeager Geier Abby Rowe ('98) H. Winston Holt IV Marthann Samek International Historic Site. Know that what is celebrated in these pages is Jason W. Ingle Henry L.P. Schmelzer but a sample of numerous senior projects, paintings, drawings, and student Philip B. Kunhardt III '77 Laura Z. Stone Nicholas Lapham Stephen Sullens and alumni research efforts, each representing the interconnections Casey Mallinckrodt William N. Thorndike, Jr. between COA and Acadia. Anthony Mazlish Cody van Heerden, MPhil '17 Linda McGillicuddy Life Trustees Trustee Emeriti Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. David Hackett Fischer John N. Kelly "William G. Foulke, Jr. Susan Storey Lyman George B.E. Hambleton William V.P. Newlin Elizabeth Hodder John Reeves Sherry F. Huber Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Helen Porter Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 John Wilmerding Dam Gold Donna Gold, editor The faculty, students, trustees, staff, and alumni of College of the Atlantic envision a world where people value creativity, intellectual achievement, and diversity of nature and human cultures. With respect and compassion, individuals construct meaningful lives for themselves, gain appreciation of the relationships among all forms of life, and safeguard the heritage of future generations. COA is published biannually for the College of the Atlantic community. Please send ideas, letters, and submissions (short stories, poetry, and revisits to human ecology essays) to: Donna Gold, COA Magazine, College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 dgold@coa.edu Back Cover: Islesford Point, Addison Namnoun '15, oil on canvas, 30"x20." WWW.COA.EDU COA indicates non-degree alumni by parentheses around their class year. From the President Darron Collins '92, PhD The view out my office window is distracting. Twice a day a view into the harbor and coming face-to-face with the retreating tide exposes the sand bar connecting Bar Harmony of the Seas. What would those final reports have Harbor to Bar Island, and I can't help but be drawn to the looked like? walkers, cars, dogs, and deer making the pilgrimage back Those cruise ships, the proximity to large urban and forth. centers, and our island's incredible beauty make Acadia Today, another gorgeous day in September, the M/V National Park the third most densely visited park in the Zuiderdam is anchored rather ominously just beyond the country (behind Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park and bar. She's a cruise ship hailing from Rotterdam. Her 81,769 Arkansas's Hot Springs National Park). There are seventy- gross tons, 957 feet in length and 189 feet in height, five visits per acre per year here in Acadia. Yellowstone? sounds big, but with a maximum capacity of 2,272 people, Not even two. That density-what can only be described she's relatively tiny. Harmony of the Seas holds 6,780 as an over abundance of love of place-is the biggest guests and 2,100 crewmembers-she's large enough to threat to the ecological integrity of the park. carry the entire city of Ellsworth off to sea. The year 2016 has been one of celebrating the first In the summer of 1971, before the inception of formal hundred years of Acadia. As we head into its second studies at COA in the fall of '72, faculty member Bill century, that overabundance of love will be our biggest Carpenter led a dozen adventurous students (including challenge. The college has been inextricably linked to the faculty member Gray Cox) out to Bar Island to describe park since Bill's first foray out onto Bar Island; those links and understand the island and to ask and answer the are explored in this issue of COA. In reading, I can't help question What are the ecological problems here? but imagine the fall 2116 issue of COA and the stories that Bill recently told me, "We understood ourselves to be celebrate how COA helped to successfully balance a world a problem-solving outfit. Unfortunately, in terms of the of soaring adoration for Acadia with a deeper, higher experiment, Bar Island seemed bereft of problems. It felt quality visitor experience and greater protection of the like paradise." place we call home. A tough job, but who better to take on I can see Bill and Gray now, traipsing through the the challenge than the human ecologist? woods. I imagine them parting the branches to clear Above: Small plant on McFarland Mountain, #73 of #100daysinanp, a yearlong celebration by Darron Collins '92, COA president, which he began at 5:33 a.m. on January 25. Follow Darron on Instagram: @humanecologist COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 3 NEWS FROM CAMPUS APRIL JULY The Udall Foundation awards 60 A summer of Tuesday morning Coffee scholarships to second- and third- & Conversations begins, featuring year students for leadership, public Acadia National Park, The New Yorker, service, and commitment to the and more. environment or to Native American THE ODYSSEY nations. Laura Berry '17 and Tides, the senior project film of CAMPUS Matthew Kennedy '18 receive two of Omer Shamir '16, is screened at the the 60. Maine International Film Festival in Waterville. Corrie Ingall '16 presents a staged reading of her senior project play, AUGUST Problem Set, exploring the doing and learning of mathematics. The Watson Foundation celebrates the homecoming of its fellows with a five-day reunion at COA. MAY First-year students gather and A month before Barry Lopez's visit to scatter on their OOPs trips, hiking campus as commencement speaker, Baxter State Park or the Appalachian SUMMER SCULPTURE the community gathers in Turrets to Trail, rock climbing in Acadia, read his book Winter Count aloud (see paddling the West Branch of the page 39). Penobscot or the Allagash rivers, or sea kayaking on Frenchman Bay. Dance. Poetry. Bagpipes. Opera. Fun. Fandango brings joy and humor. Also funds for Share the Harvest, enabling SEPTEMBER food bank clients to purchase healthy, local, organic food. Ninety-nine new students from 18 Amy Goodman ('83), Democracy Now! countries and 22 states join the COA host, and her brother David discuss community. and sign their book, Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements As they consider a COA-like college, BAR AND SWIM Changing America. delegates from Osakikamijima, Japan meet with local business owners, Acadia, town and regional officials, and the COA community to JUNE understand the impact of a small school on a small island (see page 57). Outdoors at the Shrine, Lucille Jan- Turan '16 presents her senior project play, Chi Phi Rom Com, a Chinese OCTOBER philosophy romantic comedy. Alumni, families, and trustees fill Eighty-three COA students from 24 states and 13 nations receive campus for our annual Family & DESERT ROCK Alumni Weekend. degrees in human ecology. REPAIRED, CELEBRATED George B. Dorr Museum of Natural COA hosts The Island Story Slam at History opens Exploring Acadia: Our Thorndike Library. Best Classroom, a student-created The Nature of Halloween at the exhibit featuring COA and Acadia. Dorr Museum serves up spooky fun: COA's website awarded "Best insect treats, creepy bones, live owls, more. Higher Education" site by Council for Advancement and Support of Education. It "immediately invokes Anjali Appadurai '13 co-leads a media and communications skills a smile," say judges, adding, "They don't need to tell you they are workshop for students at the first Thoreau Gathering (see page 9). SQUASH BONANZA AT different, they show it." BEECH HILL FARM 4 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE NEWS COA TOPS GREEN SCHOOL LISTS #1. PRINCETON REVIEW. SIERRA CLUB. Both Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, in its annual "Cool Schools" ranking, and the Princeton Review's "Top 50 Green Colleges" have placed College of the Atlantic as first in considering the environment. Both cite the curriculum, how the ideas, the learning, the actions are integrated within it. Sometimes we say, It's in our DNA. It's how we care for our buildings, our grounds, our purchases, our food, our energy. And it's how we teach. At COA, students, faculty, and staff learn together. Often it is students who lead-asking questions of how we handle waste, what fuels our cars, where our food comes from, how we can make changes globally as well as locally. That may be true of students around the nation. The difference is, at COA faculty and staff act on it. Together, we move forward. Just one example: In early 2013, when students petitioned to divest from fossil fuel stocks, Andy Griffiths, administrative dean, called a special meeting of the investment committee, which accepted the students' proposal. At the next board meeting, the trustees, too, approved. That was a Saturday. On Monday, COA divested. SIERRA The Princeton report, which includes a Q&A with the Jason Mark, Sierra's editor-in-chief, noted that COA college, can be downloaded at princetonreview.com/college. achieved the top spot on their list, "by a landslide." In part, it was this integration of sustainability into the curriculum, AND MORE as well as the complete divestment of our endowment Two other college guides recently came out. In US News & from fossil fuels, and the use of renewable sources, only, World Report's annual examination of liberal arts colleges, for electricity. COA again was in the nation's top 100, ranking #83 overall Hearing the news, COA President Darron Collins '92 and #16 in Best Value Schools, a category that balances responded, "I think our high ranking is an indication that, academic quality and cost. It's also among the top ten for where greenness is concerned, it's not the number of solar international students and the top 25 of the category A+ panels you can install in a given year, it's how embedded Schools for B Students. ecology, the environment, and sustainability is within the Princeton Review's comprehensive annual guide, The institution." Added Jason, "College of the Atlantic is a great Best 381 Colleges, goes deeper into campus experience, example of how schools can make sustainability a key surveying students to create a narrative of each school, part of their mission." quoting extensively from their opinions. In citing COA's More than 200 schools participated in Sierra's "unique educational model," students said the approach extensive survey of campus sustainability practices in helps "merge talents/interests in a meaningful and this, its tenth annual ranking. For more, visit sierracub.org/ applicable way," allowing for "graduate-level research and coolschools. real-world work experience at the undergraduate level." Commented another student, "It's hard for me to talk to PRINCETON REVIEW friends at other schools because it's not popular to love In choosing COA as the top green school, the Princeton your college and academics as much as I do." Review guide noted COA's commitment to becoming a Said another, "We are constantly thinking about the fossil fuel-free campus by 2050-with students involved latest environmental/social justice issue, and thoughtful at every step of the process. The work thus becomes an debates about these subjects happen at every meal." And essential part of the curriculum. Already COA classes have another, "COA is a college and a community that demands participated in energy audits and have researched, sited, cognizance, compassion, and trust." and installed solar photovoltaic arrays on campus. COA's professors rank #11 in the nation in the review's "We measure our success by how much students learn other rankings. We were also listed as #2 for LGBTQ- and by how successful they are at applying that learning Friendly, #6 for Best Campus Food, #16 for Most Beautiful out in the world," said Darron. "If we were 100 percent off- Campus, and #20 for Best College Dorms. Oh, and out of the-grid and carbon negative, but students didn't learn a a total 99 points, COA is rated 94 for academics, 95 for thing in the process, it would not do anyone much good." quality of life, 96 for financial aid, and for greenness, #1. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 5 NEWS JODI BAKER performing arts After working at COA for four years on short contracts, locations. Then her husband, Daniel Mahoney, now a Jodi Baker is now our performing arts faculty member. COA lecturer in writing, saw a listing for the COA position. Originally from Utah, Jodi studied classical ballet Reading it, they laughed. "It sounded like a fantasy-a tiny before completing a BA in theater from California State college on an island next to Acadia with an aggressively University, Fresno, and an MFA in acting from the National interdisciplinary curriculum? Way too good to be true," Theatre Conservatory in Denver, Colorado. She has recalls Jodi, perched on a makeshift wooden wheelchair studied with members of London's National Theatre and decorating her office in Gates Community Center. After the Royal Shakespeare Company, and worked as an actor visiting COA, Jodi called her family, declaring that should throughout the United States. Her teaching and directing she get the job, they would be moving to Maine. "COA are rooted in physical practice, influenced by the work of keys into all the things I've ever wanted to do with Jerzy Grotowski, Tadashi Suzuki, and Anne Bogart, as well performance study; I knew these students would be as Stacy Klein of Double Edge Theatre, which travelled to tremendous collaborators." COA to present an outdoor performance spectacle of The Last year, Jodi offered an intensive in Hamlet-with Odyssey. no production goal, only process. The eight students Jodi never planned on teaching full time. Her goal read and discussed the text exhaustively, watching had been to develop new works for new audiences and numerous versions of the Shakespeare play. Cast and produce relevant and unusual theater in unexpected recast in different roles, they performed in class, changing perspectives as they took on new characters. Now, three students are continuing the class as an independent study. They'll apply their work to a project at Bar Harbor's Criterion Theatre this spring. Creating professionals is not Jodi's aim; her joy is in teaching-everyone. "Engaged people are engaged people," she says. "The students who come here seem intuitively ready to try things in new and interesting ways. I have had some of the best and most challenging conversations of my life here-about the limits of language and art, contemporary activism, ethics. There is a willingness here to think more carefully, speak more candidly, and work more diligently toward clarity, or at least to keep trying when we fail." Jodi is currently co-teaching a course in just that with Jay Friedlander, sustainable business faculty member. Their class, Failure, is for her about making choices, the inherent nature of the creative process. "All my classes are primarily about choices. Choices, actions, consequence. That's what theater is: understanding who we are by what we do." She tells her students, "Stop trying to make something great, just make a better, more interesting choice right now. And then make another better choice. And then another." Now that Jodi is permanent, her own choices have become real. "I spent the summer thinking about what I hope to contribute here. Mostly, I'd like to offer an exciting but useful suite of courses and opportunities that help to fuel the overall curriculum. Theater work in the context of this college makes so much sense to me. I'm really happy to know that others feel the same." 6 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE NEWS KOURTNEY COLLUM food systems On her very first day as COA's Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems at College of the Atlantic, Kourtney Collum's joy was palpable. She had fallen in love with Maine years ago, when she worked on the trail crew at Baxter State Park one summer while majoring in anthropology and environmental studies at Western Michigan University. She then earned a master's in forest resources at University of Maine Orono, continuing on to receive the university's first PhD in its new anthropology and environmental policy program. Focused on agriculture, her thesis compared the bee pollination practices used by lowbush blueberry growers in Canada's Prince Edward Island and Maine. Since PEI hadn't allowed honey bee imports for nearly two decades, those growers implemented conservation practices for their native bee species. In contrast, each year bees "from away"-77,000 hives worth-are trucked in to pollinate Maine's lowbush blueberries. Though Kourtney's focus is on Maine and the Maritimes, her roots are in Monroe, Michigan, a Rust Belt town just south of Detroit where her family worked for the steel and auto industries. Something about the contrasts between Michigan's lush northern forests and the flat, industrial landscape of her home led Kourtney to focus on the impact on humans of changes in the economy and the land. But now, when she returns to southeast Michigan, she sees even more changes, particularly in Detroit where gardens rise up where buildings once stood. Kourtney envisions creating a monster class-one of COA's term-long, three-credit intensives-around the urban gardens found in Detroit and elsewhere. Such farmer training program. "We'll get into the nitty gritty of creativity around classes is one of the hallmarks of a COA transformation, like what policies are needed to ensure education, fueling Kourtney's delight in leading COA's access to healthy, affordable food for all people." food systems program. "I feel like I have a lot of freedom Already Kourtney has been meeting with a group to make what I want within the position, and what I bring of faculty and staff who work within the food and farm is a focus on the human dimensions of food systems. system, including the farm and kitchen staff, COA botanist Social and environmental justice are major themes in my Suzanne Morse, and other faculty members. They're teaching." discussing how to better integrate the farms into the Her fall class is Transforming Food Systems, focusing curriculum. Come winter, she and Suzanne will co-teach a on both the issues within food systems and the positive class on the COA food system itself. work already being done on local and global scales. "I feel empowered to do so much with this position; She and students are looking at land and labor issues, more than I'd be able to do in other institutions," Kourtney including efforts to improve conditions for restaurant says. Asked about COA students, she notes that every workers and migrant farmworkers, struggles over school has their stand-out students. What's different at access to land, and efforts to democratize food access, COA is the passion that runs through all of them. "They're such as through the COA-sponsored Share the Harvest not just studying, they're investing the studies into their program that extends organic produce to those on food own lives-it's a shared vision. Everyone's investing in it benefits. They'll also visit a community farm operated together. They don't just want to read about it, they want by Cultivating Community's refugee and immigrant to do something about it." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 7 NEWS WASTE ON THE WHEEL recycling for peace To celebrate her hundredth birthday, the late philanthropist With the help of friends and family, we printed out and Kathryn W. Davis committed one million dollars to fund laminated recycling labels for the household and shop one hundred student projects in hopes of promoting bins, and included a roll of plastic bags with our project's world peace. In this, the tenth year of Projects for Peace, name and blog. The people could decline, but most Moni Ayoub '19 and Andela Rončević '19 received $10,000 to accepted both the bins and our project's goals. create a recycling system in Moni's home of Barsa, Lebanon. To set up the public recycling stations, we bought thirty-nine metal bins previously used to ship oil. We Peace has many forms. In the vision of our project, painted these-yellow for glass and metal, green for peace is the equilibrium between nature and humans. In plastic, red for paper and cardboard-for thirteen public 2015, protests against a massive garbage crisis in Beirut stations. Metal was picked up by metal buyers in Tripoli, were met with tear gas, vandalism, and gunfire. This was paper and cardboard went to Sanita Lebanon for tissues an example of the breaking of that equilibrium. Seeking a and toilet paper, and plastic to a person who makes peaceful alternative for sustainable waste management at plastic chairs. We later expanded to nineteen recycling a landfill that, like the one in Beirut, threatened to become stations, monitoring them to see that the material was overfilled and closed, our goal was to install recycling properly separated. stations in Barsa, Lebanon to support sustainable The system continues; we hope it will grow and resource management. Our hope, also, was to encourage eventually reach all of Barsa, with the money received other villages and towns to develop recycling systems from selling the materials going to distributing more bins. so that one day it would be irrational, outrageous, and We found that one idea, although it only begins as an completely strange to see Lebanese people throw plastic idea, can become real, and grow into a meaningful cause, bottles from their car into the sea. This is, unfortunately, especially if it represents a people's inner values. If there still a daily occurrence. is a recycling system on the street, individual cleanliness We first spoke to Barsa's municipal leader, who also and order can be more present and people can value their had envisioned developing a recycling system in the connection to society more readily. We also found that village. He gave us land where the recycled materials a community can coexist where people work, act, and could be placed until the quantity was sufficient to be share-but that it takes courage and optimism to create picked up by local businesses that depend on recyclables. a space that is livable, where coexistence is not simply We began by delivering three recycling bins to each survival. -Moni Ayoub '19 and Andela Rončević '19 home or shop in a portion of Barsa: one for plastic, one For more, visit wasteonthewheel.tumblr.com, or find a for glass and metal, and one for paper and cardboard. blog post about the project at storyofstuff.org. 8 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE NEWS Bogdan Zymka 15 addresses youths during the June 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20. THOREAU EFFORT SUPPORTS LEADERS climate and energy "Urgency." That's how COA faculty and staff members Dave. It will also fund training in areas such as media began their application to the Henry David Thoreau communication and strategic planning, offering students Foundation's Environmental Leaders Initiative. skills they can't always learn in class. To enhance youth "After our students participated in the Paris meeting capacity and strengthen COA's connections to other of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate young environmental leaders, regional youth will be Change (UNFCCC), they expressed frustration with the invited to collaborative skills-building workshops, to be pace of negotiations," said Doreen Stabinsky, COA faculty known as Thoreau Gatherings. member in global environmental politics. The students Already the Thoreau grant has funded three energy wanted to implement local climate change solutions. fellows on campus: Laura Berry '17, Spencer Gray '17, Immediately. "Their loudest request was for training in and Zakary Kendall '17. The three spent the summer skills that would increase their impact now." working with the Community Energy Center, or CEC, a For more than a decade, COA students have been new, campus-based effort to bring renewable energy to studying and participating in the international politics Mount Desert Island. Along with Andrea Russell, MPhil '18, of global climate change. Their passion, preparation, the energy center's program manager, it launched a and hard work have led many students to assume youth community solar array for Hancock County residents and leadership roles at the UNFCCC and other international the Solar for Businesses and Farms program. Funded by venues. At the same time, students on campus have a $65,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture's been learning hands-on about the details of energy Rural Energy for America Program, the effort will offer implementation, such as connecting with regional solar energy assessments to thirty or more farms and businesses to site and install solar energy panels. businesses. The CEC was instrumental in overseeing the In August, the proposal written by Doreen, Anna Thoreau Energy Fellows through the summer and fall. MDI Demeo, lecturer in physics and COA's director of energy Clean Energy Partners, a local nonprofit investing in local education and operations, and David Feldman, faculty renewable energy efforts co-founded by Willy Osborn and member in physics and mathematics, was accepted. former COA president Steve Katona, is a close collaborator COA received a $40,000 faculty grant from the Thoreau with the CEC. Foundation to expand and enhance these efforts. The The Thoreau Foundation seeds visionary programs at initiative enables students to engage in a wide spectrum US undergraduate institutions, "that foster environmental of climate and energy work, "from designing and leadership and engaged scholarship." Faculty applications implementing community renewable energy systems to are by invitation only. This year, only two faculty awards participating in and learning firsthand the strengths and were given-one to COA and one to Harvard University. limitations of global climate change agreements," says For more, visit coa.edu/cec. