OA THE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Volume 11 . Number 2. . Fall 2015 ISLANDS COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine Islands Letter from the President 3 News from Campus 4 ISLANDS 8 COA's Islands Mount Desert Rock 10 Poetry 15 COA's Islands Great Duck Island 16 Grubbing for Petrels 22 Islands Through Time 23 In Their Own Words Hiyasmin Saturay '15 24 Alex Borowicz '14 26 Alice Anderson '12 28 Alex Fletcher '07 29 Julia Rowe, MPhil '02 30 Barbara Meyers '89 31 The Tactile Power of Ellen Sylvarnes '83 32 Bonnie Tai's Island Return 36 New York's Forgotten Islands 38 Book Excerpt Ocean Country 41 Alumni & Community Notes 46 Our Back Pages The Problem of Bar Island 56 Commencement Student Perspective 57 Herring gulls on the north face of Mount Desert Rock. Photo by Izik Dery 1 COA The College of the Atlantic Magazine September 7, 2015, Bounty Cove, Maine Volume 11 Number 2 Fall 2015 Midnight. We are nestled in an island cove on Penobscot Bay. Having delivered Editorial the magazine pieces to Rebecca Woods, who makes beautiful sense out of Editor Donna Gold the disparate folders of text and photographs that form each issue, I have Editorial Guidance Heather Albert-Knopp '99 abandoned land for a last long voyage of the summer aboard our thirty-foot John Anderson Rich Borden sloop Northern Light, which we have now sailed for almost half of its fifty years. Darron Collins '92 But the stories I've spent a month reading, editing, rereading, these I can't Izik Dery '17 abandon. SLEEP OUTSIDE, at least once, Teresa Bompczyk '17 urges after a Jen Hughes Rob Levin summer spent on our research station at Mount Desert Rock. Her call charms, Sean Todd then haunts me. On our last night aboard, a light breeze whipping away the bugs, Editorial Consultant Bill Carpenter I forgo our warm cabin for a cockpit bench. Not far above the horizon is the Big Alumni Consultants Jill Barlow-Kelley Dianne Clendaniel Dipper, pointing to the North Star. Scorpio, I believe, is behind me and Cassiopeia to starboard. Our son is to starboard as well, engrossed in computer work on the Design bench across from me. Sleep outside-yes. But one cannot both watch the stars Art Director Rebecca Hope Woods and sleep. My eyes close. COA Administration One a.m. Daniel's computer clicks off. "The moon's about to rise, Mom," he President Darron Collins '92 says as he heads into the cabin. I hear him; I want to see the moonrise-but no, Academic Dean Kenneth Hill Associate Academic Deans Catherine Clinger I fall back asleep. Half an hour later the quarter moon is a hand's breadth above Stephen Ressel the eastern horizon. Waves lap against the shoreline. The tide turns, and with it Sean Todd our boat. Karen Waldron Administrative Dean Andrew Griffiths The depth and persistence of our students' perceptions no longer surprises Dean of Admission Heather Albert-Knopp 99 me, but it does still amaze me. Scientists absorb the wonder of the world Dean of Institutional Lynn Boulger as if they were artists; artists understand its underpinnings as if they were Advancement Dean of Student Life Sarah Luke scientists-just look at the chemical knowledge implicit within the paintings of Ellen Sylvarnes '83. Yes, human ecology spans the disciplines, but perhaps more COA Board of Trustees important, it trains the eye, encouraging, even demanding that we go deeper, Timothy Bass Jay McNally '84 Ronald E. Beard Philip S.J. Moriarty that we see and connect and then, quite possibly act, as Liz Cunningham '82 has Leslie C. Brewer Phyllis Anina Moriarty done through her book Ocean Country. Alyne Cistone Lili Pew We are a college on an island and a college of islands, given our two offshore Lindsay Davies Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Beth Gardiner Nadia Rosenthal research stations. But that in no way removes us from the world. As so many Amy Yeager Geier Marthann Samek of our students and alumni note throughout these pages, islands cultivate H. Winston Holt IV Henry L.P. Schmelzer connection. Philip B. Kunhardt III '77 Stephen Sullens Anthony Mazlish William N. Thorndike, Jr. Sleeping outside, however, does not necessarily cultivate sleep. I shift in my Suzanne Folds McCullagh Cody van Heerden, MPhil 16 sleeping bag and my eyes open, once, twice, many times. I am bathed in the Linda McGillicuddy silence of the stars, the moon, its beauty. Life Trustees Trustee Emeriti Perhaps even more than islands or the William G. Foulke, Jr. David Hackett Fischer ocean, darkness connects us; we might think Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. George B.E. Hambleton we are isolated, separate, alone, but night's John N. Kelly Elizabeth Hodder Susan Storey Lyman Sherry F. Huber mystery envelopes us all. William V.P. Newlin Helen Porter Yes, at least once in your life sleep John Reeves Cathy L. Ramsdell '78 outside, right under the stars. But don't Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. John Wilmerding expect to get all that much sleep! 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. Dam Gold COA is published biannually for the College of the Donna Gold, editor Atlantic community. Please send ideas, letters, and submissions (short stories, poetry, and revisits to human ecology essays) to: COA Magazine, College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 dgold@coa.edu Cover: Looking out from a door atop Mount Desert Rock Light. Photo by Izik Dery '17. WWW.COA.EDU Back Cover: One a.m. A view from Great Duck Island. Photo by Nina Duggan '18. MIX PRINTED WITH CERTIFIED Paper from responsible sources WIND FSC www.fsc.org FSC® C021556 POWER From the President Darron Collins '92, PhD COA arron Collins '92 and daughter piloting in Frenchman Bay. Photo by On a recent trip in Frenchman Bay It was during that year of 2011 Connecting an institution of on COA's floating classroom, the M/V that I was introduced to the Island higher education, a community Osprey, COA faculty member John Institute's Rob Snyder. We were development non-profit like Island Anderson told a cohort of first-year both new to our roles. We had both Institute, and the island communities students, "If I had my way, I wouldn't studied anthropology in graduate along the coast of Maine is an allow first-year students to come to school. We were alike in many innovative twist on education, on campus by car. They'd have to get ways, beyond both being close development, and on applied human dropped off with whatever gear they to bald. Most importantly, Rob's ecology. can carry from Stonington, on Deer passion for and understanding of In this edition of COA we celebrate Isle, board a boat, and be brought islands-thoughtful, pragmatic, and this young and still-developing to the college's pier. That way they'd respectful-aligned well with my partnership by highlighting our truly know where they were going own. He understood the dynamism community's commitment to, and to school. They'd understand where of island communities in Maine exploration of, islands-both in the we are and where they are-on an and wasn't interested in somehow tangible, geographic sense and in the island-with much more clarity." preserving islands and island more metaphysical sense. communities as quaint museum I look out my office window He wasn't kidding. specimens. Rob also understood toward the southern shores of COA, how we were excellent, how Bar Island in Frenchman Bay, the There are obvious logistical we were different, and how we could expedition site of the college's first, roadblocks to the idea, but I'd be work together. experimental summer in 1971. From lying if I said I hadn't spent a few With the help of the Partridge that time forward, islands became an wakeful nights trying to make it work Foundation and many hundreds of archetype of the college's collective in my head. We are on an island; the supporters throughout the state and unconscious. Now we know they will largest of 3,500 or so in the state. beyond, we launched The Fund for be an important part of our future. That island-nature of this region and Maine Islands, which brought COA All the more reason to take John's COA's specific location has played a and the Island Institute together to suggestion seriously. major role in shaping who we are as work with island communities to an institution and who seeks to join address their needs in the broad Happy reading, us. It certainly did for me as a first- categories of food and agriculture, year student back in 1988 and as a energy, education, and adaptation to first-year president in 2011. climate change. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 3 NEWS FROM CAMPUS JUNE AUGUST Naomi Klein addresses COA's 2015 Sierra Magazine rates COA as one of graduates: "Mine is not going to the nation's top-20 "green" schools. be your average commencement address, for the simple reason that Susan and David Rockefeller present DAWN, 6/26: PRESIDENT DARRON College of the Atlantic is not your Food For Thought, Food For Life, a COLLINS '92 FINISHES HIS HIKE, average college. Quite remarkably, film about those working to make #40FOR40 you knew you wanted to go not just positive changes to the nation's to an excellent college, but to an agricultural system. excellent socially and ecologically engaged college." SEPTEMBER A whopping 43% of alumni show how much they care for this "scrappy COA welcomes 105 students from 18 college on the beautiful coast of countries and 22 states to the class Maine" by donating to COA, inspiring of 2019. an alumna's $40,000 matching gift. At COA everything is New! At least "As universities and other online. From action to whales, COA's ALL AGES FLOCK TO FAMILY institutions grapple with ways to website, while still at coa.edu, is FUN DAY AT THE PEGGY fight climate change the College of totally changed. If nothing else, check ROCKEFELLER FARMS the Atlantic is nudging its students out the home page where at College to reach outside the school's of the Atlantic everything is blue, boundaries and start changing the musical, and urgent. real world," writes The New York Times in "A College in Maine That Tackles Rankings don't mean everything- Climate Change, One Class at a Time" but rising 17 points to #82 in the on Page 1 of the business section. US News & World Report rankings of national liberal arts colleges makes In appreciation for a $1.5 million many of us smile. We're also noted as endowment grant, COA's sustainable a "best value" with small class sizes enterprise accelerator becomes The and a low student-faculty ratio. RYAN HIGGINS 06 Diana Davis Spencer Hatchery. National Wildlife Federation cites TALKS ABOUT MAKING CHILDREN'S BOOKS COA as the only Maine college in JULY its The Campus Wild publication, highlighting work on wildlife Calling COA a "progressive protection and habitat restoration in educational experiment that higher education. broadens perspective," Princeton Review ranks COA in the top 10 for its professors, food, student OCTOBER satisfaction, and friendliness to LGBTQ, and top 20 for financial aid, Eight students present scientific beauty, and quality of life. research at the Schoodic Research Institute during the Acadia National The Ethel H. Blum Gallery's summer Park Science Symposium and DINING OUTA show, 2 Island Friends, 2 Points of Down East Research and Education BEECH HILL View, featuring painter Clay Kanzler Network's Convergence Conference. and sculptor Katie Bell is reviewed as Nina Duggan '18, Rachel Karesh '16, magical, intriguing, spiritual. Meghan Lyon '16, Audra McTague '19, Ella Samuel '16, Erickson Smith Climate Action singles out COA '15, Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil '16, and as one of 3 "Sustainable Colleges Amber Wolf '17, traveled to the Leading the Way in Sustainable venue to present their research. Education." Parents, alumni, and trustees Maine Magazine names Darron descend on COA during Columbus Collins '92 one of 50 "Bold Day weekend for meetings, meet- "A SENSE OF PLACE Visionaries Defining our State." ups, and just plain fun. AND PER AT THE BLUM FEATURES ALUMNI PHOTOGRAPHERS 4 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Nishanta Rajakaruna's colleague Alan Fryday examines lichens in South Africa, where the National Geographic-funded team will be working come winter. Photo by Stefan Siebert. NATIONAL GEO funds Nishi Nishanta Rajakaruna '94, faculty member in botany, need to thrive-particularly the rock and soil chemistry has received a highly competitive National Geographic upon which they grow, along with the temperature and Society grant to conduct lichen diversity research in rainfall. South Africa. He'll be working with five other scholars: "Our efforts to investigate the diversity and ecology COA's lan Medeiros '16 and Nathaniel Pope '07, along with of lichens-an under-studied group of organisms-in lichenologist Alan Fryday of Michigan State, and botanist a biodiversity hotspot like South Africa will greatly Stefan Siebert and geologist Ricart Boneschans, both from contribute to our understanding of lichen diversity in that North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. country," says Nishi. Lichens are a special kind of creature-they may In 2014, Nishi was given a three-year visiting research seem to be a plant, but really they're a partnership professorship at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, North- between fungi and algae. They're also widely used for West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. This grant, environmental monitoring, and South Africa has an from National Geographic's Committee for Research and extraordinary range of them. By studying lichens in South Exploration, will build research capacity in South Africa, Africa, Nishi hopes to learn what distinct species may one of the goals of his time at the university. BIRDERS flock to COA Birders from around the world gathered at College of wading bird world and to explore the cutting edge of this the Atlantic this August during the annual meeting of the branch of science in t-shirts and flip-flops rather than international Waterbird Society, hosted by the college. suits and ties." They discussed topics that ranged from loon ecology to The 179 attendees hailed from six countries and the impact of offshore wind turbines on bird populations. thirty-five states and provinces. Among them were COA "The Waterbird Society is one of the leading students Rachel Karesh '16 and Meaghan Lyon '16, who international societies of scientists studying everything presented papers, as did both John and Kate. from sandpipers to pelicans and back again," said John But the highlight of the meeting was getting offshore. Anderson, faculty member in ecology and natural history, An excursion aboard the Bar Harbor Whale Watch's who was the conference on-site organizer along with Kate Friendship V, expertly narrated by Zach Klyver ('90), Shlepr '13. "This was a chance to rub shoulders and have brought the scientists up close and personal with pelagic a beer with some of the all-time greats of the seabird and birds, even a shark. COA indicates non-degree alumni by a parenthesis around their year. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 5 NEWS ORIGIN STORY The Bar Island Swim Left: The first Bar Island Swim participants, in 1990 (left to right): Ken Cline, Erin Marken '92, Jaime Torres '97, Kurt Jacobson '90, Wendy Doherty '91. Right: In 2015, the 138 Bar Island Swim participants wade into the frigid water from the Bar Island sand bar. It was the fall of 1990 and COA was unveiling a beautiful monitors ready to pull out swimmers at a second's notice, new pier. But not everyone was a fan. The school barely there's an hour-long, mandatory meeting beforehand, had any boats to speak of at the time. What was the point and there's the simple decree that all you have to do is of building such an expensive pier? jump in the water to be considered one of the swimmers. "Students were grousing about us spending money This, says Ken, is meant to prevent people from pushing on the pier," Ken Cline, faculty member in environmental too far past their limits. law and policy, remembers. On a fairly chilly day he was "I want people to feel comfortable asking for help. I talking with a few of his students after class, when the don't want anyone to feel like they have to go all the way if contentious subject of the pier came up followed by the they can't." usual complaints. The swim has changed over the years. As the crowd "One of the students said, 'Well, if nothing else, it'd be grew, the dock became too small to launch and keep a good place to go swimming'. So a couple of us decided to track of the swimmers. For a few years, a boat carried jump off the pier. I don't know who made the suggestion, swimmers to just off Bar Island and they jumped from but someone said we should all swim out to Bar Island. So there, swimming back. Then the crowd grew too large that's what we did," continues Ken. for the available boats. Swimmers now gather at the As Ken and four students walked down to the dock, he Bar Island sand bar, wade into the water, and head for recalls, "another student got caught up with the energy the COA dock. It might not be as dramatic a start, but and jumped in, in her underwear." the swim still represents a rite of passage, one that is The next year the group swelled to fifteen. The challenging, fun, and singular. numbers kept increasing. In 2015, 138 students, staff, "I love the swim," says Ken. "I think it epitomizes some faculty, and alumni turned out for the frigid traverse. of what we want our students to do with their education. People have shown up painted blue, in costume, with We want them to try something that they haven't inflatable animals in tow, and in their birthday suits. done before that might be a little bit scary, a little bit There are concerns. Frenchman Bay is quite cold and uncomfortable. I think we draw students who are willing not everyone is a skilled swimmer. COA works to keep to take those sorts of risks and try new things. And it does the swim safe. Numerous boats line the passage with give them a sense of accomplishment." - -Rob Levin 6 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE NEWS DECEMBER IN PARIS December marks a pivotal time in and Augustin will be joined by fifteen classmates who have been participating climate change negotiations, as in Doreen Stabinsky's course Practicing Climate Politics. Doreen is COA's nations are expected to finalize faculty member in global environmental politics, agricultural policy, and a new agreement on actions to international studies, and currently holds the Zennström Visiting Professorship address the problem. They will in Climate Change Leadership at Sweden's Uppsala University. conclude the discussion in Paris at The class enables students to become conversant in the language and the 21st Conference of the Parties concerns under discussion-studying the negotiation processes, the positions to the United Nations Framework of various countries and country groupings, and the ways to engage in the Convention on Climate Change. official processes to press for a stronger outcome. Thanks to such intensive Among those gathering in Paris work, the COA delegation often takes a leadership role among the international will be COA musicians Angela youth at the meetings. Valenzuela '17 and Augustin Martz This will be the second UNFCCC for Sara Velander '17. She has been '17 of the group Agua Libre-free following issues of forests and agriculture in the negotiations, and will focus water. They are spending the fall her work in Paris on understanding how the process can deliver adequate term on an artistic residency, support for adaptation efforts of vulnerable communities. Sara also expects creating music to promote climate to be involved outside the negotiations, where youth and others meet, make action. connections, and build strategies. The language of international While Sara would like to see true change, she is not nearly so optimistic. negotiations can be dense and the "We have lost some hope in what countries can achieve under this convention challenges of addressing climate at this point in time," she says, speaking also for Earth in Brackets, COA's change in fair and just ways student climate change group. "We believe that Paris is a stepping stone seemingly intractable. Angela and for mass civil society mobilizations where alliances will be built and cross- Augustin are working to transform community organizing networks can be established. That's why we are calling the complicated texts and issues of it the Road Through Paris, rather than Road to Paris." climate justice "into songs that can reach people and strengthen the Students are blogging on earthinbrackets.org; Angela and Augustin can be found at climate justice movement." agualibre.net. Says Angela, "We believe that art is a force that empowers and connects humans and life on Earth. Music can be the wind that sets into movement the necessary cultural and societal changes in times of crisis. We want to use this power to create a space of unity that allows for true dialogue to happen and real solutions to flourish." Through songs like "El Hombre de Papel" (Paper Man) and "El Ultimo Glaciar" (The Last Glacier), the pair discuss the problematic aspects of climate change while offering a vision for a different kind of world. "El Ultimo Glaciar" ends with words of hope: "May our teardrops become a wide river that unites our veins, that irrigates the possibility of imagining, of rising up for the infinite worlds As Angela Valenzuela '17 and Augustin Martz '17 perform at a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change gathering, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of that rise up and sprout, spread out." the UNFCCC, watches intently. Says photographer Omer Shamir '16, "They became the As the meetings begin, Angela superstars of the conference." COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 7 ISLANDS Kate Shlepr '13 Sometimes I wander until I find a nice spot outdoors, and then I sit. I close my eyes and think or dream, listen to the sounds around me, and focus on the blankness of my eyelids-so that when I open my eyes | am swept away by just how vibrant the land is. Here, on a wharf in the town of Westport, on Nova Scotia's Brier Island, bright sun skitters over a swift-moving passage between this island and the mainland, while the white of two churches and a fish plant stands stark against green leaves. Our research team worked hard over the last three days, pressing through prickly rose, raspberries, and mud in order to keep the straight transect lines necessary to complete a gull nest census. I was exhausted at the end of it, but I have since showered and prepared dinner, and now I find that I am simply happy. Tonight we will use the data we collected to generate a map of gull nest densities. We hope this will tell us more about the factors influencing the reproductive success of the gulls we monitored throughout the breeding season. We hope, too, that the map will help the Canadian Wildlife Service managers carrying out a wetlands restoration project on this island; they have observed how gull guano alters the soil chemistry where the birds nest, making it likelier that roadside weeds will outcompete rarer bog plants. Closing out my fifth summer of seabird research, I have come to accept that there is only so much running away you can do on a small chunk of rock, say one mile long and one-quarter mile wide, like COA's Great Duck Island. Add a limited residential population and what is often non-existent Internet and phone service, and you find that you really are on a little island. This kind of space to think and see without distraction is uncommon in the modern world, and it is part of what makes doing research on islands unique. There is a change of pace that comes with fieldwork-early mornings and lots of exercise, family-style meals born partly out of practicality for a small crew with a limited food supply and partly out of desire to enjoy the company of others after hours of sun and wind. Islands themselves have a unique ecology, one seemingly simple enough to fully observe, understand, explain. And there is a felt history in island townships carried in old schoolhouse photographs and known family names, or by scars in the earth where granite quarries once prospered. These qualities, shaped by the physical isolation of islands, provide settings for experiences not found anywhere else. It was curiosity about field biology that led me to islands as a COA undergrad; I now appreciate how few other colleges can boast two thriving island research stations. Like many students on their first venture to Mount Desert Rock or Great Duck Island, I had little idea of what to expect but was nevertheless fully involved from the moment I stepped onto the boat. These days my island hopping is concentrated a bit further downeast, but I am still pulled toward Great Duck where my eyes were opened to a discovering and wondering that will carry me through this lifetime. Kate Shlepr '13 is working on her master's in biology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. 8 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE View of Mount Desert Island from the Edward McC. Blair Research Station on / Photog COA'S ISLANDS Mount Desert Rock Great Duck Island Twenty-one miles out to sea, battered by waves, coursed by wind night and day, lies isolated Mount Desert Rock. On it stands Mount Desert Light and the several outbuildings that comprise the Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station. Each low tide, hundreds of seals haul out on the bare ledges, the highest of which rises only seventeen feet above sea level. Above, gulls circle and cry without end, while every thirty seconds the foghorn moans. A few plants tenuously grow on the three-and-a-half-acre island, but nary a tree. On the nation's entire east coast there is no lighthouse more exposed, none further out to sea. In 1972, Steve Katona, COA's founding biology faculty member and former president, took a boatful of students out to the Rock and discovered-much to most everyone's surprise at the time-that whales were diving near the island. Soon the Rock (or MDR) became a platform for scientists from Allied Whale, COA's marine mammal research program, also founded by Steve Katona. In 1998, the college acquired MDR from the Coast Guard. Each summer as many as six hundred seals, upwards of four hundred herring and black-backed gulls, and three dozen eiders can be seen daily. Humpback, finback, and even northern right whales are lured to the region by the upwellings of deeper, colder, Students come to the island to conduct research and nutrient-rich waters. Joining them are harbor porpoises collect ecological data. Each day they rotate a watch and common and white-sided dolphins. Add to that from the tower from 0600 to 1800, an hour on, maybe population COA students and alumni researchers, an hour-and-a-half off, searching for whales and along with scientists from such institutions as Woods porpoises, noting fishing boats and tankers. At the Hole Oceanographic Institute and the National height of each tide and at its ebb, counts of the seal Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, and you and bird populations are also taken. have a busy Rock. In the late summer of 2015, eighteen COA students lived on MDR for a two-week field In 2014, Grace Shears '17 and Teresa Bompczyk '17 studies class in marine mammal biology. Before the were among ten students conducting research on students arrived, and after, a number of carpenters the Rock. Grace was studying seal morbidity and worked to repair the damage wreaked on the buildings mortality, characterizing wound types and severity. by Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Nemo. The repairs Teresa analyzed planktonic communities to identify are funded by a grant from the Mars family. the zooplankton found in different locales, depths, and seasons. She gathered the plankton by dragging For faculty member Sean Todd, who oversees the a large, fine-meshed net behind one of the dinghies to Blair Research Station, "the Rock is a stepping stone collect water samples-a process known as a plankton to the marine environment. We look out from our tow-then viewed the results under a microscope. island to the waters that surround us. Life on both There is no better way to display the excitement and of COA's island research stations-the Rock and Great dedication of these young scientists than by excerpting Duck Island-requires independence, initiative, and a few pages from their entries to the daily log.-DG self-reliance." And that, adds Sean, echoed by John Anderson, who runs research on Great Duck, is an Looking southward from the Mount Desert Rock research station. essential part of the learning. Photographs by Izik Dery '17. 10 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE shop.vac Leaving Frenchman Bay's Porcupine Islands behind as COA's M/V Osprey heads to Mount Desert Rock. FIRST GRACE WRITES: July 26, 2014, Saturday So we got an article today about great white sharks in New Brunswick and there was a picture of their fins. We realized the fins Sophie [Cox, a summer researcher from the United Kingdom] and I saw are definitely not basking sharks, more likely great whites, not to mention the mysterious splashes we've been seeing lately. Chris [Tremblay '03, station manager] also said they saw a "basking shark" fin the other day, but he says he's suspicious it may have been a great white. I want to see one so badly! ITT [COA's summer high school session, Islands Through Time, see page 23] is coming Wednesday, and that reminds me, Sean brought out the disentanglement gear, in case we get any more entangled seals (hopefully not, but it'll be really great to have out here). Teresa and I went swimming yesterday and we found out today from the CTD [an instrument that measures the ocean's temperature, depth, and salinity] that the water is still just 50 degrees F. Haha. So we've been swimming in 50 degree water with potentially large great whites, huzzah. Well, it's been a long day.