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 9 INTERCONNECTED COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC & ACADIA NATIONAL PARK By Ken Cline, David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection Acadia. It is our laboratory, our backyard, our classroom, our sports program, our health plan, our inspiration. No matter how you think of it, it is an integral part of the COA experience. No other four- year college in the country is as physically proximate to a national park. And very few other colleges or universities are as academically proximate as COA has always been to the national park mission. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell often says about outdoor education, We all know that the best classrooms have no walls. It is true both physically and metaphorically; for years COA has demonstrated this with the use of Acadia in our teaching. Our work with the park reaches beyond the natural sciences to include art, education, and human studies. So whether it's a science course, Bonnie Tai's outdoor education class, Anne Kozak's technical writing class, or Dru Colbert's design classes (like the one that revamped the entire Dorr Museum of Natural History to feature the collaboration between COA and Acadia), COA students learn from working in Acadia and Acadia benefits from the great work the students do. Our relationship with the park reflects the breadth of human ecology and the human experience. The power of national parks extends beyond the simple experience of being a tourist in them- it is the transformation of values that really matters. National parks offer us a different way to think about our relationship with nature. Despite the benefits to biodiversity, they are less about preserving nature than they are about preserving ourselves. Whether you see that through the writings of John Muir and his concern for over-civilized people, Wordsworth's eye made quiet by the power and beauty of the River Wye, or by recent research demonstrating the restorative effects of green space and encounters with nature, there is no question that as a species we need nature. As a species we also need the humility that parks and wild places can provide for us. Still, parks are human institutions; they echo our failings as a society. Visitation does not fully reflect the diversity of the American populace, parks are insufficiently funded and they face increasing threats of commercialization and homogenization. The National Park Service finally seems to realize that parks cannot be managed as islands apart from the natural and human landscape that surround them (now if Congress would only realize this!). As with most things, the ideal and the real have several degrees of separation. But that is where COA and our graduates can make a difference. As Acadia and the park service head into their second century, the role of parks and the role COA plays with Acadia will evolve. We have formalized our many informal connections with Acadia through a new cooperative agreement and have also started an Acadia Scholars internship program for COA students while helping to meet some of Acadia's needs. Sadly, despite growing visitation and rising costs, parks, including Acadia, are receiving less federal funding in real dollars every year. COA students and faculty can never make up the resource gap that fewer tax dollars create, but we can help. Acadia is part of us and for our own sake we need to participate in the stewardship that will, as the park service's mission states, keep it unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. This issue of COA tells just some of the stories of how Acadia and COA have influenced each other. It also celebrates some of the current students and alumni who give back to Acadia and other parks. Hopefully, you have your own stories, your own connections, to Acadia. If not, it is never too late. Come visit us and travel out our back door. As John Muir entreats, the mountains are calling. Right: Students in Ken Cline's fall 2015 class, Acadia: Exploring the National Park Idea, were asked to find a place in the park that was special to them, which they would study over the term to create a human ecological biography. This drawing of Anemone Cave by Nichole Francia '19 is from her biography. 10 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 135 with law autorill believ of anemone cane entrance (Right) 10/1/15 CHANGING So WHAT? TO AHA! How Christie Denzel Anastasia '92 helps manage Acadia for the rest of us As deputy chief of interpretation at Acadia National Park, Christie Denzel Anastasia '92 is responsible for ensuring that every visitor intersecting with the park has the best possible experience. What this means is that Christie spends a lot of time behind a computer so that the seventy-odd rangers, volunteers, interns, and partnership program staff she oversees can be outside, doing their jobs. Much of the following conversation was gathered during a hike with high school students participating in The Wonder of Acadia, one of COA's Summer Field Institute programs, through personal discussions, and at a summer morning Coffee & Conversation between Christie and Ken Cline, law and policy faculty member. -DG Q: How did you become interested feeling I wanted to hold onto forever. Q: You always speak with such love in working for the National Park After my second year I knew I of Alaska. What brought you back Service? wanted to be a park ranger. That's to Acadia? A: I moved around a lot as a child and easy to say, but difficult to attain. A: Acadia definitely was my first love, I was always longing for open, green I worked with national parks as a and your first love holds a special spaces. I remember a place that volunteer, a partner, and a seasonal place in your heart. I have two sons. today I would consider a channelized for eleven years before I achieved The older one was born in California, stream, with a fence you could get permanent status-the holy grail at Point Reyes National Seashore; the yourself under. There were rocks, of being a park ranger. I have now younger one in Denali. I wanted them and trees, and water-that to me worked either full time or in short- to stay at Denali long enough to have was wilderness! When I visited COA, term assignments in more than wilderness in their blood, to know I didn't even know that there could twenty different parks. how to be a part of the landscape, be that many trees in one space. I to hunt, preserve, and protect; to went out to the Park Loop Road and Q: But you spent most of your hike off-trail. But they also needed to that was it. I was going to COA. That time at Denali National Park and learn what a sidewalk was-and that feeling of being next to the Maine Preserve in Alaska, right? you could get to the grocery store coast and granite and ocean was a A: Seven years. and back in less than eight hours. High school students par ticipating in COA's Summer Field Institute class, Wonder of Acadia, join Christie Denzel Anastasia '92, Acadia National Park's deputy chief of interpretation, on the fire tower at Beech Mountain. From left they are Christie, Lily Schaeufele, Camryn Branch, Ingrid Sant, Leanna Laws, Oscar Garcia Maldonado, and Tony Perez. The instructors in the two- week program were faculty members Ken Cline, law and policy, and Chris Petersen, biology, along with Sarah Luke, dean of students. 12 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE I didn't apply to Acadia initially. wildlife, plants, science, scenery, turtle, the ranger might invite the After they asked me if I would ecological processes, experiences, visitor to observe what it's doing, be interested, I went into the wilderness-and for people to ask about its habitat needs, relate backcountry for three days. I took interact with that heritage. Some this turtle to the broader ecosystem, an off-trail hike into the Toklat, an people come to national parks to and take a couple steps over to a immense area with a braided river have fun with their families, some conversation about turtle egg-laying that can take two hours to cross. A to have salient conversations with seasons and eventually climate grizzly came out of the bushes, way themselves in quiet places, some to change. If we are not ultimately too close; I could see the pores on heal, some for inspiration. We have preserving the resources we are his nose swivel toward me. That kind those affiliated with the military who interpreting, we are not doing our of grace snaps you into the moment. come for restoration. Parks offer real job. I felt like places in Alaska could be things in real places. preserved more deeply through Q: How are interpreters trained? lessons learned in the lower forty- Q: And what's the role of A: It's a crash course. There are eight. If national parks are going to interpretation? three components to interpreting: work anywhere, Acadia is the place. A: Interpretation is the art and knowledge of the resource-plants, Acadia has a broad level of love and act of speaking for these heritage geology, history; knowledge of the devotion by communities and visitors resources because they can't speak audience-who they are, where they with strong connections to the for themselves. We're working to are coming from; and appropriate park. Its complex opportunities and decrease the amount of formal interpretative techniques-asking challenges are years ahead of some programs and have more roving relevant questions so a person might other parks. rangers to meet people where they discover that plants are cool and are, and talk to them about what decide to give something back to a Q: What do you see as the role of they're noticing. Rather than a sage park or green space. In the trade this national parks in this country? on the stage, we're working to have is known as changing So what? to Aha! A: Parks are set aside as symbols rangers help catalyze discovery and We want visitors to learn of what we as citizens strive to encourage self-reflection through something, have fun, and be safe. conserve, protect, and hold safe for facilitated dialog: a guide on the For some, there is then the potential future generations. They're created side. So if someone sees a turtle, in for a transformational experience- for the heritage contained within- addition to giving the name of the an experience that resets or resizes COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 13 Q: But while Acadia is the most empty parking lots in August than intensely visited national park, overfull ones. given its size, many don't even go into the woods. How do you Q: We have so many alumni engage and nurture and improve working for the park service, does those experiences? having a human ecology degree A: Different people want to help? experience the parks in different A: Human ecology is the backbone ways. The traditional way is to quietly of everything I do. As a park ranger I hike. But if you grow up in a city and have many complex areas to handle. feel gravel under your feet-that The human ecology mindset helps might be wilderness. It's easy to fall me to telescope my brain to zoom into elitism and think there is only in to a piece and out to the whole. one right way to experience parks. It's always a part of how I go about Once while I was working in the Hulls thinking about and understanding Cove Visitor Center a man told me he things. Knowing that systems are real wanted to rush through driving the and complex, and that any change Park Loop Road and video the whole reverberates throughout the system, thing so he could go back home to helps me to be reflective about the relax and enjoy the video. My initial choices I make. reaction was that he would miss so I spent twenty-two years away much. But if he didn't get a speeding from MDI. Everywhere I went- ticket and the experience connected Intermountain, Pacific West, Africa-I your lens and gives you some him to the park, it's not my role to needed to explain human ecology. perspective that adds quality to judge. He could share that video with Here, I just have to say I'm a COA your life and your life path. Several friends and family and make more graduate and people know the moments of gazing into the Atlantic friends for the park. I try to reframe mindset I walk into the room with. Ocean or seeing your child run like Wow, the park is too busy today into That's a nice feeling. a deer across a mountaintop may Wow, look at all these people choosing be all it takes to gain perspective on to be in a national park. It would be Below: Looking southwest across the "quiet side" of Acadia from the Beech what really matters in your life. far more tragic to have completely Mountain fire tower. Photos by Donna Gold. OF ATLANTIC MAGAZINE SEEKING ACADIAS BATS By Andrea Lepcio '79 Little brown bat photographed on a spring day in 2012 near COA's Thorndike Library. That the bat was active during the day might have been due to hunger after a long hibernation, which can drive bats to unusual activity, or it could have been the result of white-nose syndrome. Photo by Erickson Smith '15. Erickson Smith '15 wanted to be a Death by itching Acadia's carriage roads. "Bats like to marine biologist. Beginning in the In 2006, cavers visiting the cuddle," says Erickson, so the disease middle of high school, when he left hibernating caves of upstate New gets shared among hibernating bats, the Boston area to become a student York found hundreds of bats including northern long-eared and at Lester B. Pearson United World lying dead on the floor with a little brown bats. Another species, College in Vancouver, Canada, and distinguishing mark of white fuzz eastern small-footed bats, also continuing through his initial years on their noses. The next winter, hibernate, but don't tend to go as at College of the Atlantic, his eye was state officials confirmed the deeply into caves; they've been less on the ocean. Then he began to feel bats had contracted the fungus impacted. Also less impacted are something was missing: he couldn't Pseudogymnoascus destructans. migratory or tree bats like silver- name the local trees. "It was a wake- The hypothesis is that one or more haired, red, and hoary bats. But up call to everything on land that is cavers returned from Europe- Acadia's northern long-eared and beautiful and interesting and worth where the disease is thought to little brown bats have declined by knowing about," he says. have originated-and entered caves more than 90 percent. Seeking a land-bound internship, in New York without cleaning their A sad yet helpful turning point his advisor, COA faculty member in equipment, thereby introducing came on April 2, 2015 when the biology John Anderson, connected this European species of fungus. US Fish and Wildlife Service listed him to Bruce Connery, Acadia While European bats seem to have the northern long-eared bat as National Park biologist. Bruce adapted to it, the newly exposed threatened nationally. The loss was looking for an intern to take North American bats had not. The impacts us all-bats consume over a bat survey project that had fungus irritates the bat's skin, waking insects, especially mosquitoes and been initiated by COA's Marissa them from their deep sleep. As Bruce various agricultural and forestry Altmann '13. In the summer of explains, "each time a bat wakes pests. A recent economic study 2013, Erickson volunteered to visit up, it uses some of its very limited estimated the agricultural value of locations where bats were known to energy reserves, which can lead to bats at more than $3.7 billion per roost during the day. After twenty malnutrition, dehydration, and bats year. surveys over a number of months he starving or leaving the hibernaculum The "threatened" designation found very few bats. On the best to die from exposure." immediately brought any night, he counted eight emerging White-nose syndrome might have modification of Acadia structures from the building known as the Stone perished in that cave along with the and habitats under review. It also Barn, down the road from COA's bats if some hadn't survived. Instead, brought funding. At graduation, Peggy Rockefeller Farms. In the late the surviving bats swiftly spread the Erickson was offered a seasonal 1990s, as many as ninety bats had fungus through contact, bringing paid position as a biological science been seen at the same site. By 2011, it to Maine by 2010. In the winter technician working with Bruce, white-nose syndrome had arrived on of 2011, hikers and cross-country Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil '17, and Mount Desert Island. skiers were reporting dead bats on several other scientists on bats and COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 15 Bat stalking At dusk on a Tuesday evening in June, I join Erickson and scientist Corinne Michaud on a drive up to the Jordan Pond Gatehouse. We are tracking an eastern small-footed bat that had been netted just north of Jordan Pond earlier in the season. She was pregnant and showed no signs of white-nose fungus. One of the park's ten tiny antennae had been placed on her to monitor her activities as she comes to term, though most of the antennae are reserved for northern long-eared bats. After she was released, she was found roosting in the Jordan Pond Gatehouse. We check in with two BRI staff members Erickson Smith '15 raises a setting up to watch her leave the portable receiver capable of gatehouse. We then drive along the hearing and tracking bats at the Blue Hill overlook on carriage road, crossing the bridge Acadia's Cadillac Mountain. at Jordan Pond, and climb along the Photo by Julia Walker Thomas '12/ western edge of the pond, where we Friends of Acadia. park. From the back seat, we grab an ultrasonic receiver and portable antenna. How can we help? The assumption is she will fly Leave dead and dying trees standing for roosting bats northwest over the pond to feed. We wait above the pond as mosquitoes Place bat houses on barns, buildings, and trees where they will catch sun and no-see-ums-bat food-chomp Allow bats to roost undisturbed in attics on us. Corinne holds the receiver Accept and support efforts to protect bats high. If the bat is present, we'll hear Consider volunteering or interning with Acadia's bat efforts a beep. "Will we see her?" I ask. "She Should you see a bat locally, let COA's bat afficionado Bruce Hazam '92 know is very small," replies Erickson. "We the details: bhazam@coa.edu might see her, or a silhouette over the water if the light is right; we may only hear her." We wait. Hunger is the main driver bringing a bat out, other projects. The park also hired other park plans. Bruce explains, but that is balanced against concerns the Portland-based Biodiversity "For many years the park had over predators. After two nights of Research Institute, or BRI, to assist sought funding to clear foliage so rain, we are hopeful hunger will win. with monitoring. Using passive as to open vistas that were part of The BRI folks report she has left ultrasonic acoustic receivers, the original park road system." The the roost flying southwest-the crews monitor and record bat funding finally was awarded in 2015, opposite of what