-GS July 27, Sunday Fairly uneventful day. Chris has us practicing landings in the cove and that was pretty fun. We had one whale earlier today, but none since then. I've been working on the list of MDR birds I promised Matt [Messina '16]; I've got twenty-three species so far. Today I've seen a puffin, some double-crested cormorants, semi- palmated sandpipers, spotted sandpipers, gannets (juvenile and adult), and the first common terns of the season! Very exciting. I really can't wait to see a humpback; the blows we saw today looked suspicious: not quite fin whale blows, but no flukes so we weren't sure. It was fairly foggy so we figure they were fin whale blows distorted by fog. (We were sure they weren't humpbacks, not sure if they were fins.)-GS COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 11 July 31, Thursday Today was hectic, but fun. It was quite foggy this morning and we were limited in our activities, though it cleared up later on. I helped Porcia [Manandhar '17] band chicks and took groups of ITT kids to see seals. We launched Delphis [one of MDR's dedicated inflatable boats] and set the drift buoy [to measure currents by drifting in them as the position is logged via GPS] while Sophie, Megan [Comey '17], and Chris did a plankton tow. Tomorrow will be busy; we're getting the second group of ITT kids. Chris is also taking a couple days off. Greenlight Academy [a Connecticut- based high school field camp] is coming out Monday and leaving Friday. Sadly, I'm leaving with them. To end this entry on a good note, we saw fin whales super close to the island today! Porcia had never seen a whale; it was exciting.-Cheers, GS August 1, Friday Sophie and Porcia saw a pod of white- sided dolphins this morning, which was pretty cool; they saw a large group later on the whale watch. Toby [Stephenson '98, COA's boat captain] came a little after lunch and we launched Sali [a buoy equipped with hydrophone and recorder to document underwater sounds. The names of MDR craft are based on the Latin terms for marine mammals: Sali is short for Balaenoptera physalus, the fin whale; Delphinus delphis is the common dolphin.] Chris showed us how to charge the batteries for the recorder. Since Chris will be gone for two days, we will be going out tomorrow to change the batteries and listen for whales. It's going to be exciting because this evening we saw two fin whales and a huge pod of dolphins feeding right near the buoy! I cried when I saw the fin whales lunge feeding, you could even see the bait ball! [A tight spherical ball that small fish form in an attempt to evade predators.] And we saw so many shearwaters and gulls. Well, I've got to go help with the fire for marshmallows Top to bottom: Chris Tremblay '03, station manager, awaits supplies for the Rock with Khristian Mendez '15 in the foreground; looking east into fog from the MDR research and enter some data.-(newly dubbed) station; a seal basks on the rocks of Mount Desert Rock. Capt. Shearwater. 12 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Sophie Cox, a visiting undergraduate from England, surveys the wildlife around Mount Desert Rock through the high-powered binoculars known as "Big Eyes." Behind her on the laptop is Elizabeth Beato, a summer research assistant with Allied Whale. The surveys are conducted in conjunction with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. August 2, Saturday We just had an amazing sunset and a good day. We went out and changed the batteries on Sali and saw lots of gannets, one of them actually made a sound. I've never heard a gannet before, it was neat. Due to a knee injury, I didn't do too many watches today, but I did go up the lighthouse stairs this morning with some ITT students to look at two fin whales. Others saw a basking shark and a minke.-Cheers, Shearwater AND NOW TERESA TAKES OVER: August 23, Saturday We unfortunately have witnessed two incidents of intentional homicide and cannibalism here on Mount Desert Rock it was Megan. She's gone crazy. Just kidding! It was just an evil black-backed gull attacking herring gull chicks, one yesterday and today. I think it's too fat and lazy to go scavenge for other food. A dead seal is currently swashing back and forth in the cove can't tell what kind because it's been nibbled on and is missing a face. I'm actually really freaked out by it. Abby [St. Onge '17] cooked a delicious meal of spaghetti and garlic bread (thank you Abby) last night. Hopefully tonight we can cook kabobs over a nice, non-toxic fire, as Colleen [Holtan '17] and I rescued some driftwood from the western cove yesterday evening. Other than that it's been pretty quiet out here. There was a "humpy" in the NE earlier today, but our whale friends haven't been around for the most part.-Teresa Bompczyk COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 13 August 26, Tuesday Lots of excitement this morning. There were two fin whales (on the "small" side) hanging around not too far off shore, so Chris allowed Sophie, Anastasia [Czarnecki '18], and myself to ride out in Delphis with him to get a closer view. It was amazing to see whales that close in such a small boat definitely gave me a better perspective on their size. [Sean notes that all activities close to whales are strictly regulated; students and staff comply with the minimum approach distances.] Attempted to collect plankton data but only succeeded in getting four horizontal tows, one vertical, and two CTD casts due to the tide. However, Megan and I were able to drive Delphis. Steering a boat is so different from a car-you always have to be checking and correcting your heading. I get distracted too easily on a boat. Tried fishing yesterday off the northern side with no bait and an unimpressive lure. I was surprised to catch five fish-three pollock and two rusty orange fish I can't identify. It was so different from freshwater fishing, especially in Buffalo, New York. Usually I go to this super- disgusting part of the Niagara River by my old house, throw a worm on the hook and wait at least a half hour before anything even bites. I'm so happy I was able to fish; it brings back great memories. We were seeing a seal with some gear or line caught around its neck, but it hasn't been spotted for a while. Grace has permission from Sean and Rosie Seton [COA's marine mammal stranding coordinator] to save it (if possible) next time it hauls out. Grace, Megan, and I went swimming in the cove this afternoon to wash up. We haven't showered since we got here. It's actually not too bad, except the perpetual guano on my clothes. I swear, they remember me from when I banded their chicks and are exacting revenge with air A black-backed gull on the research station's chimney. raids of excrement. Or it could be that I've been sleeping on guano-covered rocks for a few nights. August 29, Friday I received warnings about the cold, the wet, and the I'm leaving for the season today, along with Colleen, outhouse bucket before coming out here. I was also Scott, and Dan [DenDanto '91]. The summer went by so warned of the island's beauty, and how I'll never want to quickly and I've had so much fun and learned a lot. Mount come off. But no one told me about the night here the Desert Rock is probably the most beautiful, interesting, night on MDR is by far the most captivating and awe- inspiring place I've ever been, and I would be honored inspiring aspect of this place. I honestly don't understand and so appreciative if I were able to come back. There's how people can even stand to sleep inside on a warm, a lot of projects and data waiting to be started and clear night. collected hopefully next summer that will happen! Until There's the sound of real, live ocean waves to lull you then.-TB to sleep, a gentle salty breeze, the light from the tower slowly revolving around in the cove there's a dazzling P.S. display of bioluminescence, fishing boat lights reflecting off the water in the distance, and the stars. I've never SLEEP OUTSIDE, at least once. You are so conveniently been so truly amazed in my life. Billions of distant stars resting beneath one of the most clear, unpolluted (from are visible here it's so humbling. Literally, if there's light), beautiful night skies. Take advantage of it! Don't let a heaven, mine would be an unceasing night on this the gulls flying at night trick you into thinking they're huge island.-TB meteors 14 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE POETRY NO MAN IS AN ISLAND IS A WOMAN CAROLINA MOON Eloise Schultz '16 Arlo Cristofaro-Hark '17 Everything went to the wind last night; Your Mother, the ocean grabbing at what it could, my Grandmother constellation the island howling in reply. soft skin translucent veins as if This morning's calm, shy light on water. No sign of storm while she lay there I could see straight into her heart but what the waves threw up. Sophie ventures out like with a bucket and returns like with a dead monkfish like draped over her forearm, fins splayed like like between her fingers. She pries open its mouth to reveal a pale, fleshy tongue behind rows of needle teeth. like like Its slime skin has lost its luster, dulled by sun and heat. Three hundred Sixty five For most out here, the sea is home: Crossword puzzles danger comes when we wash Pool cues ashore, where soft meets hard. She sang, Carolina moon, But to the saw-whet owl seeking keep shining refuge in the generator shed, the island sings: survival. I bet you that she is still up there somewhere To the tern darting through the air, white wings moving like scissor blades, she calls come: here, no harm will come to you. And to the downy chick scurrying across the rocks, small of its neck gouged to a bloody mess by beak and talon, she says the same. This is not to suggest that the island intends to deceive; rather, she welcomes everyone with the same enthusiasm, then watches them die with the same indifference. The island understands what is expected of her: to receive. But she is necessarily her own self. All her life, she has been practicing separation; think how long she has strained to hold herself above the waves. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 15 COA'S ISLANDS Mount Desert Rock Great Duck Island There's an almost eerie quiet to an offshore island. Walk just a few steps inland from gull cries and wave surges and you can hear the flight of insects within the silence. Spend time and the island begins to reveal itself: which bird nests where, what rocks are stable, how field merges into forest. Eventually, it almost seems possible to sense with the eye of a gull or guillemot. So it is with COA's "ducklings," the students who spend the seabird breeding season on the narrow, mile- long Great Duck Island some eighteen miles south of campus. Here the nocturnal Leach's storm petrel and plump black guillemot flock to breed each summer-more here than to any other known locale in the eastern US. Herring and black-backed gulls along with eiders also nest on the island, joined recently by the Atlantic puffin. In 1998, COA acquired twelve acres of Great Duck, sharing the rest of the island with the Nature Conservancy, the State of Maine, and a summer resident. Each summer, guided by biology faculty member John Anderson, students at the island's Alice Eno Field Research Station begin the day with a climb to the lighthouse tower to count and record every visible living creature. Later the thirty-five representative herring and black-backed gull nests selected at the beginning of the season are monitored. Once the chicks have hatched from these nests they are weighed and measured daily: "chick check." Tiny metal and plastic bands are placed around the legs of these chicks-and as many other birds as possible-to better observe their individual destinies. The day ends with a communal dinner and the nightly log. Every week a careful sweep of the island is made to count all nests. Beyond recording daily findings, most students do their own field research. Some begin the summer with a well-planned project; others wait to survey the island upon arrival, finding their subject in the questions that arise. "They come up with a project themselves. We're giving them the chance to experience graduate school early on," says John. Through observation, field research, and archival searches, students are amassing a thorough ecology of this one small island-zoological, botanical, geologic, human, and historical. And dramatic changes have been observed- an increase in eagles, major movements of gulls, the introduction of puffins. At 0600 on June 8, 2015, this year's crew-Brenna Castro-Thews '18, Nina Duggan '18, Nadia Harerimana '18, Rachel Karesh '16, Meaghan Lyon '16, Audra McTague '19, and Ite Sullivan 18-boarded COA's M/V Osprey and departed into a misty sunrise for Great Duck Island. Over the weeks, as the students watched petrel, gull, guillemot, and puffin emerge from egg to nestling to fledgling, as they observed eagles foraging the very chicks they had cradled in their hands, they came to a new understanding of place, themselves, each other, and the greater cycle of life. The following excerpts, taken from the group log during each of the seven weeks of the 2015 Great Duck Island season, reveal the students' remarkable commitment to the human ecology of an island.-DG Fog rolling in partially obscures the lighthouse on Great Duck Island, but doesn't touch the flagpole. Photographs by Nina Duggan '18, except as noted. 16 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Meaghan Lyon '16 holds a black guillemot chick during "chick check. June 12, 2015 Friday The day dawned cold and a little windy. John woke us up at 0640 as usual. Nina saw savanna sparrow chicks. Audra worked on her project, mapping her nests and recording the eggs and chicks. Brenna found something amazing: herring gulls dove on her much more than black-backed gulls as she was sitting next to the nests. After dinner Ite, Brenna, and Rachel went out in the drizzle and a petrel flew into them. They held it and were very happy. June 18, Thursday ISLAND COUNT DAY! The day dawned slightly overcast and warm with lovely mirages to the east. After a basic tower count we set off round the island. Audra [who was looking at herring and black-backed gull vocalizations] finally got a recording of the gulls' nest switch call. [Both male and female gulls take turns feeding and tending their young. As one returns from offshore, it announces its arrival to the other.] Rachel [who was using game cameras to determine the petrel's pattern of return to their deep, inland burrows] set up three game cams around Atlantis [near the boathouse, see page 18] to try to see petrels and found a burrow with three adults in it. Meaghan [who was researching her senior project on guillemot nest site selection and survival] found eight guillemot nests between Atlantis and the boat house. Ite learned to tie various knots and looked at algae. Nadia saw two fights between herring gulls. Audra banded her first chick by herself! Brenna and Nina went on a plant phenology walk and brought back lots of samples as well as photographs. NB: Roses up to the north end of the island are flowering. Irises are also flowering, as are the ones in our eastern meadow! But eastern meadow is only just flowering while those at north end are fully open. June 19, Friday ALCID DAY-Nineteen razorbills seen by John at tower count this morning The day dawned drizzly and dark. The ducklings slowly trickled downstairs for breakfast. John made us French toast with homemade bread. Yum! After breakfast everyone sat around writing notes and going through journals. Brenna started to identify plants and Nina [who was looking at the interaction between gulls and eiders] went through eider photos. The cloudy weather blew over and blue sky and sunshine started peeking out at around 1100. Nina and John spent time in the tower. At 1247 an adult peregrine falcon took an adult guillemot right out of the air just left of the boat shed. It eventually dropped it somewhere around Puffin Point after being pursued through the colony by gulls. The harbor seal kept porpoising up, seen last at 1419. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 17 June 24, Wednesday private hell & ofsky's Patience's chick [a late-nesting gull whose nest was next to the lighthouse tower steps] is moving within its wet shell about to be a freshly hatched chick. The adults are becoming slightly more aggressive stood now and it'll be interesting to see where their territory/range expands to. Nina had been searching for cabin depsycho common eider from the tower all morning: seventeen common eider adults and nine chicks. In airstrip the afternoon she did not find any common eider, but she did find wren chicks and a mountain ash. Slough From 1300 to 1500 Rachel and Audra despond banded gulls on the east berm totaling forty-one chicks: thirty-six herring gulls and five great black- backed gulls. Meaghan trailed along disods searching for black guillemot nests and brought her total island nest count to fifty-one nests! Rachel checked on her petrel cameras after the banding fest. By the end of the most beautiful day thus far Patience's chick successfully hatched from its shell, fluffy and chirping for Mum. blondie June 30, Tuesday sun The day dawned with a beautiful fog surrounding our tower. It lifted by W. 0740 and we were all ready to play in the warm sunshine. Meaghan sat in the tower from 0800 to 1030 Grand Canyon watching the feeding rate of the black guillemot along the west berm. Most chicks were found alive and my well, but there was one dead. "Late N Gull" has three chicks, John's favorite black-backed chick is fat and sassy, and everyone is happily surprised by the lack of dead chicks after our rainy silver day. An adult bald eagle came from Puffin the north, diving down on a group keeper's death of five common eider chicks and one adult female. The eiders all dove simultaneously just escaping the grasp of the eagle. The eagle then lighthouse attempted it a second time, but the eiders escaped into the depths of the ocean yet again. John is full of songs Great Duck Island, by Robin Owings '13. today by a variety of artists and time 18 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Clockwise from top left: a black guillemot egg; adult herring gull; Audra Novine McTague '19 assists Bik Wheeler '09, MPhil '16 in banding a great black-backed chick. Photo by John Anderson. Sunlight reflecting off the ocean illuminates the undersides of clouds hovering near Great Duck Island. At such moments, students on the island would abandon their work to admire the sky. periods. A great black-backed gull stalked the chick under the tree by the path but had no success. Meaghan saw the chick later in the evening with the parent! Black guillemots and gulls were copulating on the rocks which seems late in the season, but they may be re-laying. [When eggs are lost to weather or predation, birds sometimes attempt replacement clutches.] A crow was seen carrying a chick (herring gull) from the east colony in the afternoon. Also an eagle (mature bald) came into the colony twice, once in the morning and once in the evening, but nothing was taken. N.B. The Indian pipes are coming up! July 2, Thursday EAGLE HELL DAY Meaghan checked on her chick check nests at Point Colony and found three wet chicks! Rachel collected her SD chips but only got pictures of rabbits. John, Ite, and Brenna discussed the Civil War during tower watch. Between 1452 and 1828 we had eight separate eagle attacks! One eagle got an adult herring gull on one of the later attacks. John made us enchiladas and beans and rice for dinner and we talked about suicide bombers. Eagle attacked again after dinner! July 9, Tuesday PUFFINS ON POINT (Nesting) Meaghan spotted two great blue herons as well as two juvenile and one adult bald eagles. We got our first confirmed sighting of a puffin with a fish in its beak, which means chicks! July 15, Wednesday The day did not dawn. Everything was damp and layered in thick fog. The air began to warm by 1200 and the fog cleared a bit, but the water was still not visible. Meaghan spent time painting, Audra wrote and studied constellations, and all the while the gulls remained relatively quiet, uninterrupted by eagles. 