had been expected. calls-mostly pitched too high for only to conflict with the guidelines We head to the Stanley Brook humans to hear-and raise nets protecting the northern long-eared parking area, hooking the receiver near bat habitats to gently capture bat. Notes Erickson, "Among the to the car antenna. It is multi- the small mammals, band them most interesting human ecological directional; we will pick up the bat for identification, check them for quandaries in working for the park is if she is nearby. Sure enough, as we disease, and attach transmitters for trying to manage all these different approach the bridge we hear a beep. tracking on a select few, since the resources and values for the visitor, Excited, we hop out with the portable gear is limited. but also for the wildlife, for nature, receiver, heading south toward the The most sensitive period for for historical preservation purposes. beeps. They stop. We turn north bats is pupping season, from June 1 When those come into conflict, how toward the pond. The beeps pick up. to July 31. A female bat has only one do you resolve them?" In this case She seems to be flying above us. The pup a season. But protecting bats the cutting was able to be delayed direction changes again, off she goes in this critical period has impacted until after the pupping season. toward where we had originally been 16 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE waiting. She had gone northwest conversation. More checking. Around and the others saw eighteen bats to feed. We decide we have enough midnight, Erickson announces that foraging one Thursday in May, "the information; it is time to help with he is due at work at 7:30 a.m., I leave most I've ever seen!" exclaimed netting. with him while the BRI team spends a Erickson. Work on the bridge has few more hours waiting for bats. been suspended for now. Waiting for a bat In the summer of 2016 there were Some bats are surviving the The rest of the BRI team is above three sessions of nightly net surveys, syndrome. One, tagged in 2013, was Hadlock Pond, stringing nets across each for two to three weeks. If a bat recently recaptured, indicating it is the carriage road and an adjacent is netted, it is identified by species not just the young that are surviving. stream. We drive until we see a and checked for disease, gender, Looking out five years, Bruce is barricade, park, and approach the age, pregnancy, and lactation. The hopeful surveys will "confirm more first of three, thirty-foot tall nets biologists are specifically looking for juveniles that are healthy," and that placed near natural overhangs that how the disease affects bats as they hibernating bats, "will have adapted should cause the bats to swoop mature. or become resistant, or at least have down, hopefully into one of the a greater immunity to white-nose nets. We come to a circle of camp Hope arising from concern syndrome." chairs around a worktable and A second critical period for bats It wasn't that long ago that island join the six BRI researchers. Soft is hibernation, though there are residents saw dozens of bats swirling conversation ensues for twelve still questions about where MDI at dusk. The summer's research minutes, then everyone stands, bats hibernate. One potential revealed that of the 115 bats netted, snaps on headlamps, and leaves to hibernaculum was discovered by as many as 65 percent showed no check for bats. Erickson and I visit chance. Bruce got word the park signs of the fungus, which implies the first net. Nothing. We return to wanted to work on the motor road that some portion of Acadia's bats the circle. No bats. bridge over Duck Brook, which is are still finding hibernacula that have We converse for twelve more hollow. After checking the blueprints not been exposed to the fungus. minutes. This time, Erickson and and being trained to enter confined Through continued protection, it is I head north with our headlamps, spaces, Bruce and two others possible that bats may once again be checking the net over the stream explored the bridge. They found able to successfully reproduce, feast and one more, further up. No bats. bat guano, which has been sent for on mosquitoes, and cuddle as they We return. Silence. More random testing. Monitoring the site, Erikson roost and hibernate. Nighttime bicyclists encounter a closed carriage road as researchers raise nets in an attempt to catch bats to assess age, gender, reproductive status, and health. Photo by Julia Walker Thomas '12/Friends of Acadia. Andrea Lepcio '79 spent her early career in banking and real estate, discovering playwriting in her thirties. She holds a master's in fine arts from Carnegie Mellon University and has been a full-time playwright since 2000. Her Looking for the Pony was a finalist for the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award and the NEA Outstanding New American Play Award. Recent productions include Tunnel Vision, Dinner at Home between Deaths, The Gold, and Strait of Gibraltar, to be produced by Atlanta's Synchronicity Theatre in April 2017. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 17 VOLUNTEER WAY IN THEIR OWN WORDS COA Alumni & the Park Collected and edited by Marni Berger '09 Photo by Charlie Jacobi Working, Connecting, Recharging: Jonathan Gormley '78 Jonathan Gormley '78 began working at Acadia National Park's Blackwoods Campground in 1987. He remained for ten seasons before serving as an interpreter at the Precipice Trail, talking to visitors about the peregrine falcons nesting on the cliffs above. He then coordinated park volunteers until becoming "funemployed"-or retiring-in June, 2015. A month later, Jonathan received an award for public service from Friends of Acadia. My first job at Acadia was at Blackwoods Campground, years as the volunteer coordinator, working with Friends one of the few places in the park where you could really of Acadia's volunteers and also encouraging international get to know the visitors because you'd often see them volunteers. more than once. You'd greet them when they checked My favorite spots in Acadia? As a student, Bar Island in; they might ask about a hike, then return with another was one of them. It was fun to sit and watch the tide come question. You'd see them later while making rounds, and in and be marooned on the island for the next six or seven ask about their adventures. The people there wanted to hours. These days one of my favorite views is where Kebo enjoy the park like I enjoy it. They wanted to hear night Street meets the Park Loop Road. Each day it's different. sounds, go hiking, bike the carriage roads, explore tide The summit of Cadillac Mountain might be in the clouds pools. I'm friends with some of those same folks today. one day; the next day the fog will fill the valley and the Before COA I had been involved with some mountains will be clear. In the spring, shades of green environmental education programs, primarily in work their way up the hillsides. The maples and poplars curriculum design. The people I worked with had heard are brilliant in the fall. about COA, so I visited one cold February week. I was Acadia has changed a lot. Certainly there's been more hooked. What drew me in were the people. And the use. Roots and rock come up because the soil is being curriculum design work I was doing led me to want to get worn down or pushed away. Trails get wider. Muddy spots in on the ground floor and shape the future of this new where you might have had one path around now have college. That was 1973. Year Two. three or four paths around. Some changes have been I was into natural history with some interest in good-like the return of the peregrine falcons. But I have education at the time. I found that at Blackwoods, not heard a whippoorwill on the island for years. whether it was answering questions about tide pools The park is a place to recharge. I consider myself very or birds or talking about Leave No Trace or a recycling fortunate to be living here in this incredible landscape program, I could still be an educator, but focused on that millions of people come to visit every year. But who the resource right in front of us. I spent ten years at knows, maybe when my wife, Nina Gormley '78, retires, Blackwoods, a year as a park naturalist, and seventeen we'll volunteer at other parks. 18 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE The View from the Park "College of the Atlantic students can experience Acadia National Park within a relatively short distance a walk, bike, or drive, part of coursework, an independent study, thoughtful reflection, and just having fun in the outdoors. While this is fortuitous enough, the beauty of COA and Acadia sharing this island now and in the future is of a substantial benefit for all of us. The premise of human ecology and the mission of the National Park Service ultimately Photo by Robert "Fitz" Fitzhenry, US Forest Service, Northeastern depend upon each other as a Area State and Private Forestry. place of practice and of action. Bringing Back the Peregrine: Kyle Jones '82 Human ecology can remind us the world is a system, it Kyle Jones '82 worked with COA ornithologist Bill Drury in Acadia's 1984 effort to is complex and endlessly reintroduce peregrine falcons. He is now a natural resource manager at Marsh- overlapping, and humans are Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont. a part of the solution, not just the problem. Through their Reintroducing peregrine falcons to Acadia was a big deal in 1984. Peregrine human ecological lens, COA falcons were historically on Mount Desert Island and in Maine, but they were extirpated in the fifties and sixties. Then the Peregrine Fund, based at Cornell students bring a fresh and University, came up with a way of releasing peregrine falcon chicks into the challenging perspective to the wild and started doing that in other parts of the country. It just seemed issues and opportunities Acadia Maine was ripe for it. That's when the National Park Service, COA, some folks is facing and will face in the from Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and the University of Maine got involved. future. The park mission is to We never touched the falcons. We raised and fed and cared for them preserve and protect heritage for without pretending to be a parent. We conserved a bird that needed a lot of help using techniques developed by falconers. In that way, everybody was future generations. To realize contributing to the conservation of this animal. And it worked really well. this mission in an increasingly I see Acadia as defined by the intersection of land and water. I can interrelated, interdisciplinary, remember being out on the Maine ocean on a really calm day and floating awesome, hopeful, and into a raft of shearwaters that were sitting on the water. It was amazing. I I ultimately meaningful co-future, really loved the juxtaposition of the park and the college. It's what attracted we will need many universes of me to COA. I started with the park service at Acadia and I've stayed with it. At Marsh- ideas and solutions from places Billings-Rockefeller we have an active forest management program-we're like COA." unlike the other park service units in that respect. When I first heard that a national park in Vermont was created, I was really interested because of Kevin Schneider Vermont's rural landscape-it seemed like the kind of place where I wanted Superintendent, Acadia National to spend time. And it is. I've been here close to twenty years. Park and Saint Croix Island Typical days? There really aren't any. In the summer I work with the International Historic Site Vermont Youth Conservation Corps crew and Student Conservation Association interns, and coordinate job assignments. The crews do a lot of nps.gov/acad trail work, manual forest management, and invasive plant removal. I also nps.gov/sacr COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 19 do public programs in summer, most geared to people the winter I'm not out as much as I'd like because there's interested in working hands-on with their woodlots. Some more planning and budgeting. are about forestry and some about management for I've always lived and worked close to nature. I grew birds. But some are nature-oriented, like identifying ferns. up in Ohio, a rural environment, and I've taken a very We have a rich fern biota here. And recently I've gotten slow road to upward mobility so I could spend more time more involved in climate change adaptation. outside and not in the upper management level roles-in In the fall we do our big equipment forestry work. In meetings and meetings and meetings. Launching Summer Field Studies: Vicki Nichols Goldstein '84 In 1985, Vicki Nichols Goldstein '84 founded COA's Summer Field Studies program, a day camp engaging young people with Acadia. She stayed four years, leaving to get her master's in marine policy and planning at Yale University. Vicki now lives in Boulder, Colorado where she launched and runs the Colorado Ocean Coalition, "to inspire an inland community to be stewards of our oceans." My love for the island and the ocean and Acadia and COA beauty of the island and the park. I had a Maine teaching inspired me to stay after I graduated, when I was invited certificate and had been traveling with COA's Whales on to be acting director of the natural history museum, which Wheels program, bringing a minke skeleton and replica turned into the directorship. At the time, it was only a pilot whale to schools, and training COA students in summer museum. Over the next two years we created a interpretative techniques. year-round entity and moved it into Turrets. The summer I spoke with many staff and faculty members, including was great, I was working in an amazing museum-but I former administrator Ted Koffman and Ron Beard, current was inside every day! trustee. They introduced me to Barbara Lawrence. She That summer I began raising an abandoned baby shared a similar vision and helped fundraise. We needed squirrel in the museum. It would sit on my shoulder and field materials, a van, scholarships. I formed a team and stick its head out when visitors came through. I also had developed the curriculum, picking different ecosystems. baby leeches and baby snapping turtles. Surrounded by I wanted mudflats, where the kids could get muddy and these animals, I started thinking about a field studies really dig deep; I wanted hiking-I knew we would do a lot program, taking young people outdoors to experience the of trust games in the forest, holding hands with blindfolds PPER Vicki Nichols Goldstein '84 leading Summer Field Studies in the 1980s. Photos by Michael Train. 20 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE on to get everyone to work together. We spent hours on the bay in kayaks The View from the Park exploring the flats and experiencing the tides. It was all about discovery-being outside, connected to the environment, and having just enough thrill to get the kids a little nervous and have them feel a sense of achievement. "Few college students and few I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, / can't believe / just made this up-and it's working! There was so much excitement-we were creating this together. We parks have opportunities born talked about natural history, and also about pollutants. How, for example, from being neighbors, and bivalves filtered water, so if we contaminate our oceans, we contaminate the fewer have similar missions to bivalves, and that would work its way up the food chain-to us. understand the relationships and Acadia was a beautiful, outdoor, environmental lab that we never tired bonds that place humans and of. There was the magic of mountains and oceans and wildflowers and fresh, protected areas together in the running streams; carriage trails and hiking paths, beaches and rocky shores. It was the most enchanted place. same time and space. However, But most thrilling was the enthusiasm of the kids every single day. Really that is exactly the setting that wanting to be there. Showing initiative. And all the hugs! You can hear it in students from College of the this quote from a camper in a 1987 Bangor Daily News article: "The best part Atlantic and staff from Acadia of canoeing was that we saw three bald eagles, and it was fantastic! We also National Park find themselves in went mountain climbing, exploring woods, swimming, tracking animals. And on Mount Desert Island. Both we learned a lot about plants and trees. While you are having fun, you are also learning." college and park are challenged to increase our understanding Identifying the Plants of Acadia: of the human presence in the changing and complex ecological Glen Mittelhauser '89 systems found here and around the world. As neighbors we Glen Mittelhauser '89 was the lead author of the award-winning 2010 field guide, can teach each other about the The Plants of Acadia National Park, making plants identifiable to the average non-botanist. Glen has also collaborated on Sedges of Maine: A Field Guide challenges we and other humans to Cyperaceae and The Plants of Baxter State Park. He directs the research face, and continue to identify nonprofit Maine Natural History Observatory. His son, Pepin, is now in his second solutions and actions to protect year at COA. the systems and values that we depend upon and that enrich us. As a prospective student, I drove up to COA for a visit during Christmas break. There was hardly anybody on campus. I didn't tell anyone I was coming. I just Doing so gives students ample showed up, walked around the buildings and the island, and thought, Yup, this opportunities to learn while also is the place for me. supporting the park's mission It was the habitat-islands, mountains, water. Those were the things I was to preserve the resources and passionate about and they were all in one place. I packed everything I owned in heritage of this island and park my car; I was coming up to live. for future generations. With I came thinking I wanted to study marine biology; whales in particular. But there were no whale classes my first term, though there was an introductory every year our paths become botany class that Craig Greene taught, and a group-study ornithology class. I more entwined and enriched- learned a ton taking classes from Craig. And the same with ornithologist Bill benefiting students and staffs of Drury; I couldn't get enough of his field classes. I got side-tracked immediately both the park and COA." and never was able to fully choose between birds or plants, so I study both. What COA does well is hands-on education. When I graduated, I applied to Bruce Connery work on a field project in the park. After accepting the position I heard that there had been some PhD and master's students who also applied, but I had Biologist, Acadia National Park more field experience-all from my COA classes. The project was an Earthwatch study of the flora and fauna on all park- nps.gov/acad owned small islands. We took volunteers, camped out on the islands for a week, and did everything: inventoried plants, trapped mammals, looked at bird populations and the structure of the island forests, and searched for amphibians and reptiles. We'd spend a week out with a group of volunteers, come back and do another island the next week. I've now been working on projects in Acadia for more than thirty years, so I have a strong connection to it. I did a bibliography of research with Craig COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 21 The View from the Park "I see COA's deep commitment and many connections to Acadia as part of my work here every day. The research, questions, projects, and just plain hard work constantly generated by COA students and faculty help the park and surrounding communities protect what is special about this place while looking toward a sustainable future. Meanwhile, Friends of Acadia itself is fortunate to have so many COA grads among our seasonal and permanent staff- their impact here continues to grow over time." David MacDonald President, Friends of Acadia Glen Mittelhauser '89 is on the right with biologist Linda Welch just off The Thrumcap in Frenchman Bay. He is measuring a purple sandpiper on a cold December day. Photo by friendsofacadia.org Darrin Kelly '10. when I was at COA, my senior project was in the park, as was my grad school project-both on harlequin ducks. This year I'm working on a study looking at Acadia's salt marsh plants. Two major phases led to the publication of The Plants of Acadia National Park. Craig was working on a flora of Acadia for twenty or more years. I helped him on the field work for a summer. When he was getting sick, a couple of students helped publish his information in journals. That was the first phase. I COA had talked with Craig about the second phase, publishing a field guide to make CENTENNIAL the flora more accessible to non-botanists. We started after Craig passed away. TRAIL It took the authors, who include Linda Gregory '89, sometime COA teacher Jill Weber, and fellow biologist Sally Rooney, five years to complete. Encouraging Middle School Adventuring: Alexa Pezzano '00 Seven years after graduating from COA, Alexa Pezzano '00 thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, thinking she might find a home outside of Maine. Instead she became a ridge runner for Friends of Acadia, and in 2008 began working directly for the park, where she runs the Schoodic Education Adventure program for middle school students as an educator and interpreter. COA's Acadia trailmarker. Photo by Liz Graves/MDIslander. At COA, I bounced around a lot. I was interested in natural history, but nothing really concrete. Looking back, it all makes sense. People ask me, What did you study to be a park ranger? The answer: / studied kind of everything. I work out of the Schoodic Education and Research Center in Winter Harbor. In summer I teach public programs that vary from forest ecology to climate 22 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE The View from the Park "The ties between College of the Atlantic and Acadia National Park are long and strong. COA's highly skilled and motivated students and its gifted teacher naturalists have been contributing to our understanding of park resources since the college's founding. Over the span of my thirty-five years at Acadia, I've worked with COA students, alumni, and faculty and have experienced first-hand their important contributions, not just at Acadia, but at other park units. The park's never-ending need to better understand and steward its amazing natural and cultural laboratory that's in COA's Alexa Pezzano '00 looks for insects during a bioblitz, a time when scientists and volunteers seek to record all living species within an area. Photo courtesy of the National backyard is well-served by our Park Service. vital partnership. A win-win for all!" change. That's a facilitated dialog program, connecting through conversation. We also have a marine touch tank to talk about adaptation and marine history, Judith Hazen Connery and engage with the scientists and researchers here, translating their science for the public. Natural Resource Program In the fall I work primarily with middle school students for the Schoodic Manager, Acadia National Park Education Adventure, or SEA program, teaching similar sessions, but aligned with Maine's curriculum and the Next Generation Science Standards. The kids nps.gov/acad live in the bunkhouse on site for about three days, and we keep them outside as much as we can, immersed in the resource and the research. We take them tide-pooling, do marine chemistry, soil science, geology, tree identification, photojournalism, art, GPS, mapping, and we have a night hike and a campfire. We attract local schools from Washington and Hancock counties, but also schools from Aroostook County, even Vermont and New York. Some kids have never seen the ocean before! I find myself talking more and more about human ecology, not essentially in those words, but about the interconnectedness of habitats. Understanding human ecology was definitely a huge help in wrapping my mind around the way systems work. My favorite place? Schoodic Head, the little mountain we have here, is one of them. It's only about 440 feet, but I try to go up at least once a week on my way to work. There are some really wonderful spots of rocks and ferns and beautiful lichen. I have to be at work at seven, which puts me on the mountain at six in the morning-it's so peaceful and quiet there at that time. I also go out in winter. On Mount Desert Island one winter, I decided to summit every peak in the park. Just getting to the trailheads was often a challenge. Some of the hardest hikes were the Bubbles because no one had been there. I was snowshoeing in thigh-deep snow. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 23 I feel a very strong connection to this place. I've lived is a COA student. She's been a great worker, with so much here for close to twenty years and things have come full good energy. It's been neat to mentor someone who is in circle for me, in a way. We had an intern this summer who a place where I once was. Surveying Salamanders, Monitoring Mollusks: Sarah Colletti '10 For her senior project, Sarah Colletti '10 obtained salamander baseline data in Acadia, designing an ongoing, volunteer- based monitoring program. She then worked for the US Forest Service as an AmeriCorps member in West Virginia before conducting freshwater mussel recovery for the Commonwealth of Virginia. The through-line? Studying the smaller creatures of our world that reflect a larger picture of ecological health. I caught salamanders and frogs as a kid, but it was COA's three-credit experiential Maine Woods course that piqued my interest in amphibians. Before the course I remember thinking, Why amphibian biology? Why not just ecology? Then I caught a spotted salamander and I thought, Oh my gosh, they have these cute faces! (See COA, Spring 2009) I was trained to be observant in my COA ecology classes. Having the park so near offered the opportunity to go into the field with professors. You never knew when you might be asked a question like, Why do you think that plant is shaped like that? Then I'd have to look at it again. Soon, I saw working with amphibians as a way to tie together my interests in science, education, and policy. You're crawling around on the ground, turning over logs, Sarah Colletti '10 tags a federally and you find these treasures underneath. Salamanders endangered mussel for later are in every kid's backyard, making them a perfect identification. Photo by Joe Ferraro. educational tool-as opposed to large mammals like polar bears or tigers, which you learn about, but you can't see river, but I've come to love them as I understand their and touch. complexity. I did an independent study at COA to test different There are definitely similarities between mussels ways of sampling salamanders. I'd go into Acadia on rainy and amphibians. I'd always heard that amphibians were nights because that's when most of the salamanders were the most endangered, but actually in North America it's out. I got so used to looking at salamanders, at paying freshwater mollusks. More than 70 percent of them are attention to the little things, that soon I could also see tiny threatened or endangered in some way. There's the water little spiders, and light reflecting off their eyes. connection, too. Mussels filter the water, and because When I started my current job, I didn't think mussels some live decades they can tell a story of what's been in would be as charismatic, but they're pretty cool creatures. the stream-heavy metals, bacteria, whatever. In order to complete their life cycles, freshwater mussels Looking back, Acadia was a great way not only to get have to be parasites on fish, and they have really unique into amphibian biology, but any field science. If I was ways of getting their larvae onto fish hosts. Parts of their curious about something and really wanted to see it, I body will mimic a fish to lure a larger fish to bite, and then could just walk out there and do it. Now, if it's a rainy they will release their larvae into that fish's mouth. Some night in the spring and I want to go find amphibians-we will actually grab onto the fish's face and hold it while call it herping-I have to obtain access from landowners. releasing larvae. Mussels may look like rocks out in the In Acadia, I always knew where to go. Marni Berger '09 holds an MFA in writing from Columbia University. Her short story "Waterside" was published in the Spring/Summer 2016 issue of Glimmer Train. Marni's work has also appeared at The Common, The Days of Yore, The Millions, Fringe Magazine, and COA; her fiction frequently has been a finalist or received honorable mention. Her novel-in- progress, Love Will Make You Invincible, is a dark comedy about a precocious tween. 24 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE The Stepping Stones By Christian Barter Leaning up against the cut-up pieces trapped in the era's costume. "The youth of an old footbridge at lunch, we are is sexting and listening to Fox News," Dave says, talking about politics: the Copenhagen and recloses his eyes, up late last night global-warming summit, Afghanistan, with his girlfriend out of town. The leaves an interview with Nader who said have started turning, single trees that only the super-rich gone suddenly red in a valley of green can save us now. The little beach like clear, high trumpet notes and the season looks out on a pond between two mountains of RVs has started, tin garages that cup the clouds between them leaned out on shoulders all along in a light-washed blue. The ozone days the Loop Road, stern retirees snapping are over, and it's like the dust has blown photos from their tailpipes. Last night from the trees that porcupine the ledges. I dreamt I had traveled back to college Cars drift somewhere in that distant groan and stood looking up at the house where I had as constant here as breathing. "Too little drunk away two entire years. "Sexting?" too late," I answer Clark about the talks. says Clark, snuffing out his butt with his "We're basically screwed," adds Michael and laughs thick, former-boxer's hands. He has declared a laugh that seems to slump down he's going to quit so many times with his shoulders, a little lower we've started a pool on the boss's whiteboard since the birth of his third. Clark, where everyone's guess is a joke: in his fifties now, in his tie-dyed bandana, This Sunday-okay, some Sunday; says the youth is really getting Right after the funeral; involved, you know? "There's so much positive When the poles reverse, and now that it's been weeks: energy out there right now," he says When Gary finally erases the whiteboard. through puffs of an American Spirit. Behind us, "I just see all this positive energy," he continues, giant stepping stones span the outlet. lighting another American Spirit. They were built by George Dorr in 1915, "That's got nothing to do with it, Clark," Michael says who gave all the land we can see from here and we all laugh, even Clark, because and died penniless. In the picture we're using the beauty is all that ever feels real, and Dave, to set each stone as it was, he looks without opening his eyes, mumbles, like a normal man: distracted, tired, "And I think your stone's crooked." Reprinted with permission from Christian Barter's In Someone Else's House (Kansas City, Missouri: BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2013). Christian is a poet, Acadia National Park trail crew supervisor, adjunct instructor of poetry at COA, and Acadia's poet laureate. His first book, The Singers / Prefer, was a Lenore Marshall Prize finalist. In Someone Else's House was the winner of the 2014 Maine Literary Award for Poetry. His book-length poem, Bye-Bye Land, received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. It has just been released by BOA Editions. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 25 BY MAXIM LOWE '18 WITH THANKS TO ACADIA THROUGH THE AGES DONNA GOLD, SARAH HALL, AND ALBA MAR RODRIGUEZ PADILLA '18. MARY You KNOW THAT SAYING, "I'D MOVE MOUNTAINS FORYOU?" DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE, RIGHT? BUT TALK TO GEOLOGISTS LIKE COA'S SARAH HALL AND YOU'LL DISCOVER THAT NOT ONLY Do MOUNTAINS FALL AND RISE AND MOVE, BUT CONTINENTS DO, TOO. IT'S HOW MOUNT DESERT ISLAND WAS FORMED, BRINGING US THE VALLEYS AND PEAKS OF ACADIA NATIONAL PARK. IT JUST TAKES TIME; A LOT OF TIME. WE'RE TALKING MILLIONS OF YEARS, So DATES ARE EITHER MYA (MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO) OR MY (MILLIONS OF YEARS). ABOUT 550 MYA, DURING THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION (AN EVOLUTIONARY SURGE WHEN MOST OF THE FORMS OF ANIMALS APPEARED AND SHELLED LIFE RULED THE SEAS) EARTH LOOKS VERY DIFFERENT. LAURENTIA IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, GOND WANA SUPERCONTINENT GONDWANA COVERS MUCH OF THE GLOBE. WHAT BECOMES NORTH AMERICA 15 NOW LAURENTIA, HOVERING AROUND THE EQUATOR AND MISSING SOME CRUCIAL PARTS, LIKE MAINE. OVER THE NEXT ~ 100 MY, HEAT FROM THE EARTH'S INTERIOR CAUSES MULTIPLE LANDMASSES INCLUDING ONE CALLED GANDERIA, A JAPAN-LIKE ARC OF CRUST NEAR GONDWANA (WHERE SOUTH AMERICA'S NORTHWEST COAST IS NOW), TO MIGRATE NORTH, COLLIDING WITH LAURENTIA, BECOMING MAINE. LAURENTIA LAURENTIA CRASH DERIA GONDWANA GONDWANA GONDWANA ~ 550 MYA 2 440 - 430 MYA 2 400 MYA 26 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE WHILE THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS GROW ALONG THE EASTERN EDGE OF WHAT BECOMES NORTH AMERICA, VOLCANOES ERUPT IN THE COLLISION ZONE FORMING MANY OF THE FAMOUS Rocks of DOWNEAST MAINE. MDI 15 CENTERED ON ONE OF THOSE VOLCANOES- - A SUPER VOLCANO - THAT ERUPTED 2420 MYA. MOLTEN ROCK WITHIN THE VOLCANO'S MAGMA CHAMBER SLOWLY COOLS PRODUCING LARGE CRYSTALS TO FORM OUR BEDROCK, THE FAMOUS CADILLAC MOUNTAIN GRANITE. THE PINK COLOR COMES FROM THE MINERAL FELDSPAR AND THE WHITE FROM THE MINERAL QUARTZ. PRESENT LAND SURFACE A SUPERCONTINENT IS FORMED, PANGEA. BUT SUPERCONTINENTS DON 'T LAST FOREVER! DURING A VERY LONG BREAK-UP, PANGEA DISASSEMBLES, FORMING THE ATLANTIC OCEAN PANGER BASIN THAT CONTINUES TO SPREAD, EVEN TODAY. THE FRACTURES AND FAULTS FORMED BY THESE COLLISIONS AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS ARE STILL VISIBLE IN THE GRANITE OF MDI. WATER AND ICE HAVE EXPANDED THE CRACKS INTO WIDE AND DEEP VALLEYS THAT FILLED WITH LAKES OR EXIST NOW AS DEEP OCEAN CHANNELS THAT ENABLE SHIP PASSAGE. THE REGULARLY FRACTURED AND EASILY SLICED BEAUTIFUL PINK GRANITE ALONG THE SEA BROUGHT A QUARRY INDUSTRY TO MDI. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS PASS, BUT NO EVIDENCE REMAINS FOR WHAT HAS HAPPENED - THE PAGES IN OUR LOCAL GEOLOGIC HISTORY Book ARE MISSING. BUT, AS TODAY, EARTH PROCESSES CONTINUE TO SHAPE THE LAND THROUGH WIND, WATER, AND ICE. AROUND 50MYA, SOON AFTER THE DINOSAURS DIED OFF, THE EARTH'S CLIMATE BEGINS TO COOL. BY ~3MYA, EARTH HAS ENTERED THE PRESENT ICE AGE. THICK ICE FLOWS OVER MDI, COOLING AND WARMING MULTIPLE TIMES, COVERING NEW ENGLAND'S HIGHEST MOUNTAINS AND EXTENDING 370 MILES OUT TO THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. SPREADING SOUTHWARD, THE GLACIERS RESHAPE THE ALREADY EXISTING HILLS AND VALLEYS OF MDI. 1 mi THE ~MILE-THICK GLACIAL ICE CLIMBS THE NORTH SIDES OF MDI'S HILLS, SMOOTHING THEM AS MELTWATER AT THE BASE HELPS TO ABRADE THE SURFACE. THE MELTWATER FREEZES TO THE SOUTHERN SLOPES, THANKS TO THE DROP IN PRESSURE, PLUCKING AWAY THE ROCK, LEAVING RUGGED SOUTH-FACING SLOPES. BY 18,000 YA, THE ICE BEGINS TO RECEDE REVEALING PILES OF DEBRIS AND ERRATIC BOULDERS ABANDONED BY THE ICE. MOVEMENT GLACIER CHANNEL AS THE ICE MELTS, ALL THAT WATER CAUSES SEA LEVEL "a MELTWATER TO RISE 230 FEET ABOVE WHAT IT IS Now. MUCH OF GLIDING-AND SMOOTHING MDI IS UNDER WATER, LEAVING A COATING OF CLAY ALONG THE ISLAND'S FRINGES. COA's BEECH Hill FARM TOYR RE-FREEZING AND "PLUCKING" WAS LiKELY BEACHFRONT PROPERTY. GRADUALLY THE WATERS RECEDE - FAR!- TO 180 FEET BELOW TODAY'S SEA LEVEL, So NATIVE AMERICAN ARTIFACTS HAVE BEEN FOUND BENEATH THE WATERS THAT LAP OUR CURRENT COASTLINE. SEA LEVEL HAS BEEN SLOWLY RISING SINCE 211, 000 YA AND WILL CONTINUE TO RISE - QUICKLY- THANKS TO WARMING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES THINK Now, AS You STAND ON CADILLAC, OR WALK ALONG THE GRANITE COASTLINE. THOSE ROCKS- - THEY HAVE BEEN INSIDE A VOLCANO; THIS LAND - IT WAS ONCE ACROSS THE OCEAN; THESE CRACKS- THEY WERE OPENED AS A RESULT OF MASSIVE STRESS AND TIME. THINK TOO OF THE ROCKS THAT AREN'T HERE, THE ROCKS ERODED AWAY DURING THE ~360 MY OF TIME BETWEEN THE VOLCANO AND THE ICE - EVEN ABSENCE TELLS A STORY. REFERENCES: THE LAST BILLION YEARS: A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY of THE MARITIME PROVINCES OF ACADIA. ATLANTIC GEOSCIENCE SOCIETY. 2001. GUIDE TO THE GEOLOGY OF MOUNT DESERT ISLAND AND ACADIA NATIONAL PARK. DUANE BRAUN AND RUTH BRAUN 2016. THE GEOLOGY OF MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. CHAPMAN, LOWELL, AND BORNS, JR. 1988. RECENT RESEARCH Nesting Islands Leach's storm petrels, black guillemots, common eiders, herring and greater black-backed gulls, double-crested cormorants, razorbill auks, Atlantic puffins, and several tern species choose islands for nesting. As many as half of all breeding seabirds on the nation's east coast nest on Maine's offshore islands. These birds often build their nests on the ground or beneath it, in burrows-one reason they prefer islands where mammals haven't arrived to nose out their young. Another might be that seabirds take a relatively long time to hatch and fledge. Still, islands are exposed to flooding waves from storms. This might well increase in the wake of climate change, which is also causing rising sea levels. Predictions range from a six-inch increase to as much as six feet over the next century. Concerned about the impact on nesting seabirds, officials at Acadia National Park asked John Anderson, faculty member in biology, to survey the islands under park jurisdiction. Between 2011 and 2014, for more than eight summer months, fifteen students roamed and circled thirteen nesting islands. On some, they recorded every nest and egg of gull, eider, and cormorant, and nudged between rocks to find burrowing guillemot and petrel. They also noted wave action. A bird wouldn't want to nest where the water might splash. Back at COA, John and the students modeled the geography against potential flooding. They found that if the sea level rose just one meter, half the islands would lose habitat; four wouldn't be habitable at all; only three wouldn't be impacted. But that wasn't all. Islands that previously had been covered with seabirds were much quieter, especially when compared to a 1995 survey. The culprit? The return of our national bird. Bald eagles forage off the islands' eggs and young, whose only protection is a furious rise of the parents to mob the approaching predator. So while nesting islands will surely be altered over the next hundred years, the recovery of the eagle is bringing change right now. In Progress: Surveying Stream Discharge Rivers and streams flow throughout Acadia, carrying nutrients and sediments of various kinds. To understand their health and any changes, we need to know how much water is moving through the system and how swiftly it moves. To establish a baseline of river discharge, William Minogue '16 installed seven surface water discharge monitoring systems within the island's major drainage basins for his senior project. The watersheds also will be occasionally sampled to measure the abundance of various chemicals, such as dissolved oxygen, ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites. The data will highlight seasonal and annual fluxes in discharge, and chemicals found in the water. Will created this project in coordination with Acadia National Park, Friends of Acadia, Wild Acadia, the US Geological Survey, and COA. He hopes the monitoring Will Minogue '16, on the left, is working with park employ Kyle Grossman equipment will be upgraded eventually to record ('16) installing a monitoring station at precipitation, wind magnitude, and other surface water Cromwell Brook. Photo by Sarah Hall. and weather factors. In Progress: Revisiting the Warblers of a Spruce Woodlot Thanks to a seminal paper researched in Acadia by Robert MacArthur in the 1950s, scientists believe that different warbler species easily coexist within the spruce forest, even within the same trees, because each has a slightly different foraging specialization. For his MPhil degree, Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil '17, is reviewing this classic study. He has found that the original research was conducted during an outbreak of the spruce budworm caterpillar, offering the warblers an atypical wealth of food. Much else has also since changed in habitat, warbler species composition, populations, and behavior, says Bik. His work was discussed by Irby Lovette, Fuller Professor of Ornithology at the Cornell Lab, in the summer 2016 Living Bird. Writes Irby, "Whatever Wheeler ultimately finds, his revisiting of this classic study system is bound to tell us something new about how bird species coexist across time in ecological communities, even beyond the foraging divisions that MacArthur documented." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 29 ACADIA'S NATURE CENTER 4 5 6 2 I 3 Acadia National Park's Sieur de Monts Nature Center reopened this summer, entirely redesigned. The initial design team? Students within a COA class (see COA, Fall 2013). In the spring of 2013, thirteen students in the one-credit, collaborative class, National Park Practicum: Designing the Acadia National Park Nature Center, worked with Lynne Dominy, Acadia chief of interpretation and education; Ardrianna French McLane '02, former Acadia ranger; COA's Dianne Clendaniel, formerly with the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History, later with alumni relations; and faculty members Dru Colbert, arts, and Steve Ressel, biology. While the students' designs were finalized by designer Mike Kelly of Northern Arizona University, their concepts, research, approach, and many essential ideas remain. Why students? Why COA? Says Lynne Dominy, "We Research: Students interviewed scientists and wanted a youth voice and perspective in the park. COA investigated previous and current research projects and students are here, involved, and have a good idea of park archives, creating the very content of the exhibit. what's going on with the landscape." Communication: Translating scientific facts and findings Theme-Climate Change: The Nature Center, a place of into exhibits is clearly a challenge. When the facts are orientation, excitement, and education, would also focus complex, controversial to some, and also something of a on how a changing climate impacts the park's various downer, the task can be overwhelming. Through research, habitats, a theme chosen by Acadia personnel. conversation, and brainstorming, the students created interactive, encouraging, even humorous exhibits to Invitation: "WANTED! Creative minds to help shape the engage visitors. future of Acadia's Sieur de Monts Nature Center. Must love sharing the wonders of nature with others." Organization: Centered around the [9] ranger station to better connect park personnel to visitors, exhibits Process: Divided into four teams, students created progress from sea to summit, with a [3] map for four distinct designs based on the theme of a changing orientation. climate. 30 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE II IO 8 I3 7 I2 9 Stories [1]: Students also wanted to offer a glimpse into on COA's Mount Desert Rock marine research station by the lives of people who work in and around the park. Hurricane Bill. For her senior project, Sarah Duff '14 videoed interviews [8] Bird Bed & Breakfast-students created title of four people speaking about the changes they've [10] Soundscapes: To plunge visitors within the sensory witnessed. Each has a connection to COA. Featured are experience of the park, sounds of surf and birds are Eddie Monat '88, aka Diver Ed; CJ Walke, Peggy Rockefeller heard. Farms farm manager; Ruth Grierson, widow of Stan [11] Connection: Students wanted visitors to look closely, Grierson, whose exhibit design classes launched the Dorr to observe. The solution? Magnifying lenses. Museum of Natural History; and Bernd Heinrich, author and naturalist who holds an honorary MPhil from COA. Sensory Awareness [12]: The park experience is more than visual-there's the gull's cry, the pounding of surf, Call to Action [2]: Seeking to reach beyond a visit moss' softness, the differing size of birds and their eggs- to Acadia, students encourage people to get outside and there's taste. Lobsters, mussels, clams. Sound, touch, wherever they are. They also suggest ways visitors might sight, taste. Those are changing. lessen the pace of climate change by providing a spectrum of engagement possibilities, from recycling plastic to Writing [13]: Once the exhibit was finalized, Anne Kozak's contributing to citizen science, depending on the visitor's technical writing class wrote preliminary text and titles, interest. working with Acadia curator Marie Yarborough. Exhibits: Results: Having presented their ideas in the form of [4] What's for dinner: Menus serve as a gentle means of three-dimensional models, written concept plans, and showing oceanic climate change, a direct student idea. PowerPoint explanations of four possible designs, park [5] Imagery: For a greater sense of immersion, students personnel were delighted. Says Lynne, "The students did asked for mural-sized photos. an amazing job. The exhibits were extremely different, [6] Warm & Stormy Gulf-students created title extremely original, and also had elements that the [7] Climate danger: photo shows the damage wreaked students thought were really important." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 31 DRAWING THE FOREST & ITS LEAVES Print 10mm with moms . smallecondary cannec himing PALMATE things peltak hans veins " ROTATE radiating not bending towards apex ARCUATE secondary veins veigns LONGITUDI LONG mostly all ITUPI ITUDINAL gred are along of INAL & secondonate SIXO top 32 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE shaped OVATE ROSETTE ACUMINATE FLABELATE fan shaped egg-shaped, wide leaflet in thight tapening point to a long at base circular nags Each spring, COA artist and art historian Catherine Clinger teaches Drawing Mineral and Botanical Matter in the Forest. Leaving the studio for Acadia National Park, island gardens, or just the campus, students draw rocks and water, moss and crabs, trees, leaves, and flowers. ASTATE "From the start," says Catherine, try to wick away what students think they believe about what it means shaped to draw, PALMATE what it means to look at something. The course is taught with a nearly imperceptible program of deprogramming, so as to re-illuminate experience. Students don't know what is happening and I don't tell them; they discover it-all of them. I assist in removing assumptions and perceived rules that prevent them from seeing with a quality of empathic vision. Instead of drawing what they think they see, I remind them that seeing is as much about remembrance and memory as it is about making marks to record a view." SUBULATE In typical COA transdisciplinarity, as students pursue line, shape, and grace on the page, they also find they're learning about bark and leaf, contemplating chlorophyll, geology, and their own take on the world. But mostly they learn to see-to look closely and carefully, to notice the detail of what is. As Casimir Pellegrini '19 says, they're developing "a language with pencil and paper." The language might be sensual, as it is for Sibia Inay Ortega '19, who considers "the tenderness and lightness of the flower versus the heaviness of the leaves." Or it might be intellectual. Emma Kimball '17 finds botanical illustration, "the best way to understand plants." Sea creatures, too, she adds. "Though they're harder because they move!" Whether students comes to the class quite focused in one subject, as did lan Medeiros '16, whose senior project in botany pioneered a description of the vegetation of serpentinite outcrops in Massachusetts, or as a generalist connected to art, field biology, and education, like Jessica Arseneau '18, they leave with a changed vision. "You notice more when making the marks yourself, you're really looking at the proportions; figuring out the relationships," says lan. Jessica recalls a study in which Catherine asked the class to look so closely at tree bark, they only saw the patterns, not the tree. "I looked at the tree in way I hadn't before," Jessica says. "It made me realize that the way I imagine a tree in my head, the marks we think we have to make to make someone feel like they're seeing a tree, are not always the ones that represent a tree best." Focused on the subtle color variations of a piece of rock, the ridges within hemlock bark, and also the minute striations on a leaf, Connor O'Brien '17, a musician who chose COA in lieu of a conservatory, notices his cognition expanding from spring's daily changes to the epochs of geologic time. As he paints blossoms on a May afternoon, TERNATE he muses not only about the plant and its flowers, but also about the watercolors themselves, 'made of water and hear minerals what everything is made of. "-DG omorgins pierce leaves This spread, drawings by Jessica Arseneau '18. Overleaf, excerpt from an illustrated three-page discussion of deciduous conifers created by lan Medeiros '16. In the page that is missing, he describes short shoots, which are a form of bud at the end of a branch that remains relatively CUNEATE short. OBCORDATE ODD-PINNATE wedge shaped- heart-shaped- TRIPINNATE stem at point leaflets in nowl, acute base one at sig leaflet bipinnak TRUNCATE OBOV ATE DELTOID EVEN PINNATE Eriangular egg shaped, norrow square apex leaflets in nws, 2 at base at tip COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 33 OBTUSE PINNATISECT UNIFOLIATE "Leaf" -out, or. How to make a deciduous conifer At temperate latitudes, we divide trees into deciduous species, which lose their leaves in the winter, and evergreen species, which retain their leaves year round. Generally, we think of conifers as evergreen and Pinus broadleaf trees as decidvous strobus Betula papyrifera But some temperate conifers, such as Larix and Metasequcia, do lose their leaves each winter. In these paintings, I investigate not why these conifers lose their leaves, but how they do 10. Different decidvous conifers - and other decideous gymnosperms, such as Ginhgo - lose and regrow their leaves in different ways. But, as it turns out, there are certain unifying features to decideous coniters, and conifer decidoasness actually shares a great deal in common with decidvousness in broadleaf trees. Larix laricina The story of decideous conifers is a story of shoots and leaves. Remember: not every Flat, green thing is a leaf, and not every leaf is flat and green. IDM 34 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Short choots are not just Found in gymnosperms; apple Malus pumila spurs and all flowers cire short shoots as well, as are the leaf-bearing twings of birches and beaches. Short shouts in conifers do not necessarily lead to leaves that fall off every year. The Fascides of needles in pines are actually short shoots, with long photosyathetic needles and a few small scale leaves at the base. A dormant apical menistem at the center of the needles keeps these fascicles determinent- unable to grow longer. When pine needles do Fall off after a for years on the tree, they fall off in Fasciales - the short shorts are deciden, just not Pines seasonally. strobus While the Pinus short shoots are determinent, the short shoots of Larir or Ginhgo are indeterminant. short shorts may not even remain as short shoots - in Lariy, there is a short shoot at brench tips, but Larix the internodes between leaves of the laricina newest year's growth may elongate to lengther the branches, a fact evidaced by the leaf sears along Larix braches. To people native to temperate regions, conifers "are" the evergreens, and deciduous conifers strilie us as addities. But the preceeding text and illustrations have shown that decidvous coniters loose their leaves using an architecture - short shouts-that is found in broadleaf trees as well. Larches and beeches lose their leaves by the same developmental system, we only think of one as being "unusual" because most coniters we hase lose their leaves on much longer time scales. Metasequoia styplastrobades COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 35 BOOK REVIEW THE WILD GARDENS OF ACADIA Anne Kozak and Sue Leiter Arcadia Publishing, 2016 Tucked away behind an elegant wooden gateway in Acadia National Park's Sieur de Monts Springs are the Wild Gardens of Acadia. Within just three- quarters of an acre, this living museum offers a baker's dozen of landscapes, each its own distinct habitat. The plants and trees you see as you travel through Acadia, whether beside the Park Loop Road, atop Dorr Mountain, or by the seashore-four hundred of them-are here: lowly moss, maidenhair fern, majestic hemlock, even the blueberry, though not for picking! Most important, they are labeled. And because they are identified we know what these plants are, and so we pay attention. Always, the roadside plot grabs me. When I'm not driving the roads of Maine, I'm biking them. As I do I pass-well, what? Greenery, sometimes with a spark of blue, or purple, or ruffled Queen Anne's lace. I know that one. The rest I hardly notice. But one visit to the roadside habitat of the Wild Gardens, and there they are-my plants! Now as I travel I look, seeking identities. Always, too, I've wondered how it was possible to place a wetland beside a dry mountaintop, close to a beach. Thanks to The Wild Gardens of Acadia, the 2016 volume written by faculty member Anne Kozak, who directs COA's writing center, and Sue Leiter, a retired Connors Emerson School library media specialist, we all know more. Anne and Sue are friends who have volunteered in the park since the 1970s, immersing their hands in the garden's soil and stream while also seeking funds for its upkeep. Susan coordinated the work of volunteers and supervised interns for more than twenty years; Anne currently co-chairs the Wild Gardens committee and helps with fundraising. The volume is packed with images, including many by COA photography lecturer Josh Winer '91. We learn that the gardens began in 1961, a Each spring, beginning in the realization of the vision and hard work of a group of Mary Hodgkins would bring to the volunteers. "We took an undifferentiated piece of cardinal flowers that flourished land," remarked Janet TenBroeck, a co-founder of as they seldom survived the the gardens, "and made it seem as if the deciduous Now, however, they are quite and coniferous woods, meadow, bog, and pond were always there." Yet, according to this lovely photographic COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE history, what the volunteers began with was no more than "a mass of tangled blackberries and scarred red maples, but fortuitously it had a brook and along the brook a stand of royal ferns." There were no boulders, however. To create the mountain area, these were trucked in and arranged to echo a summit. Emerging between the rocks is the native columbine (once regularly grown and watered by Elizabeth Thorndike, whose involvement with COA is celebrated in the naming of the Thorndike Library for her and husband Amory). Because stone settles, this habitat had to be twice reconstructed and replanted, most recently with the help of landscape architect Dennis Trailing arbutus, or Bracale '88. mayflower, a low- Only native plants are allowed growing evergreen, is in the gardens-but none can be found on mountains collected from the park itself. That and along Acadia's set off hunting expeditions by early drier roadsides in volunteers who located and nurtured early spring, one of the native plants, often collecting the first plants to and drying seeds, even overwintering bloom. them in their refrigerators. Since the founding of COA, students have joined the effort, volunteering, studying, drawing, interning, and working. The park maintains the infrastructure and provides other support, while Friends of Acadia funds an intern and one staff member, a supervisory gardener. In 2007, that was Tanner Harris '06. Since 2009, it has been Geneva Langley '94, who also curates the College of the Atlantic/Acadia National Park Herbarium. Housed on campus, this collection of 15,000 specimens documents the vegetation of the park, the island, and beyond. Geneva spends her days supervising the intern and volunteers, answering questions, pruning some-though not all-of the dead wood, every so often sprinkling salt water over the beach habitat, and subtly tending each plot to Large yellow lady's maintain its wild but visible shape. slipper flourishes -Donna Gold in the Mixed Woods habitat in early For more, visit arcadiapublishing.com spring, before the or friendsofacadia.org. All proceeds deciduous trees have from the sale of The Wild Gardens of leafed out. Photos by Josh Winer '91. Acadia support the gardens; Josh Winer's photographs were also donated. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 37 COA Is NOT JUST ANY COLLEGE: NEVA GOODWIN & THE ROCKEFELLERS It was a Columbus Day weekend laughing. She won't take you seriously!" of three economics textbooks in the late 1970s. A minke whale Neva's connection to COA began published in several languages. She had washed ashore on Campobello with some math tutoring from Butch also heads the Mount Desert Island Island. COA biologists Sentiel (Butch) in advance of her return to academia, Land and Garden Preserve board, Rommel and Steve Katona (later and continued with a conference on which owns and manages much of COA's fourth president) were heading the meaning of human ecology that the land between Northeast and Seal up to autopsy the animal and she organized with her husband, MIT harbors south of Acadia, including retrieve its skeleton for the college's professor Bruce Mazlish (father of the Azalea and Thuya gardens. budding natural history museum. current trustee Tony Mazlish). As a Her mother, the late Peggy They wanted students to join, but trustee during COA's troubled years, Rockefeller, was passionate about needed a large car for transport. when a fire destroyed what had been farming-what Neva calls, "the Butch called Neva Goodwin, who the college's main building and its system that most intimately showed up with her roomy Suburban second president resigned under connects humans with nature." wagon, five students, and her own pressure, Neva helped hold things Knowing that COA shares this willing hands-though when they got together. Her proudest contribution passion, Neva encouraged her father there, the smell of the decomposing to COA, she says, was persuading to donate to COA the two island whale so overwhelmed all other fellow trustee Tom Hall to become farms her mother stewarded. The sensations that for a long time she board chair in 1984. Peggy Rockefeller Farms are now a didn't notice the cold as she stood Meanwhile, Neva was obtaining vital part of the college's curriculum. hip deep in the North Atlantic. In an MPA from Harvard's Kennedy Supporting COA is a matter of October. School of Public Administration family values, Neva adds. "COA Among the many links between and a PhD in economics from is not just any college. Its degree Acadia National Park and COA, Boston University. Hired by is in human ecology, and that Neva is one of the strongest. A Tufts University, she co-founded mission is so exciting. My family trustee from 1981 to 1991, she is the the Global Development And members are all environmentalists. granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, Environment Institute where she Everything about our upbringing Jr., a park founder along with George works to systematize an economic causes us to appreciate nature, to B. Dorr and Charles W. Eliot, and theory appropriate to contemporary seek to understand the interactions Acadia's premier bridge creator, real-world concerns, both social between humans and nature, and to supervising the building of its nearly and environmental. Focused on help create institutions that would sixty miles of carriage paths with conveying a fuller understanding of improve those interactions." their many stone archways. the economy, Neva is lead author -Donna Gold On a recent summer afternoon, settled in an old metal rocker overlooking the delphinium and clematis of her Mount Desert Island home, Neva recalls childhood excursions from this same house, catching crabs in tide pools, building caves in the hills, hiking, and admiring, especially, the forest's mosses, ferns, and lichens. She also remembers a sweet grandfather who knew how to talk to children. "He came to our level." On her last visit to his summer home, the Eyrie, Neva and a friend brought him some blueberries and discussed her friend's new kitten. Recalls Neva, "He asked the name of the kitten and my friend said, Minihaha. He responded, Oh that's no name for a kitten- when you call her, she'll think you're 38 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Leave No One Behind COA commencement address, June 4, 2016 By Barry Lopez The first thing I want to do this afternoon is express my a landscape no people, no human culture, had ever gratitude for the invitation to speak with you today. I feel occupied. I wanted to float the Yangtze; stand on the honored, knowing you've read work of mine and decided north shore of Tahiti in French Polynesia at Point Venus, I had a place in this moment, the moment when you look as Cook had; travel with Warlpiri people in the Tanami back over your shoulders but also look ahead to the road Desert, in Australia's Northern Territory. I wanted to see you're about to embark on, or maybe to the open water wolves and polar bears and orcas on their own ground. south and east of here that you intend to sail-a road less I wanted to see it, see the varied Earth and meet those safe, and a waterway trickier than those you've known living in it and on it. here. As it's turned out, I was able to do all of this. I can't I want to ask you to travel a little with me this tell you how. I can only say I wanted it. I desired it. afternoon. At your age I secretly wished to become a When I was your age, I wrote Louis Leakey, the great writer, but I had no clear image of what I would do as a paleoanthropologist, sending him my shallow and writer. The topics I hoped to address were too broad, inadequate resumé and saying I wanted to come to and the life of a writer, as I understood it then, too Olduvai Gorge and work for him there in Tanzania, to problematic. So I matriculated in graduate school. Hiding do whatever camp chores were required in his and his out might be a better term for what I was doing. What I did wife, Mary's, search for the origins of man. To my utter know was that I didn't know; and instinct told me the way surprise, he sent back a welcoming letter; but we could out of this innocence and ignorance was to travel. To put not arrange our logistics in time, and then I was on to this succinctly, I needed another, different epistemology other things. My desire to witness this search for the than the one I'd gotten in my years of formal education, fossilized bones of our deep ancestors, however, burned another way of knowing the world than the one I had on in me. Twenty-five years later I flew in to Nariokotome been taught was the right one. I wanted to see the on the western shore of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya, great Earth-the Shiretoko Peninsula, on the island of to search with Louis's son Richard's "hominid gang" for Hokkaido in northern Japan, the last redoubt of remnant further hard evidence of hominin evolution. Ainu people; the Strait of Magellan, the country, once, What I'm saying here, of course, is to follow your of Selk'nam, Yamana, and Kawésqar people-peoples instinct now, as you walk out of here. Where your hunger from the edge of the world. Like so many, they would fall is concerned-for social justice, for scientific inquiry, for victim to the predatory instincts of Western civilization, protecting the Earth, for education, for economic reform, and in the process be disparaged as dim-minded and for writing or for painting-be tenacious. Do not quit atavistic by nearly every Western historian who followed when it becomes too much, too daunting, too lonely. Be after Magellan. I wanted to see the interior of Antarctica, like wolverines. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 39 So that one thought: Hold on to your desire. Feed it. cavernous holds. On the wall in my hotel room was a And know that your rational mind will periodically offer placard warning me not to drink the tap water, and to you no support at all. Don't let it have the final say every shower only briefly, and not more than twice a week. The time. air in the town's bars was rancid with cigarette smoke, the air combusting in them like lit fuses in a dynamite bunker. A few moments ago I asked you if you would please travel The rooms themselves shook from the jackhammer music a little bit with me. I had in mind places of adumbration, roaring on, unnoticed by men with thousand-yard stares, places where you might sense the larger outlines of your making $200,000 a year driving ore trucks up out of the own life, events and moments you might go back to again pits. and again, because they prefigure, in some vaporous Out in the country beyond, an Aboriginal man, a or symbolic way, what is coming for you, and, if you are traditional man, speaking of his poverty and describing someone with a sense of social responsibility, what is the unraveling village in which he used to live, answered coming for your people. my question about what had happened here. "Natural Many years ago I was on the upper Yukon River just resource extraction happened to us," he said. south of the Arctic Circle, about forty miles west of The ore ships were headed to China, nearly every one Alaska's border with the Yukon Territory in Canada. I of them-a country not sending troops to the Middle East, was traveling with my friend Bob Stephenson, a wolf or to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram, or anywhere else, but biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. gathering the last major deposits of iron ore in Western It was midday, and for some reason we became aware Australia, and of copper in Afghanistan. of what seemed like an inviting spot on the south bank Do I need to add anything about sociopathic of the river. We tied the canoe off on the roots of a fallen speculators in our own country trying to secure the last spruce tree, climbed the large reservoirs of fresh cutbank and walked off into water in South America, or a clearing. We didn't know So that one thought: Hold on to your sex trafficking in the fracking what we were looking for, we desire. Feed it. And know that your camps of North Dakota, or just felt drawn to the place. rogue fishing fleets in the After a few moments we both rational mind will periodically offer you Pacific? halted suddenly and looked no support at all. Don't let it have the at each other. Uneasy now. Last week I was in Occupied Wary. Without exchanging a final say every time. Palestine, traveling with word we moved to leave. On several other writers to cities the way back to the canoe in the West Bank to read and Bob stopped abruptly ahead of me and pointed with present. I had arrived in the Middle East a few days earlier his chin. There in the brush, not thirty feet away, was a and was staying in Amman before our tour began. One fresh caribou carcass. The left haunch was ripped open. day I took a chair with me and sat by myself on the barren It glistened with blood. The animal's twisted neck was edge of a bluff that fell down to the Dead Sea on the broken. Our flesh hummed with the knowledge that a Jordanian side. This sea lies in the lowest part of a visible bear was certainly very close. We choked down panic. geological feature called the Jordan Rift. The Jordan River, It's like that now. Out there in the real world. Quite which flows into the Dead Sea, drains the Sea of Galilee, or dangerous. A world threatening eruption everywhere, Lake Tiberius as the Palestinians have it, which itself takes in the same moment that we're idling along, most days, flash flood waters from a series of wadis in southwestern confident that things are going to work out, somehow, Syria, south of Damascus. The Jordan Rift continues on believing the danger is far away, in Syria, say. In North south of the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern Korea. On Wall Street. spur at the northern end of the Red Sea, the western spur In the austral fall of 2012, I was traveling in the being the Gulf of Suez. This geological fault continues Pilbara, in the northern reaches of the state of Western south, past Jeddah, the port for Mecca, until at the Gate Australia. A painter, a landscape photographer, two of Tears, at the southern end of the Red Sea, this line, American writers, an Australian writer, and our guides. which marks the tectonic boundary between the Saudi We were looking at how iron-ore mining was changing the Arabian plate and the African plate, turns southwest, countryside, and had changed the lives of the Aboriginal bisecting Djibouti and the Omo River Valley of Ethiopia, people living there. I'll skip to the end of this complex trip where the fossilized skeletons of "Lucy" and other and say that when we came in off the desert and saw Port australopithecines ancestral to us have been found. The Headland, the harbor from which much of the ore was fault continues through Lake Turkana, in Kenya, where being shipped, the town looked like Mordor to us. The sky paleoanthropologists are looking, right now, as we're orange from iron ore dust; the nearly incomprehensible gathered here in Maine, for hominin and hominid fossils. sprawl of an automated operation loading the faceless It then follows straight on to Lake Malawi, passing through ships; the seething noise of dry ore being poured into Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania along the way. This particular 40 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE section of the fault lines that run from Damascus in the I think of this indictment here today because I have Middle East to Lake Malawi in Africa is called the Great Rift just returned from a distant shore, and feel responsible Valley of East Africa. to offer you some kind of wisdom that grew out of what I I've been staring at this line for a while now, at these saw; but all I have, at the moment, are painful memories, several landscapes of our human origins: in northern paradox, and threats to my sense of hope, which, God Kenya at a paleoanthropological dig that gave us the willing, I will write my way out of in the months ahead. nearly complete skeleton of a Homo erectus youth in And if I cannot find a language that will serve as a 1989; near Djibouti, at a landscape of predatory drones foundation for hope in Palestine, I will not write a story, setting their Hellfire missiles loose over Yemen; and near out of respect for those whose vision for peace there Bethlehem, at refugee camps where third-generation continues undisturbed. Palestinians continue to hope for intervention. Also, I think there is no Ben to offer us advice. No one I would like to offer you something coherent and is coming over the horizon to tell us what to do. What we insightful about all this, including the refugee camps need to do we will discover only in deep and sustained in southern Ethiopia and South Sudan, and along the conversation with each other. Jordanian border with Syria, northeast of Amman. But I am still reeling from what I saw two weeks ago. I have I want to tell you about one more place, a place that nothing to offer you this afternoon but the fact that gave me a kind of blueprint for dealing with our modern everywhere people are running, running hard, like problems, many of which seem intractable, and which are they were running out of that ticket lobby in Brussels a too often addressed in public by people with pedestrian few months ago, running from war and drought, from ideas and selfish motives, by people who offer us, in place military occupation and corrupt governments, from of leadership, a personality disorder, in place of ethics, desertification and extreme venality and cowardice. poverty. For them, the illusion In 1981 or so I was traveling of safety has been completely What eludes us, really, is the secret with Inuit hunters in northern shattered. They're all running of leading morally successful lives, ones Baffin Island. We were out from Hellfire missiles of one on the sea ice in Admiralty sort or another. that do not leave injury and mayhem Inlet, hunting at the ice edge, in their wake, and which create inner when a light wind that had In Death of a Salesman, been blowing from the north Arthur Miller's enduring peace. came around to the south. 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning We broke camp quickly play, a man who cannot and headed south as fast bring reality and the wishful dreamscapes of his own as we could move. Admiralty Inlet is about the size of aspirations together, in order to create and maintain Chesapeake Bay. Where we were camped, the inlet was an informed-you might also add ethical-life, this perhaps twenty miles across, and we were about forty salesman hallucinates at one point about a visit from miles north of a peninsula where the hunters' families his entrepreneurial brother Ben, who is just back from were camped. To get to the camp we had to cross three a successful venture of some kind in Africa. Ben, a sort transverse cracks that ran east and west through the sea of Cecil Rhodes, scolds his younger brother, urges him ice. When the wind was coming out of the north it kept to get out there in the world, get out there and make a these cracks closed. Coming out of the south now, the killing. The play works, in part, because Miller, who was wind was slowly widening these cracks, creating leads incisive about the type of folklore that fed American lives, of open water. If the leads widened too much, we'd be understood that we are eager to hear from men who are trapped on the massive ice floes we were racing across, financially successful, eager to know the secret of financial and possibly swept out into the open waters of Lancaster success. But of course there is no secret. What eludes us, Sound, where we would be in real trouble. really, is the secret, if you want to call it that, of leading We crossed the first two of these traverse cracks, morally successful lives, ones that do not leave injury and which were only three or four feet wide, without incident. mayhem in their wake, and which create inner peace. When we reached the third crack we were looking at ten I saw the play on Broadway once, fifty years ago, and feet of open water. Instead of some dominant personality I remember being transfixed by the figure of Ben. In my emerging, stepping forward to say what we should do, as adolescent mind he embodied the will to break free of might happen in our culture, each one of about twelve the fear of failure. It was years before I understood what men spoke about what he had done in the past in a similar Miller was really saying was that delusions of one kind situation. He offered us detailed information about the sometimes feed delusions of another kind, to the point of weather, the sea ice conditions, and the size and nature tragedy, to suicide in Willy Loman's case. To be successful, of his komatik, his sled, and said whether he had been it is necessary to confront one's cherished delusions and traveling with dogs or by snow machine. After all the men dismantle them. had spoken, each person decided which was the best COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 41 choice for him, and went ahead with his plan. Everyone threats. You got that here, many of you, the knowledge did something a little different. All but one of us got about what to do, the confidence to step into the work across the lead of open water successfully, through a set that is calling you into the future, the preparation to of deft but dicey procedures. The one we almost lost, we understand what has gone wrong in Syria, or Kashmir, or rescued. America, if I may say that. This incident has stayed with me for many years, Most of you arrived here, as I look at it, with two because the successful solution did not lie with the questions; and you have discovered here, I hope, two opinions of a strong personality but with each man saying skills. The questions that define a college education, what he knew, everything he knew, and not more than for me, are these: What do / mean by my life? And, How what he knew. can I say what / mean? Shall I say it as a humanitarian The idea was to get everyone safely across. The aid worker, as a physician, as a computer programmer, authority for a successful crossing lay with the sharing as a sculptor, as an educator, as a parent? If you know of knowledge, not with following any single charismatic at this point what you mean by your life, what you want personality's institution or dictate about what to do. This your life to stand for, ethically and spiritually, and if you was not Follow me but Let's not leave anyone behind. can discern the general outline of how you will conduct I would offer you this strategy, to leave no one yourself as you walk out the door here, then you have behind, at a time when too much of what is important accomplished something hard already, and we here are for us as a people is being decided by those who say fortunate, because we, the ones who are older, share a Follow me. Instead of proposing their views, they seek fate with you. to impose them. This is yet one more expression of the The particular skills I hope you have learned here "cult of personality," of have little to do directly which America is so greatly Be careful in what you say, so that you with your major area of enamored. This is not a academic interest, which, helpful approach in my mind, do not destroy someone's sense of really, is just a matter of when you consider what hope, or frighten them when they are your intellectual comfort we're facing. So, I'm urging with a certain metaphor, like you not to strive, when already feeling afraid. physics or history or design. addressing those issues that The skills I'm thinking about lie out there on the road have to do with navigation, for you, not to strive to be noticed or seem interesting to how you will navigate from here to wherever you want others. Strive instead to understand, to let others speak, to go with as little trouble as possible. One such skill and to listen. Generally, in my experience, successful would be the ability to be discreet. I'm not talking about communities are composed of people willing to let others steering clear of gossip, though that's usually a good speak for them because they know these other people are thing to do, or covering up for bad behavior, which we're good listeners. You are not depending then on the narrow all prone to do because we're human, but about another quest of an individual ego but dealing with the reality kind of discreetness. One time a senior person to me, of a common fate, which, like global climate change, is an indigenous woman I met in Oregon, said to me, You indifferent to the desire of any one individual to be proven know, Barry, we don't tell all the stories to all the people. She right. meant you must be careful in what you say, so that you do not destroy someone's sense of hope, or frighten them So, where from here for you? You can sense the bear in when they are already feeling afraid. that clearing on the upper Yukon, whatever you might The particular skills I want to stress this afternoon name it: ocean acidification, methane gas pouring out however, as you look out the figurative door here to see of the tundra this summer, volatile national economies, what has your name written on it, are the ability to be anomalous drought and wildfire, the coming fight over discerning and the ability to discriminate. To be discerning fish in the territorial waters of the Sprately Islands in is to be aware of the nuances in any given situation. It's the South China Sea, plans in the winds now in some an ability to recognize both the small within the large countries for mining and drilling in Antarctica, despite (the tree in the forest) and the large within the small (the the existence of the Antarctic Treaty which prohibits such forest made of trees). It's the ability simultaneously to development. You can see the Four Horsemen out there. accept multiple points of view and to accept the validity You can already articulate your desire to play a role in of the ones that differ from your own. In a way, to be finding ways for humanity to successfully meet these discerning is to approach the world with an attitude 42 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE opposite that of a fundamentalist's, the polarizing your own culture. Learn what others are facing, and how attitude of someone who doesn't or can't see the world as they are coping. Think more often of what might work nuanced, or who is frightened of change. To be discerning for everyone, instead of what will work for the chosen is to be comfortable in the world outside the known self, few, among whom you will no doubt count yourself. Read to go deep where art is concerned, and to be at ease when about the lives of those you admire-Thomas Merton, awe is the proper response to mystery, not analysis. Rachel Carson, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Aung To be discriminating is something different. It is the San Suu Kyi, and take in the meaning of each one's flaws. ability to distinguish between two things that look, at Be cautious if you feel an urge to become well known. first glance, as though they are the same. In order to Remember that sometimes reverence, not efficiency, be discriminating you have to pay close attention to is the way to a solution. And remember that it is more whatever is unfolding before you, to distinguish between important sometimes to be in love-with the Earth, with the authentic and the fraudulent. To be discriminating is, each other-than to be in power. I suppose, simply the ability to know when someone is In the years ahead you will find that it is extremely lying. difficult to lead a good life. Every life, sooner or later, In your years here you have developed the scaffolding meets tragedy and despair, injury and injustice. Every of your "philosophy of life," which you will strengthen in life hears the seductive call of cynicism and detachment, the years ahead, and which will be your guide in both lay offering you a way out. If you hear those calls, if you and spiritual matters. But these skills I've mentioned, falter, go to those you've come to trust, and seek their to be discerning, to perceive the nuances, and to be counsel. Remember those Inuit men on the ice, who had discriminating, to recognize to move quickly when the the authentic, will be useful wind shifted. Listen, and then at every turn. You will be I am inspired by your vision, and choose your way. misled less often, and you impressed by your capability, and | If you do well out there, will move more quickly to the after the safe years in an heart of what it is you are have been revitalized by your energy academic community, all after. and enthusiasm, and I should say by of us together here this afternoon-those with me So, now the road opens, your daring. on this stage, your parents, and you are out of here, like your teachers-will do well. Huck Finn lighting out for the We share a fate, and now we territory where you will make your mark. I admire your welcome you to the work that needs doing, from one end bravery, your diligence in getting as far as you have. I also of the Earth to the other. respect the desire in some of you to go no further just I have spent only a few hours in your company, now, to wait until the road ahead seems less obscure. and have come here from a far away geography and a I hope some of you will choose to join the women and different human community altogether. But I am inspired men of my generation, and those born in the fifty years by your vision, and impressed by your capability, and I separating us, to ferret out ways of life that are more just, have been revitalized by your energy and enthusiasm, and less cruel, more compassionate, and more enlightened, I should say by your daring. considering what we are all facing. You represent something magnificent. Now the real On your way out the door, then, here are a few work begins. For God's sake, take care of each other. thoughts. Step away from the unconscious confines of Thank you. Barry Lopez has been publishing short stories and essays for more than forty years. His volume Winter Count was read in the Human Ecology Core Course by the class of 2016 when they entered in 2012. Said Galen Hecht '16 in introducing Barry during commencement, "We are honored to have with us someone whose true calling is as a storyteller and storywriter, who lets the poetry of the earth rise up through his shoes, a writer whose stories of this magnificent world are testament to the astonishing and trying reality that we are all here, alive, on this earth." Barry Lopez now holds an honorary Master of Philosophy in Human Ecology. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 43 ALUMNI NOTES Alumni, please welcome Amanda Mogridge, our new alumni relations coordinator. She is sure to be in contact with many of you just as soon as she returns from maternity leave. Find her at amogridge@coa.edu. 1976 Hilbert, a painter and sculptor offering information on cost-effective From Alaska, Paula Cullenberg since March 2015," writes Andrea resources for improving thermal writes, "I attended COA for one Lepcio. "This winter I will be teaching comfort and performance, including year and really loved my time there. business writing at COA. I also renewable energy options, energy Currently I'm director of Alaska Sea launched a writing coaching practice, efficiency measures, financing Grant. I've lived and commercially working with novelists, memoirists, strategies, and incentives to make fished salmon here for 30 years, and playwrights, nonfiction, and other improvements affordable. am happy to talk Alaska with any COA writers in person and via Skype. I folks headed this way!" had a play open in Los Angeles in 1992 April and a musical in New York in In July, Christie (Denzel) 1978 August. Next up is a world premiere Anastasia, Acadia's deputy chief "In 2015, my wife and I finished in Atlanta in March 2017." Find more of interpretation, spoke with COA our second winter and spring field at andrealepcio.com. law and policy faculty member season on the Mendocino Coast of Ken Cline during a COA Coffee & Northern California conducting an 1981 Conversation about the challenges annual census of southbound and Marti Gudmundson is in her second and opportunities encountered by northbound gray whales," writes year of a master's of social work national parks and protected areas. Scott Mercer, who was a COA program at Northwest Nazarene visiting student. They also census University near her home in Caldwell, humpback and killer whales, and ID. Her specialization is medical and right whale dolphins, presenting mental health social work. She hopes their findings to a marine mammal to work with refugees in Idaho and biennial conference in San Francisco. eventually go into the Peace Corps At the November North Atlantic Right with her husband, Nick Molenaar. Whale Consortium in New Bedford, MA, Scott connected with COA 1984 marine biologist Sean Todd and his After 13 years of a psychotherapy students. Find him on Facebook at practice, Ker Cleary (formerly Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study. Rachael Merker) is concentrating In May, Jeffrey Miller launched on the channeling she's done for 30 DC Cycling Concierge, a private 1979 years, and on Bach flower remedies. bike guiding service. Among his Last fall, Sue Inches led a group of Ker and her partner, Julia Trippe, guests was former Governor Arnold 14 Maine legislators and business, celebrate 25 years together and their Schwarzenegger. "It was pretty municipal, and environmental third wedding anniversary ("Yay, surreal watching the wave of reaction leaders on a climate tour of marriage equality!") in November. from people walking, biking, and Denmark, culminating in three days They have an urban homestead driving around DC as we rolled by," on carbon neutral Samsø Island, in Eugene, OR with chickens, fruit writes Jeff. On their second ride, he helping, she writes, "keep the trees, raised beds, a new asparagus adds, they biked "along the Mall to sustainability conversation alive bed, and dogs Max and Tilly. Visitors the Capitol where guards asked the during a difficult and anti-renewable can stay in their 18' 1968 Kencraft governor if there was something he administration in Augusta." As a trailer with original birch veneer and wanted. He said he'd like to go in, consultant at Tilson Technology, turquoise appliances. Find her at so they opened a small fence to let she helps communities in Maine bluestarchanneling.com. him climb the steps of the Capitol, and across the country plan and where he found the door locked. As implement broadband strategies 1986 he jokingly pounded on the door, for improved internet services. Teny Bannick consults as a team saying, Let me in, it's the people's "Telecommunications is a fun and member