20 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE July 18, Saturday The day dawned with cool, damp air and we felt rain driplets during tower count. The air remained cold and the wind was strong out of the southwest, which occasionally brought in some rain. Tower watch was cold but doable. We saw several flying chicks, razorbills, Atlantic puffins, double-crested cormorants, and the usual. Point Colony smelled like death (rotting chicks). Meaghan found dead chicks in nest eight and nine. She also found four new nests and there are most likely more because there were over 136 individuals on the water from Blondie Bay to north of the point. Rachel went petreling and found a chick in a burrow along the road and it was tiny tiny! The adult was in the nest too. Around 1426 a juvenile eagle went into the west field and grabbed a chick. It was a large chick with flight feathers. We saw it being eaten up the field along the path to Blondie Bay. It was a day for walking and adventuring in the forest and updating data. Nina made a beautiful and delicious curry and dahl for dinner and we shared stories of our past. July 23, Thursday ISLAND COUNT-(Rachel, Meaghan, and John's season comes to an end. ITT starts soon.) The day dawned finally clear! The days of fog are over. During island count Meaghan saw a black guillemot go into an unmarked crevice along the slough, which is so weird. Those rocks roll/are very unstable and have very limited spaces for nests, but the individual was carrying a fish (ground gunnel). Just before noon, Nina, Meaghan, and John saw two mature bald eagles fly over the east berm and slowly rise above the tower. Then they latched their talons together and dove for the colony spiraling downward as the colony rose like a cloud in protest. No more babies they called with traumatic alert calls. The eagles stopped and flew on but did it one more time before heading north along the west berm. It was interesting that the herring gulls did not rise in protest until after a dive was made. Nina went to Blondie Bay and saw a mass of hummingbirds on the fireweed on the path. Eagles (juvenile) were hanging out there too, soaring high above the woods. The sunset was beautiful and cool as we enjoyed one of our final nights on the magical Great Duck Island. Two gulls-a black-backed (left) and herring (far right) pursue a bald eagle that had come in close to the lighthouse to attack the gull colony. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 21 Grubbing for Petrels Anne Hurley '15 The Leach's storm-petrel, a small, dark seabird that seldom even rests to eat, nests in deep burrows within the sod of Great Duck Island's woods. To band and thus monitor the young, students are trained to reach into the burrows and pull out the tiny fluff of a chick-known as petreling, or grubbing for petrels. Anne Hurley '15, a "duckling" from 2012, wrote about the experience in her senior project, Coming In By Going Out: Notes for Olive, a collection of experiences in nature written for her young niece. My first time grubbing for petrels was on a humid, sweaty day-the kind where you're tense from the heat and the only thing worse than being hot is being bitten all over by mosquitoes while sweating. We checked hole after hole, the soil and tree roots biting at our skin as we reached deep into the nests, our faces beet red and our hands puffed, scratched, and sore from the mosquito bites. We hit two that were empty; I prepared to grub the third hole. My arm was stinging as I began reaching into the burrow. I sunk my chest into the ground as my arm stretched. I was just about to reach the limit of my arm when I felt a soft shell-like object covered in what felt like long peach fuzz. At the touch of this surprise I drew my arm back quickly, but then continued forward to ever so gently grab hold of the shelled cotton ball. I heard a "peep" from below the ground. I tried not to panic as it sat in my grip-it was so light, so vulnerable, and sitting in my hand. I was terrified of my hand twisting the wrong way, for fear of injuring delicate life. When I finally reached the opening of the burrow and this new chick saw its first rays of light, my body filled with an overwhelming amount of guilt, adrenaline, and love. She was no bigger than a cotton ball; she even looked like a cotton ball, but dyed with black walnut ink. It's been said that petrels smell like grandma's clothes that have been stored in the attic. I held her, scooped between both hands, and brought her close to my nose. Breathing slowly, I smelled the soft scent of Nana's dress that hung lamely in the back of her closet. We banded the chick, leaving our signature deliberately behind. 22 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE ISLANDS THROUGH TIME Audra Novine McTague '19 In the summer of 2014 Audra Novine McTague was one of sixteen high school students participating in Islands Through Time, or ITT, an immersion in the human ecology of islands. Guided by faculty members John Anderson (zoology, behavioral ecology), John Cooper (music), Helen Hess (invertebrate zoology, marine biology), Sean Todd (marine mammology), and Karen Waldron (literature, writing), students spend time on Great Duck Island, Mount Desert Rock, and campus. For Audra, the twelve-day intensive was not enough. What follows is adapted from her essay applying to PROVIDE the COA class of 2019. GREAT DUCK ISLAND, August 1, 2014 The stars were brilliant that night. I sat and stared upon the haggard, wooden foundation of what used to be the home of one of the three Photo by John Anderson. lighthouse keepers on the island. Only one of the homes remains, with a boathouse that has been the fresh, salty air as it entered my to know what I thought about such transformed into a bunker, to my nostrils and continued down, filling subjects. Why do I think as I do? left and down the hill. Behind me, my lungs; the smell of nothing but Why have I never thought that way the towering white lighthouse had nature. before? My brain hurt, but it was a just revealed itself earlier that day For at least ten minutes this was good kind of hurt, as if something as the fog lifted for the first time all that occupied my mind. But as had forced a door open that I didn't since I had arrived on the island. The I came to, I realized that I had to know was there. tower shot out an eerie red light that get up early the next morning, so Then, as quickly as they came, the almost gave the night a supernatural I made my way down the winding thoughts left. As I lay down, my mind impression, completing a revolution path, through the gull colony, and became silent and centered around every twelve seconds. into the boathouse. That is when the the atmosphere that enclosed me, The sights, the sounds, the conversation that was just held on as the crying of the gulls just outside smells were magnificent: the those old, haggard boards flooded the door and the continuous blows of contrast between the blue of the my brain. My views on the world, the foghorn held me in my sleeping sea, the white of the ocean's mist, on science, and my own religious bag. I lay with my eyes facing the the brown of the beaten rocks, the beliefs had just been challenged northernmost window and watched red of the rugosa rose blossoms by my teacher, John Anderson. Not the sliver of moon afloat above the and berries, and the green of lush simply questioned, but tested with earth turn into a crescent of fire as brush and bushes; the crackling of a bombardment of alternative it sank below the western horizon. the campfire, the beating of the flag theories, queries on why I believe Without a thought in my head and on the pole behind me by the wind, what I do, and reasons as to why he with this intense feeling of deep and the whistling of the wind itself believes what he does. Never have I happiness and content, I drifted off blowing from the ocean, through my thought about such deep ideas, nor into a peaceful slumber as the island hair, past my ears; the coolness of has anyone ever been so curious lulled me to sleep. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 23 In Their Own Words COA community members tell us about their lives in this new section; while we edit the conversations, they remain "in their own words." Collected and edited by Marni Berger '09 Island Activism Hiyasmin Saturay '15, creator of the film Pangandoy: The Manobo fight for land, education and their future on the struggles of the Philippine indigenous group, Talaingod Manobo Islands mean a lot to me. I come from a country of 7,107 islands-and I grew up on an island, the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. Both my parents were activists and were helping stop a mining company from coming into our area and displacing hundreds of indigenous people. We had to leave in 2006 because a lot of my parents' colleagues were getting killed. I always remember the sacrifices they made, the work they started, how it's grown. When I think about that, it's like, How can you stop working when some people have offered their lives for it? Coming to COA with that background helped me to understand Benito is one of Talaingod's leaders. Says Hiyasmin Saturay '15, this work "has human ecology, that it's really made me more humble, definitely, just to see that you're one part of a bigger movement." important to see things in more than one perspective and address problems in more than one perspective. My senior project was kind of a going-home project. It was also a part of my organizing work here in the US. I am currently in Long Beach, California, part of a progressive arts organization, Habi Arts. Habi means weave, weaving the different arts, looking at the connections among different struggles. We believe that people coming together is what's going to create change and try to use our art in organizing workers, youth, women to connect the struggles of migrants and women in the US to the problems in the Philippines. For example, we encounter migrant caregivers here who are being exploited and abused on the job. Basically, the same kind of political-economic system that causes their displacement to the US is the same system that affects the indigenous people that I made my documentary about. I was in Talaingod, Davao del Norte to do my project for three months. The paramilitary was close by the communities I went to, so it was pretty scary to do that kind of work. But I just trusted the people. They knew how to protect me and protect themselves. They have a community that functions, that aims to be sustainable; it's very democratic. I saw the seeds being planted there-what can happen when people come together. It's so inspiring that people see their school as very important and try hard to keep it going. I think that's only really reaffirmed for me that I will be committed to this work wherever I am, and if something happens, I'm OK to give my life to it, just like so many others. I wouldn't let fear stop me. Hiyasmin Saturay's film was part of her senior project. For access to the film, or her senior project presentation, email hsaturay@coa.edu. Marni Berger '09 is a writer living in Portland, Maine. 