with UpGrade Ohio to house! a couple of SUVs rolled up and fast-changing field, with enormous motivate residents and business out stepped Majority Leader Kevin implications," she adds. owners to shift to clean energy McCarthy of California, who gave solutions. She provides one-on- us an impromptu, personal tour of "I have been happily living in Bar one client interaction with home the Capitol." Continues Jeff, "All my Harbor with my partner France and business owners and renters, guests are given the VIP treatment, 44 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE some are just a bit more famous- 1996 1998 and I'm so grateful to so many COA Shelagh Harvard is on a year-long Raechelle Edmiston-Cyr moved friends for supporting this new adventure, wandering around the from Orono to a log home with a venture!" Visit dccyclingconcierge. nation, following years in healthcare couple of acres in Charleston, ME. com. management. She writes that she's, "My sons and dog love it!" she writes. "taking the time to slow down and 1993 see what I like and who I am after 1999 The Adventures of Kermit the Newf, a few tumultuous years, spending In May, Meghan Pew received a written by Bonnie (Tischler) time with new and old friends, BSN from Norwich University. She Giacovelli and her mother, Mollie photographing, drawing, and writing now works as a registered nurse in Tischler, was published by Mascot every day." She's looking for places intensive care in central Vermont Books in April. It is the first in a to camp or crash, and COA alumni to where she lives with her daughter, series featuring Kermit, Bonnie's talk with along the way. "I'd love to Mavis, 5. Newfoundland dog, and his real- come and see what you do, especially life adventures. Find more at if your work revolves around food 2000 kermitthenewf.com. or healthcare in some way." Find her at shelaghmaine@gmail.com or tracingtheedge.com. No dream is too wonderful to come true Circus School Asa Orion Cuffari was born at home on Jan. 16 to Katie Dube and Peter In Sept. 2015, Heather Sisk Cuffari. On her maternity break was board-certified as a clinical from tattooing, Katie found herself anaplastologist. A month later, on After 13 years traveling with, working collaborating on a coloring book. Oct. 24, she married Craig Gordon, for, and researching traditional and Color Acadia is now available in many who writes about politics and the contemporary circuses, including MDI shops, or at coloracadia.com. "A perverse. They have now moved to Circus Smirkus, Big Apple Circus, and big year for creating!" she writes. Boca Raton, FL and have created Cirque Du Soleil, Amity Stoddard several holistic and green online writes that she and her husband, directories, blogging about health, Sellam El Ouahabi, are opening The food, policy, and environmental Sellam Circus School in Biddeford, news. Adds Heather, "I continue to ME. "Sellam has been a performing sculpt and miss Maine!" artist for more than 30 years, doing aerial straps, trapeze, acrobatics, 1995 hand balance, human pyramid, Sonja wheel of death you name it." He's Johanson also been a coach for 20 years. released her The school will offer recreational Trees in third poetry classes, a professional circus arts Anne Mary Myers and husband Our Dooryards chapbook, training program, and eventually a Matt Blakeley-Smith welcomed son Trees in Our traveling circus academy. Find more Owen this January. Anne Mary is Dooryards, at thesellamcircus.com. a wildlife biologist for the Oregon Sonja Johanson by Red Bird Department of Fish and Wildlife in Chapbooks, 1997 Corvallis where she and her family and had a Sue Fox is working as an artist, enjoy gardening, hiking, foraging, poem read gardener, and farmer on Mount chicken-keeping, swimming, and the by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Desert Island. abundant organic produce of the Almanac. Willamette Valley. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 45 2002 Learning Excellence for her work as a management consulting firm. Sarah a GIS professor at the University of is Harvard School of Public Health's Maine Machias. The statewide award deputy country director." recognizes faculty who integrate community or public service into On March 14, their curriculum. bad 2017, Demitria Lunetta 2004 blood will release Bad Blood, a DEMITRIA LUNETTA paranormal thriller set in On June 4, Rickie (Bogle) Drake and Edinburgh, husband, Justin, welcomed their first Scotland, her child, Sawyer Livingston Drake. Rickie third novel is taking time off from her massage for teens. Demitria interned at practice, but will continue Lola Arts, the Centre for Human Ecology in her ceramic business, part-time from Edinburgh in 2003. their Portland, ME home. "We are soaking up every moment as a new Mukhtar Amin and Sarah Hurlbert family!" she writes. '02 moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in late 2015. Mukhtar writes, "It has 2003 been a great move for all of us. The Tora Johnson, MPhil and former COA kids have adjusted, we're enjoying GIS instructor, received the Donald living in Addis, and our careers are Harward Faculty Award for Service going well. I am working for Dalberg, Allison Rogers Furbish is in her third year at the nonprofit Vital Communities in Vermont, where she manages communications and the database to support regional WHY WE GIVE work around local agriculture, Sean '00 & transportation, economy, energy, civic engagement, and sense of Sarah '05 Keeley place. Her second child, Ezra, was born in April 2015. She enjoys pearlja connecting regularly with fellow alumni, including Nikki Grimes '96 (also a nonprofit development professional), Matt Protas '06, and COA is part of us. old friend Erin Kavanagh '04 (on the COA's values align with our values and its mission speaks to the core left with Allison and all of their kids of who we are. We believe environmental stewardship, social justice, on a summer visit). and cross-disciplinary approaches to problem-solving are desperately needed in this world and we see the college as being at the forefront of 2005 these issues and more. Annie Harris recently graduated When we make our modest donation every month we know that this from the two-year wooden is a small way of bringing the kind of world we want to see into being. boatbuilding and restoration Besides, after moving back to Bar Harbor two years ago, the campus program at Newport, RI's has become a kind of oasis for our family. How do you value the big International Yacht Restoration swing on the North Lawn's white pine, or jumping off the COA dock in School and has joined the Salmon summer, or hunting for sea glass with our kids on the beach? For us, Falls Canoe crew in Shelburne, MA, giving to COA is about giving back and doing our small part to create a building and restoring wood canvas better world. canoes and other small boats. When not in the workshop, she can often 46 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE be found paddling the waterways of Kidd was born at home on April 20 Community Foundation, another southwestern New Hampshire with with a midwife and doula. They are significant institution founded by her fiancée, Nell, a music teacher, living in Santa Fe, NM. Ed, who is in the Mt. Desert Islander and their two dogs. photo with Elsie, left, and Ellen 2007 Dohman, volunteer executive administrator. 2008 Naturopathic physician Jessica Hardy graduated from the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine and is applying to master's programs to also become a licensed professional counselor. She hopes eventually In June, Sanjeev and Rachael Jacquie (Ramos) Bullard and to offer holistic care to trauma (Rapacz ('05)) Shah welcomed their Anthony Bullard welcomed sufferers. second child, Rowan Sur Shah, in St. daughter Ariana Bullard on May 25 Paul, MN. The entire family, including in San Francisco. They've moved to 2009 big brother Cedar, 3.5, are enjoying Fremont, CA to watch her grow. Sam Miller-McDonald has been the new addition. working with Matt Maiorana '10 to launch ActivistLab.org, an online 2006 publication dedicated to social change innovation. He has also HOTEL begun a PhD program in the School Bruce of Geography and the Environment at England's University of Oxford. 2010 Alyson "Aly" Bell completed her master's in library and information Executive director of Healthy Acadia, science from the Graduate School RYAN T. HIGGINS Elsie Fleming, has been working of Library and Information Science Ryan Higgins' Mother Bruce saga with Ed Kaelber, COA founding at the University of Illinois. She is continues with October's release of president, on the neighbor4neighbor now coordinator of stewardship and Hotel Bruce by Disney.Hyperion. In fund he launched with his late wife, donor relations at the University of addition to awards mentioned in last Ann Sewell. The fund offers mini- Illinois' College of Engineering. She spring's COA, the book was named grants to Hancock and Washington writes, "The University of Illinois is an E.B. White Read-Aloud Picture county seniors facing unexpected ranked as the #1 program for library Book of the Year, Winter 2015-2016 expenses, such as creating handicap and information science and #7 for Kids' Indie Next Top Ten Book, Kirkus accessibility at home after an illness, engineering, so I am honored and Best Book of 2015, and was a Junior replacing eyeglasses, fixing a leaky excited to be a member of both Library Guild Selection. roof, or fitting a set of dentures prestigious groups!" following cancer treatment. "The idea behind the foundation was In April, Noah Hodgetts was actually rather simple," Ed told engaged to Sandra Woods of the Mount Desert Islander. "There Lebanon, NH. are a lot of old people who are not necessarily impoverished, but have In August, COA's 2016 Udall scholars, all kinds of little needs they can't Laura Berry '17 and Matthew meet." Currently, the fund generates Kennedy '18, attended the Udall about $6,000, offering $250 to Scholar Orientation in Tucson, AZ, $500 to some 12 to 24 people a facilitated by Udall Foundation year. The aim is to raise about $1 staff member Lauren Nutter, a On July 3, Jeanne Lambert Kidd million, generating about $40,000 2008 scholar (in center of photo, married Stirling Kidd at Ghost Ranch dollars annually for grants. The next page). Lauren has just begun in Abiquiu, NM. Daughter Marian Ellis funds are administered by the Maine a master's degree in law and COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 47 continuing my farming work while udall.gov Uc uno educating future farmers as part of INTEGRITY the community college system here in Maine!" all diplomacy at Tufts University's in landscape architecture at RISD. In Fletcher School. the photo (by Wylde Photography), Jason Barton '12 and Megan Laflin 2011 are second and third on left. Second Natalie Barnett, managing director to last is Matt McElwee '12. of operations at Mount Desert Island Ice Cream in Bar Harbor Sarah Gribbin and Phinn and Portland, ME, is working with Onens '13 held their stateside partners in Washington, DC to open wedding celebration on June 26 in a branch by late 2016. She'll be Vermont, surrounded by love with traveling between Maine and DC, as close friends and family, including well as to other East Coast locations, many COA alumni. They're excited facilitating the opening of the new to begin life together in the same store and scouting possible future place after spending two years apart, locations. though Sarah is working for the COA admissions team this fall, while Phinn Lillian Bronson completed her After earning an MS in resource studies orcas off the west coast of master's of science in nursing at New management and conservation Canada. Pictured, left to right are, York's Columbia University and is from Antioch University New kneeling: Julia De Santis and Sima taking certification exams in nurse England in Dec. 2015, Hazel Stark Haigh; on hay bales: Danielle Meier midwifery this fall. As a student incorporated Maine Outdoor School, '08, Yuka Takemon '14, Phinn, midwife she attended more than 30 L3C (maineoutdoorschool.org). with (holding the cardboard face of Becca births in Brooklyn and the Bronx. co-founder, co-CEO Joe Horn. The Hamilton '13, see page 49), Sarah, She writes that she is "very excited to two were married in July, surrounded Andrea Garcia Molina '13, and continue to provide compassionate, by many COA alumni. With Joe and Emily Hollyday '15; standing: lan revolutionary healthcare rooted in Hazel in the photo are Brianna Yaffe, Eliza Ruel '13, Devin Altobello feminism as a new midwife." Larsen, Vivian Lambert '12, and '13, Khristian Mendez '15, Hannah Hale Morrell '12. Viens '13, Marketa Doubnerova '13, Since last June, Marston Leff has and Annie Cohen '13. Attending but been a Peace Corps volunteer in 2012 not pictured is Chris Hamilton '85. Panama where he is developing a Lucy Atkins completed her K-8 site for sustainable agriculture in teaching certification from the Los Uveros, a mostly jungle region Extended Teacher Education of Lake Gatun in the Canal Zone Program at the University of watershed, a community accessible Southern Maine. She's now enrolled only by a walking trail about an hour in a long-term master's program. off the highway. Read his blog at panamonzo.blogspot.com. Writes Bo Dennis, "My exciting news is that I am now the farm manager On June 11, Kate Ross and Austin at Kennebec Valley Community Bamford '13 were married on College in Hinckley, ME, managing the Turrets lawn. Friends, family, the 120-acre farm that functions as On April 19, Michelle Klein and alumni, faculty, and staff joined in the learning lab for its hands-on, high school sweetheart Steve Seyler the celebration which also included vocational, sustainable, agriculture eloped along the west fork of Oak lupines, a campfire, and a little rain program. We grow three acres of Creek in Sedona, AZ. Though their for luck. The two met at COA in 2009 certified organic crops, and raise long-distance relationship has turned and are now living in Providence, RI sheep, cows, chickens, pigs, and into a long-distance marriage- where Austin is pursuing a master's ducks on pasture. I am happy to be Michelle is a fisheries biologist at 48 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE JOIN THE BLACK FLY SOCIETY! The Black Fly Society was established to make donating to COA's Annual Fund easier and greener. It's the paperless way FLY BLACK SOLICE to give to the college. We hope you'll join this swarm of sustaining donors by setting up a monthly online gift. Follow the instructions at coa.edu/donatenow. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC If you want to give by mail: COA Annual Fund 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 (Please make checks out to College of the Atlantic.) Questions? Call 207-801-5625. NOAA in Gloucester, MA and Steve experience, kind of like life at COA, Their work is in the show, Masters an aerospace engineer at Orbital ATK but with a Nepali twist!" In the photo & Apprentices: Work from Maine's in Chandler, AZ-the two enjoyed an she is flanked by her parents, Patti Craft Apprentice Program at LA Arts epic cross-country road trip this fall. and Chris Hamilton '85, and her in Lewiston, ME until Nov. 7. See host parents. mainecap.org. 2013 2014 After a year as an admission Kyle Shank is now MDI Biological counselor at COA, Khristian Mendez Laboratory's bioinformatics training has moved to Texas for a three- specialist. He's also a board member year MFA program in performance of Kids' Corner and the Island as public practice at the University Housing Trust. of Texas at Austin. His project is inspired by COA's Guatemala 2015 program, performance faculty Jodi Baker's coursework, as well as his family history. He writes, "It will be a Becca Hamilton is in her first year piece about the Guatemalan armed of Peace Corps service in Nepal. conflict and genocide, possibly She writes, "I live in a small village involving comedic elements." on the top of a ridge, surrounded Khristian was the only applicant by corn fields and jungle. I am part accepted to the 2016 MFA program, of the food security project here and received almost full funding in in Nepal, focusing on health and addition to a teaching assistantship. nutrition education in local schools. When I am not having my crayons Both Jacquelyn Jenson and James 2016 stolen by first graders and trying to Crawford are in the inaugural year For five months next year Matt integrate experiential education into of the Maine Crafts Association's Messina will be working for Cornell a rather rote educational system, Craft Apprentice Program. Jacquelyn University as a non-degree master's I am helping to build waste water is apprenticing with COA adjunct student in the Bartels Scientific collection tanks to increase home teacher Linda Perrin of Ellsworth's Illustration Internship. He'll illustrate garden productivity during the dry Atlantic Art Glass; James is with the Living Bird magazine, visually season. It is a crazy and wonderful blacksmith Doug Wilson in Deer Isle. depict research, and teach classes. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 49 FAREWELLS COA is a more than a college. Some see it as a family; certainly it is a community. We embrace those who come to work for us when they arrive, and also when they move on to new adventures and challenges. Peace CHALLENGE FACULTY vs. STAFF vs. SENIORS 000 Heath Cabot Dianne Clendaniel Charlie Farley Anthropologist Heath Cabot is now Dianne Clendaniel came to COA as an Charlie Farley retired in May after at the University of Pittsburgh after instructor for Summer Field Studies, thirteen years at COA. Writes Millard five years at COA. Writes Darron later overseeing that program as Dority, buildings and grounds Collins '92, COA president, "Heath education director at the natural director, "Hired as a dorm custodian, had a tremendously successful history museum until taking the Charlie quickly became responsible career at COA as a teacher, scholar, position of alumni relations and for the care of all buildings south collaborator, and institution builder. development coordinator. After of Turrets, taking great pride in his While here, she received a Fulbright twenty-six years, having longed for work. Thanks to his wide-ranging to continue her studies of migration the environmental education setting knowledge, he became a consultant in Greece, and published her first of a museum, she has moved across for the rest of B&G on many sticky book, On the Doorstep of Europe: the island to work with alumna Nina situations-mechanical, structural, Asylum and Citizenship in Greece. Gormley '78 at the Wendell Gilley and automotive. But the better I Given how migration shapes our Museum. Says Lynn Boulger, dean of knew him the less we talked about world, that text will only resonate institutional advancement, "Dianne work and the more we talked about more forcefully with time." Adds has been a wealth of institutional life. I always appreciated his advice- Amber Igacia '15, "Heath's classes knowledge. She's done so much to as did many students." Adds Anne asked students to look at the world connect alumni back to the college, Hurley '15, "I bumped into Charlie and question accepted notions increase our outreach and COA's my second day at school. We talked like family, identity, legibility and alumni giving programs, and educate about home, interests, and Zagnut autochthony. Questions like: What students on the role of philanthropy. bars. His smile was just what I makes a family without blood? What To say she will be missed doesn't needed after the big move from creates a national identity outside of come close." Cerissa Desrosiers '00 home. Passing him between classes, nation states? How do you exist without sums up the many alumni responses I could always count on a smile and papers to identify you to a government? to her change: "Thanks for making chat. He's a very hard worker and This funny, kind, generous, sweet, the alumni experience friendly an incredibly genuine listener. I feel and ridiculously intelligent and personal, and keeping the privileged to have met him that day firecracker of a woman pushed me to community alive. You are an and to have him as a friend every day improve, sometimes beyond what I awesome human-you will be loved after." believed myself capable of." wherever you go!" 50 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Puranjot Kaur Khalsa '05 Nishanta Rajakaruna '94 Jean Sylvia Puranjot Kaur Khalsa '05, formerly Botanist Nishanta Rajakaruna '94 After seventeen years, Jean Sylvia Lauren Rupp, has moved on is now at California Polytechnic has retired. She began working from COA's wellness and campus State University after ten years at in the development office, then engagement coordinator to join the COA. Writes Darron Collins, "Anyone added purchasing, then moved to yoga-focused company Spirit Voyage. who knows Nishi knows his great the Blum Gallery, and later shifted Writes Sarah Luke, dean of student heart and mind-he's a tremendous to summer programs, eventually life, "During her five years here, scholar, teacher, and human being. becoming associate director of Puranjot brought a deep sense of Nishi will always be part of COA, summer programs, while continuing compassion and justice to her work no matter what university, bog, purchasing. Writes Jill Barlow-Kelly, in health and wellness, particularly woods, or field he finds himself in." internship and career services in the support and resources for Adds lan Medeiros '16, "Nishi sets director, "Jean has been one of students in need and Title IX issues. high expectations of his students, the most dedicated, supportive I miss her wonderful sense of humor knowing that reaching them would staff members, ready to help with and the insight she brought to our give us the confidence to pursue whatever needs to be done. A long- work together." Adds Joshua Tohn '16, even greater challenges. After four standing member of the internship "Puranjot brought an awesome years of working with him, I'm more committee, she took a personal level of energy and originality to life excited than ever before to follow interest in students and their well- here, offering us countless chances my dreams of a career in botany, being, and always offered positive to help design events for students, knowing that I have in Nishi a feedback on their development and making space for students to teacher, mentor, and friend who will through their internships. She's execute and orchestrate the events continue to support me and my work been a constant volunteer at local themselves, taking campus life to in the years to come." And Philip community dinners as hostess, chef, a new level." And Lucy Allosso '15 Kunhardt '11 writes, "In my senior storyteller, and dishwasher. Her love says, "A devoted care-taker of herself year, through multiple classes and of life, dedication to a job well done, and others, Puranjot enriches the several delicious botanical dinners, and ability to meet and greet all, will lives of all those she comes to know. Nishi helped me sharpen my focus be missed. She is a good soul!" Adds I am grateful for all the listening, and find my career path-I now have Marie Stivers, administrative and the thoughtful conversations we've a master's in forest science from academic services director, "Most shared, and the projects we've Yale and have conducted research in important, Jean is a great person to worked on." Brazil's Atlantic Forest." have as a friend." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 51 COMMENCE ENT 2016 77H COMMUNITY NOTES Over the summer, John Anderson, Society meetings in North Carolina. the William H. Drury, Jr. Chair in Also presenting original research Evolution, Ecology, and Natural were Caroline Brown '17, Mike History, along with Kate Shlepr '13, Cornish '19, Molly Finch '19, Audra deployed eight solar-powered GPS McTague '19, and Gemma Venuti tags on herring gulls nesting on '18. In April, the special edition of the Great Duck Island as part of COA's society's journal, Waterbirds, focusing initiative working with the Fund for on gull declines in the northwestern Maine Islands, tracking the birds' Atlantic, was published. It was locations and altitudes every 10 introduced by John and Kate and minutes. The results were presented co-edited by them, along with at the 40th anniversary Waterbird researchers from Canada and the 52 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE United Kingdom, and dedicated to During the summer, Dave Feldman, the late COA biologist Bill Drury. faculty member in physics and Cover art (pictured) was by Lindsey mathematics, taught Dynamical Nielsen '13. Systems and Chaos, his massive, open, online course (MOOC) to more Art faculty member Nancy Andrews than 1,600 students. His Fractals returned to Ohio's Wexner Center for and Scaling MOOC will be offered in the Arts Film and Video Residency the winter of 2017. It was recently Program in June to edit eight ten- ranked among the top-50 MOOCs minute episodes of her film The of all time by class-central.com. Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes to be released An interview with Bill Carpenter, Among mathematics MOOCs, that on the web this fall-keep an eye out! faculty member in literature and class is ranked #3 while Chaos and In September, the film's lead, Michole creative writing, is included in Dynamics is ranked #1. For more, Briana White, joined Nancy at the the 2016 book Salt in Their Veins: visit complexityexplorer.org. No Borders section of New York Conversations with coastal Mainers City's Film Week, connecting feature by Charlie Wing. In it, Bill reflects Word about the abundance cycle filmmakers and series creators with on the formation of COA. In June, framework developed by Jay industry members. Additionally, five Bill was part of a poetry reading at Friedlander, the Sharpe-McNally drawings and Nancy's previous film, the Northeast Harbor Library along Chair in Green and Socially On a Phantom Limb, are in the exhibit with Christian Barter, adjunct Responsible Business, has spread, Phantom Limb, on view through poetry faculty, and Kate Macko, thanks to articles in MIT Sloan December at the Victoria Gallery former assistant to President Darron Management Review, Stanford Social and Museum of the University of Collins '92. His poem "Rain" was read Innovation Review, Forbes, and Virgin, Liverpool, UK. This interactive portion over the radio by Stu Kestenbaum, along with presentations at Brown of the Liverpool Biennial 2016 Fringe Maine's poet laureate, as part University, a tweet by Sir Richard reflects on medicine, memory, and of the series, Poems from Here Branson, and Jay's inclusion in the the treatment process from personal (mainepublic.org/programs/poems- July issue of The Maine Magazine as experience of operations, illnesses, here). And his poem "The Husbands," one of 50 people shaping the state's and the physical and mental impact set to music by Tom Cipullo, will be future. Read about the model, which of memory on body. performed as part of Opera Bites blends sustainability and business at the Pickman Concert Hall of the strategy, and find more articles at In April, psychology faculty members Longy School of Music in Cambridge, abundancecycle.com. In addition, Rich Borden, the Rachel Carson MA, Nov. 11-13. Jay led a program for professors Chair in Human Ecology, and Ken at Hamilton College on embedding Hill, academic dean, were co-chairs In addition to launching COA's solutions to pressing issues in of the XXI International Conference Community Energy Center (see page teaching across the curriculum. of the Society for Human Ecology 9), Anna Demeo, director of energy (SHE), with the theme, Shaping a education and management, gave a Livable Future: Research-Education- speech to the Lamoine Conservation Practice. At the Santa Ana, CA Commission on "Rethinking Energy: conference, Rich chaired a session Opportunities and Challenges for on networking human ecology Communities and Individuals;" programs worldwide, conducted took students from COA and DC's a symposium on ecological values Trinity Washington University to and knowledge, and gave the Denmark to work with the Samsø presentation "Rewriting Nature's Energy Academy on the challenges of Story: Lessons from a Century community energy work; presented Along with Ken Hill, academic of Ecological Science." Rich had a at the AASHE conference in Maryland dean, Jay taught a program on the sabbatical in spring, during which he on the connection between Samsø, Japanese island of Osakikamijima visited Portugal's Universidade Nova COA, and Maine islands through the to help establish a new university de Lisboa, the 2018 SHE conference Fund for Maine Islands; and assisted based on the COA model. From site. While there he gave a talk in building a greenhouse at the there, Jay headed to Germany to co- on COA and the history of human Pemetic School of Southwest Harbor, lead the "Future of Sustainable Food ecology, and served as an outside along with Haleigh Paquette '17 and Business" with the German Society of reviewer for four PhD human ecology Gillian Welch '19. Human Ecology. dissertations. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 53 In April, Sarah Hall, the Anne In May, Doreen Stabinsky, faculty T. and Robert M. Bass Chair in member in global environmental Earth Systems and GeoSciences, politics, presented her analysis of accompanied lan Medeiros '16, the loss and damage provisions of Alba Mar Rodriguez Padilla '18, and the Paris climate agreement to a Gemma Venuti '18 to the Geological workshop on transitional justice Society of Maine meeting in Orono held by the international think tank where the students presented their Climate Strategies at the Center independent geoscience research for Development Research of the and all three were distinguished as University of Bonn in Germany. At outstanding presenters. In June, summer, welcomed their first child, the July Swedish political gathering Sarah conducted reconnaissance Eve Madeline into the world. The Almedalsveckan, she was the lead fieldwork in California's Sierra family is overjoyed and doing great! discussant on the panel, "Now that Nevada for the National Science we have the Paris Agreement on Foundation-funded experiential After six years, Suzanne Morse, climate change-what next?" Doreen class, Environmental Geoscience the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair ended her visiting professorship Field Methods, which she will lead in Botany, completed her six-year in climate change leadership at with colleagues from Mt. San Antonio fall appointment at the Norwegian Sweden's Uppsala University in College, University of San Francisco, University of Life Sciences, teaching August as a panelist at the opening and Yosemite National Park. agroecology with an emphasis on lecture by the incoming professor. participatory research. In winter, And in September she was an invited At the quadrennial 2016 Tokyo Suzanne brought six students to the speaker and resource person at Argumentation Conference in Organic Seed Alliance conference a workshop on agroecology and August, Jamie McKown, the James in Oregon. Upon their return, they climate sustainability in Brussels, Russell Wiggins Chair in Government presented seed-saving efforts to Belgium, hosted by an international and Polity, gave a talk on the role of COA's farms, "the ultimate in self- alliance of Catholic development debate in civic education reform in sufficiency," as long as the quality agencies. late 19th century American colleges remains, she says. Black bean and universities. While in Japan, seeds are being saved at the Peggy With partners from the Island Jamie spent some time researching Rockefeller Farms, along with squash Institute and Rural Aspirations and collaborating with colleagues seeds that are being pollinated by Project, Bonnie Tai worked with at the Meisei University Abraham hand to breed true. COA's educational studies program Lincoln collection, the largest such to organize and host the first collection outside the United States. In April, Steve Ressel, faculty summer teacher institute of the His chapter, "Renewing a Very Old member in biology and zoology, Sustainable Coastal Communities, Means of Education," will be included was awarded a three-year National Educators, Students, and Schools in the National Endowment for the Park Service scientific research (SuCCESS) project, funded by the Humanities-sponsored anthology, and collecting permit to study Fund for Maine Islands. Twenty- Speech and Debate as Civic Education, the ecology and physiology of four island and coastal teachers, published by Penn State University amphibians that breed in saline school leaders, and community Press this winter. water. Steve aims to involve at least partners gathered at COA to deepen three students each season in this and apply their understanding Barbara Meyers '90, COA head project. In June, Steve participated of experiential and place-based gardener, joined the statewide effort in the 2016 EcoLeague Retreat held education to develop curriculum that to bring back the chestnut tree last at COA. There, he and Katie Stumpf contributes to the social, economic, April by helping to plant 75 chestnut of Northland College were awarded and ecological sustainability of their seedlings and 75 chestnut seeds in a faculty development grant to fund communities. In August, as part of the Dixmont, ME community forest, curriculum development for a future furthering her studies in Buddhist creating the forest's new chestnut joint EcoLeague course in tropical literature, thought, and practice, research plot. biology. Initial planning took Steve Bonnie participated in an in-house to Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula and retreat at the Gampo Abbey in Cape Amanda Mogridge stepped into a Corcovado National Park in August Breton, Canada. new role this summer as the alumni to scout field sites and establish relations coordinator, and on Sept. relationships with local conservation 2 at 6:56 a.m., she and her husband, organizations. Alan, who married at COA last 54 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE IN MEMORIAM Polly Guth March 4, 1927-June 22, 2016 These youngsters need some dirt under their fingernails, Polly Guth would say in her glorious, eloquent voice, when I visited her. Polly helped COA build one of the strongest, most innovative programs in sustainable food systems in higher education. She understood the transformative power of farm work-and the linkages between food production and human health, economics, and ecological sustainability, helping us articulate the human ecological nature of farms. Polly also understood the power of cooperation, helping to inspire the college's partnership with the Island Institute. She loved islands and the resilience, creativity, and entrepreneurship of the people who made islands their year-round home. Her understanding of island communities was neither nostalgic nor quaint, she loved islands for their dynamism as much as for their beauty and iconoclasm. But I cannot think for one second about Polly without remembering her as a friend. Polly Guth took me under her proverbial wing in the summer of 2011 and became one of my dearest friends and greatest mentors. She got the biggest kick out of my frequent kayak pilgrimages from MDI to her home on Sutton Island. We would spend summer days talking about things great and small over coffee and eggs, looking out over the channel as sailboats raced back and forth. I miss Polly terribly, but the world is so much better because of her and the life she led, and that gives me tremendous hope. -Darron Collins '92, COA president Forrest Mars, Jr. August 16, 1931-July 26, 2016 Forrest Mars, Jr., grandson to Franklin Clarence Mars, founder of Mars, Inc., was a kind, resourceful, accomplished person. I first met him while guiding in the Antarctic. He had sponsored a trip aboard the M/S Silverseas Explorer to take a group of students and teachers from his alma mater, the Hotchkiss School, to South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula; I was one of the guides. I took a second journey with Forrest to the Southern Ocean, where he had considerable experience and knowledge; we had planned a third. Thanks to his philanthropy, the South Georgia Heritage Trust achieved its plan to entirely remove invasive Norwegian rats brought to the island by early whalers, devastating local species. Additionally, Antarctic Heritage Trust received a new building to support the museum staff at Point Lockroy on the Antarctic Peninsula. As a businessman, Forrest and his brother globalized and diversified Mars, Inc., bringing the company to developing markets in Russia and Africa. It is now widely regarded as one of the nation's most successful privately held companies. Forrest was passionate about the preservation of the ocean. With his wife, Jacomien, he helped COA rebuild much of the facilities at Mount Desert Rock's Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station after the 2009 devastation of Hurricane Bill. The new buildings are dedicated in their honor. Forrest and Jacomien have also supported the college's marine program. COA and I have lost a great friend. -Sean Todd, faculty member in marine mammal biology and Allied Whale director Robert Nagle January 22, 1948-April 15, 2016 Robert Nagle, Thorndike Library assistant and daytime weekend supervisor since 1998, died peacefully following heart bypass surgery. Kate Gordon, his partner of thirty-six years, and grown son, Sam, were by his side. Robert had been recovering at home when he suffered a setback that returned him to the hospital with additional heart and added kidney problems, complicated by diabetes. Robert cared deeply about the students with whom he worked. He also cared about the homeless, spending much of the past eight years working at the Emmaus Homeless Shelter in Ellsworth. Previously, Robert had been a library assistant at the Boston Public Library and the Fogler Library of the University of Maine. He served in the US Army as a radio teletype operator and radio-wire integrator from 1967 to 1970. He was also an avid Red Sox and Patriots fan, taking trips to Florida to watch the Red Sox practice. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Emmaus Homeless Shelter at 51 Main Street, Ellsworth, ME 04605. -Jane Hultberg, Thorndike Library director COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 55 Our Back Pages Five Miles in Seven Hours WIDE LOAD How the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History got its name A century ago, when Acadia National Park was Sieur de Monts National Monument and George B. Dorr its custodian, Dorr's office was at the corner of Bar Harbor's Main and Park streets. Eighty years on, the building remained, unused, right where the YMCA was about to expand. That's when Millard Dority, COA's director of campus planning, got a call. Want it? Millard knew it would be the perfect home for the natural history museum, then housed in Turrets. But while a museum building was a goal, fundraising hadn't begun, and the move had to be immediate. And the building was tall. Lifted onto a trailer, it would hit phone and power lines-including the hospital's-requiring numerous utility trucks to raise the lines. Costs mounted. Ah, but if they took the long way, via the Park Loop Road (closed for the season), there would be fewer lines, reducing the power and phone company's workload-not quite as costly. At six a.m. on October 30, 1996, escorted by the police on public roads, park maintenance in Acadia, and some half-dozen phone and power vehicles, Millard and crew set off. He had visited every homeowner along the route, saying, We believe we can get under your tree, but if we can't can / nip off an edge? No one objected, though the park asked that they shield the roof with a wooden prow-like covering to protect Acadia's trees from the building's protruding dormers. "It looked like a Mad Max vehicle, but we parted the tree canopy without damage," recalls Millard. Lumbering along at five miles an hour, the parade headed up Paradise Hill. One turn took a full hour. Still they were doing well. And then snow. "We're on Paradise Hill, we're getting ready to take the steep slope down Highbrook." Millard was speechless. They made it through the flurries, but in those days columns graced both sides of COA's entranceway. "We come down over Highbrook hill fine, we cross Route 3, and then we get between the columns at just the wrong angle, so we're sticking out onto the road." Millard and workstudy Amanda Robbins '98 had measured every low-hanging tree along the route and the width of every road, but not every possible angle they might take. Backing and straightening, backing and straightening, mover Kenny Jordan got the building on campus by one p.m. By six, the crew raised a ladder, entered, and there-in that empty, dusty, historic structure-uncorked the champagne. 56 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE HELIO Human Ecology Lab & Island Odyssey By Clement Moliner-Roy '19 After months of discussion with Japanese leaders, twenty-four students spent two weeks on the island of Osakikamijima planning a college modeled on COA. The impetus was the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. In its aftermath, some Japanese officials felt that the memorization and specialization of their educational system might have contributed to the string of bad decisions escalating the disaster. This led to an interest in interdisciplinary education featuring collaboration and critical thinking, hence the connection to COA. The following report was written by a participant in HELIO, the summer's Human Ecology Lab and Island Odyssey. We were a team of twenty-four students from around The students were incredible, each with a unique the world, the first cohort of a new Japanese school, dream for improving the world. Some owned non-profit hoping to spark an educational reform during a two- organizations fighting for food security, some worked for week experiment. There were eight students from Japan, business incubators, others were involved with various eight from COA, and eight from Ashoka schools around social businesses. Never had I felt so surrounded by the world. (Ashoka is a global organization supporting leaders. I learned so much from the others' stories; their innovative, practical ideas to solve social problems.) We energy charged me! were artists, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, all with One day, the vice-minister of education in Japan shared the common hope of making the world better. his educational vision with us. After his presentation I One of our main tasks was to generate ideas of what asked, What do you want to see from this school we are education would be like for future HELIO groups. Diving creating? His answer: that our education model would deep into the community of Osakikamijima, the small, change people's definition of happiness from just making gorgeous island in the Seto Sea where the school would money, just increasing the GDP. be located, we talked with locals, visited sites, split into At the end of the week, each group synthesized what focus groups, and generated ideas of what the ideal they learned to create a collaborative presentation to education model would be. stakeholders-including mayors and investors who might My group's theme was agriculture, so we visited support the future cohorts of this school-in hopes that lemon, avocado, and watermelon farmers-some certified it eventually becomes a university. The presentations organic, some not-to hear their views of the farming served as proposals. Our group suggested a farm near situation, the opportunities, and the education model that the school where students could practice agriculture would help create the next generation of farmers. Themes as well as the skills associated with running a farm, recurred, like the need for more hands-on education in from accounting to cooking. I thought most of the ideas farming and in the holistic range of skills that turn farms generated should be implemented in colleges around the into businesses. world. One day we realized that all the farmers we talked to We don't know what HELIO will become: Summer were growing similar crops, so we asked our organizer program? Gap-year school? The ultimate goal is an if we might speak with a fish farmer. In five minutes, the accredited university-or maybe a new-versity. organizer came back to us: Tomorrow for lunch you are The two-week program was so transformative, I could visiting a shrimp and oyster farmer. I wish every student list a hundred ways it changed my view of the future. I would have access to such flexibility and support in their really hope the program will sustain itself and transform research. others. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 57 COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609