24 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Above: Hiyasmin Saturay 15-in blue, upper left-with children from Talaingod. "The most important thing is to stay close to the people. And learn from them." Below: Motivated students study even outside their classroom. Photos by or courtesy of Hiyasmin Saturay '15. Chile's González Videla research station in Paradise Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. Below: Alex Borowicz '14 and penguins at Salisbury Plain, South Georgia. Photo by Tanya Cox. Antarctic Research Alex Borowicz '14, Antarctic field guide and PhD student in ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, New York When I sailed in the morning toward the Antarctic peninsula my first time, it was absolutely breathtaking-you go from two days in open ocean and all of a sudden you see these snow- and ice-covered mountains, and you reach this place that is stark, and it's harsh, and you feel how desolate it is, but also how palpable life is there because it's such a challenging place to live. I spent two winters as a general marine biologist guide in the Antarctic. My first season I was a senior, it was right before my senior project term. I put together an introductory whale talk, an intro seal talk, an oceanography talk, one on whaling history, and one on fish and fisheries. I didn't do a climate change talk, but I always throw in little nuggets of climate change. The Antarctic is the most rapidly warming place on the planet-you can look at pictures of glaciers melting back year by year and how all the organisms are responding. You can see it right there. But you still run across people who don't believe it. There isn't a lot of large-scale science going on in the Antarctic because it's so challenging. There's a lot of basic biology that we've inferred from just a few data points, which isn't quite enough. So we make a lot of generalizations. When I see something interesting that hasn't been represented in the literature to my knowledge, it's exciting: a penguin with the wrong color eye; a humpback whale with really weird barnacles and skin lesions that I've never seen anywhere. Each one of those moments is this feeling of exploration and the promise of answers to questions that hadn't been thought yet. I come from Wisconsin and there's not a lot of ocean out there, so COA was my introduction to the marine world-I worked out on Mount Desert Rock and on COA's boat, the Osprey. My PhD program is in a quantitative ecology lab, using math and statistics to tackle complex ecological questions which can be used to get at issues of population dynamics and other fairly large-scale problems in ecology. I'm hoping to look at how changing climate variables are affecting populations at both large and finer scales in the Antarctic. One thing COA taught me was to ask questions broadly and think about how things work on vastly different scales. 26 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Clockwise from top left: two crabeater seals on an ice floe; chinstrap penguins returning from the sea; an iceberg adrift in Antarctica's Bransfield Strait. Photos by Alex Borowicz '14, except as noted. Island Education Alice Anderson '12, science educator at the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership on Hurricane Island, Maine A lot of people jump to thinking, islands are isolating. But islands are also really connected-in different ways than we necessarily think of. Island environments are great teaching tools because they are this miniature version of the world that ideally can be scalable. On Hurricane Island, it means students can come out and get really excited about the natural environment, but not feel totally overwhelmed. Our main mission is supporting Maine youth in science, sustainability, and leadership. Within the science realm we focus on getting kids excited about making their own observations and informing their own questions around the natural world. One program focuses on the terrestrial landscape; after seven days students can really have a good understanding of the top twenty-five plants and identify them as they go around the island. It is so important to help kids connect and be familiar with the place that they are in, which is really valuable in empowering them to see that they could be a field scientist-or have skills to identify things around them. I see kids light up in the field, really engaged and sort of dropping all of those thoughts, like I'm too cool for learning, because they are just genuinely excited about what they are finding. We've also collaborated with programs like Eastern Maine Skippers which Todd West '01, the Deer Isle-Stonington principal, helped spearhead. It's a multi-school program targeted towards students in the fishing industry who tend to be at a higher risk of dropping out because the lobstering industry is so lucrative right now. The classic response is, Why would / sit in a classroom when I can make more money hauling traps in one morning than teachers make in a week? It's getting those kids re-engaged in learning that's relevant to them, making sure they're getting some of the critical at-the-table, on-the-water, and in-the-office skills that help them be good lobstermen and owner-operator businessmen long-term. A big part of how we live out here is that we're off the grid. We have our own solar panel system, composting toilets, a constructed wetland that filters our graywater. And we have a really intentional design around the campus that helps students monitor our collective energy use and learn about what it is like to live off the grid. COA has a lot of that, but when you really have to embrace it as your lifestyle because there is no backup to plug into, it definitely changes you. You think, How much do / really need on a daily basis? How can I cut back on my impact on the natural environment? That's been a huge part of how I live now-just recognizing how important it is to walk the talk when it comes to sustainability. Photo courtesy of Hurricane Island Center for Science an Leadership. 28 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE A northern elephant seal family on Race Rocks; a juvenile golden eagle calling with Mt. Baker in the background. Photos by Alex Fletcher '07. Bottom: Alex Fletcher '07. Photo by Virginie Lavallée-Picard '07. Solitary Reliance Alex Fletcher '07, winter Race Rocks Ecological Reserve guardian and Vancouver Island farmer, British Columbia, Canada I grew up on a big island, surrounded by islands, living at that transition between landscape and seascape. You have that rich intertidal zone-there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of life, a lot going on there. My work at Race Rocks is a mix of caretaking the island, coordinating and supervising students and visitors to the island, monitoring and observing wildlife and human activities within the protected area, and reporting infractions such as marine mammal disturbance or illegal fishing in the protected area. The light station has been in operation for over 150 years but in the nineties federal government budget cuts resulted in the station being de-staffed. That is when Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific took over management of the area, ensuring its protection and continued availability for research and education. The setting is very dramatic: we're in the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca so we're partly protected to the south, but we're also exposed to the open Pacific. We're RACE surrounded on one side by the mountainous peninsula of Olympic National Park in the States and on the other side by Vancouver Island. The Race Rocks archipelago has pretty rich wildlife. It's a haul-out for California and northern sea lions, seals, and the ROCKS most northerly rookery for northern elephant seals. It's also a pelagic bird nesting ground. It's solitary. There's not really the right word in English to describe it: you can be solitary without necessarily feeling lonely. In some ways when you're out there you're more attentive to people, and to your interactions, and you don't take as much for granted. You get more richness out of some things because you're in a state of being more conscious of how vulnerable you are. You rely on a boat, current tables, weather forecasts, and your judgment for running supplies and transporting visitors. You have to be able to read the weather and have the confidence to make those judgment calls. The logistics can be complicated: we have to bring in all our supplies, generate electricity, and desalinate all our drinking water. There's also the factor of-when I walk out my front door there may be a twelve-foot-long male elephant seal looking at me from across the pathway. While I am often the only human on the island there's still lots of other life there. And the ocean, as well, the ocean is a presence in and of itself. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 29 Julia Rowe, MPhil '02 at Tawharanui Open Sanctuary outside of Auckland, New Zealand. Photo by Megan Friesen. Below: Trematolobelia. Photo by Julia Rowe. Seabird Conservation Julia (Ambagis) Rowe, MPhil '02, PhD candidate in natural resources and environmental management, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii The overarching theme to my work right now is sustainability, with seabird conservation as the focus. There are three main parts: 1) a nutrient cycling study, investigating how seabirds impact nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrient availability in montane areas, 2) an assessment of what the nutrient input would have been in the pre-human past when seabirds were more numerous and widespread, and 3) an economic assessment of seabird restoration actions in Hawaii, the costs as well as primary and secondary benefits. Most of this work has taken place in Hawaii, but I also conducted a comparative nutrient study in New Zealand. The economics are hard for me; I struggle philosophically with the use of ecosystem services. I like the concept, especially for recognizing that species and ecosystems have value that may not show up in a traditional cost-benefit analysis, but I am uncomfortable monetizing some goods, I feel like value is lost in the process. With ecosystem services there is an implied use to humans which misses intrinsic value. Biodiversity and a species' intrinsic right to exist should account for more than its monetary value. Certain species lend themselves to this type of analysis-bees pollinate crops that we depend on, therefore their monetary value can be calculated. But this leaves out many other values that are also important; butterflies or lichen or even certain native mammals may not be actually contributing to human "good" as we define it. I hope that my work with ecosystem services and the economic assessment I conducted for Hawaiian seabird restoration projects will aid those working to conserve seabirds-that is my goal. COA was really helpful in my current interdisciplinary program. Most PhD students had to take a number of background courses in policy or stats or other things, but my COA work allowed me to hit the ground running without taking catch-up courses. My first COA class was Island Ecology in the summer with John Anderson. That was my intro to seabirds, islands, and interdisciplinary work. I do love islands and seabirds. There is a sense of self-reliance that comes with islands and more of a sense of immediacy in relation to our resources, both for personal consumption, but also ecologically. Maybe islands could be boiled down to community, both in relation to people and nature. 30 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Mission Healthcare Barbara Meyers '89, winter steward on the Maine Seacoast Mission's vessel the Sunbeam, COA head gardener, and long-time Great Cranberry Island resident You know, in a lot of ways I'm a mountain person at heart. I first came to COA from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but in my years here I've become a good boat person, a good sailor. I'm interested in the ocean, in the biology and the ecology of the ocean; it has certainly been the defining feature of the second half of my adult life. I have a natural affinity for the way water moves; the way boats move in it. In addition to my COA work, I am the winter steward on the Sunbeam, which is a ship run by the Maine Seacoast Mission. In winter we do two telemedicine trips per month. Our basic route takes us to Frenchboro, Isle au Haut, and Matinicus. The ship is equipped with high-tech telemedicine equipment and a nurse who helps people connect to medical services remotely. I do the cooking and provide hospitality for people who come aboard. I cook three meals a day for the boat's crew plus guests-which can be as many as thirty people! Some of the most fun I had on the job was putting on a make-your-own pancake breakfast for the kids on Matinicus. We huddled around electric grills and just made the craziest pancakes we possibly could. This year on Great Cranberry, Sarah McCracken '13 and Kayla Gagnon '15 teamed up with Island Institute fellow Jessica Duma. They went to a lot of older people who no longer planted their vegetable gardens and got permission to start those gardens again. They are giving the land owners vegetables and selling the rest at a farm stand. It's fantastic to have people in their twenties-with all that thoughtful energy-doing these good things. They're already talking about what they will do next year. Islands form a distinct community. You can be more aware of where the boundaries are, and when things get imported, and how ideas work-whether it's plants or people or goods or technology. When one person comes to the island, you really see the changes that result-for better or worse, or simply different. It gives anyone the chance to observe changes more distinctly, and to follow the impacts. Barbara Meyers '89 on the upper deck of the Sunbeam last winter while at Matinicus Island. Photo by Mike Johnson, captain of the Sunbeam. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 31 THE TACTILE POWER OF ELLEN SYLVARNES '83 "Islands conjure ideas about isolation, detachment, lost paradises," muses artist Ellen Sylvarnes. "The solitude of the artist also comes to mind." She knows that thoughts are as fluid as the water that surrounds any island. "Artists aren't alone," Ellen quickly adds, "they're alone when they come up with ideas, but they're also out there interacting in the world." And so islands become the ultimate metaphor for the creative process, for just as islands are not separate bits of land, but rather hills keeping their heads above water, so our works-even those created in the deepest seclusion-are linked one to another within the fluid depths of the unconscious. Ellen came to COA for its approach-small classes, broad connections, meaningful content. "Art, the environment, human ecology, were all formulating in my mind at the time," she says. She worked with three now-retired arts faculty members: JoAnne Carpenter, Ernie McMullen, and Roc Caivano, then spent a few intense years at the famed Art Students League in New York City. Context remains essential to Ellen, beginning with the very materials with which she works. Only rarely will she purchase a tube of paint. Rather, she creates her pigments from centuries-old techniques, crushing marble into powder, combining it with wax or resin derived from beetles; choosing Italian gessoes by their locale-for the hue varies according to the minerals within the region's clay; painting with the dust of gold or silver; or painting on silk woven by former prostitutes in Cambodia. With these substances-"pummeled, poured, mixed, and boiled over a flame," according to Berlin, Germany's Emerson Gallery-Ellen "explores everything from the power structures that silently govern our lives to the radiance of desire that emboldens us to a greater reality." Ellen had two solo shows at the Emerson. She has also had solo shows in Rome and Slovenia, and group exhibitions in New York City, New Jersey, Canada, England, and Scotland. Recently, installations have captivated Ellen-works that one needs to stand within to experience. Through sound, light, icon-like sculptures, and drawings on transparent Mylar that change as the sun tracks across the sky, the pieces interact with each other and with the space in which they are seen. Whether painting with resin on panels or filling vials with various chemicals; whether setting bronze orbs on the street in front of the New York Stock Exchange or tossing prints of her own body into the sea, there's a physicality to Ellen's work, and with that, a tension which she sometimes speaks of as a battle between concept and material. "Things happen; you destroy, and create, and destroy." From this struggle comes a tactile power-one that is salted within the depths of our oceanic selves.-Donna Gold Right: Vessel Series, mixed media, 6 X 8 inches. 32 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Left: Emerging Night, mixed media on panel, 76 X 54 inches. Above: Division, mixed media on panel, 96 X 84 inches. An Island Return By Bonnie Tai, faculty member in education A cove south of Hualien on Taiwan's eastern coast, where Tzu Chi Foundation is located. I now have two passports. The newest one is forest Buddhism, particularly its non-theistic, question- green with gold letters stamped in English and traditional authority emphasis on the experiential learning of the Chinese. Except for these facts, it looks very much like nature of our minds, also transcends dualistic perceptions a United States passport, although the characters say of reality. I have been studying the dharma since being Republic of China on top, with Taiwan Passport on the introduced to the work of Pema Chödrön, US-born teacher, bottom. In possession of these and a minute portion of author, and Buddhist nun. I am also a feminist. The farmland inherited from my paternal grandmother, I feel alchemy of these two commitments creates a heady draft: immeasurably privileged. Many decades, and a lifetime Buddhism teaches equanimity and non-attachment to my from a childhood as an immigrant learning to speak English embodied ego, whereas feminism affirms my personal, at the same time I learned to read, a new perception of embodied experience of this world. I was in Taiwan in part self awakens even as I contemplate anatta, the Buddhist to restore an "accurate and usable past," in the words concept of no-self. of Rita Gross, a Buddhist feminist theologian. Studying Buddhism is not my mother faith, as English is not my Taiwanese Buddhist nuns and laywomen is part of a larger mother tongue. For seven weeks of a ten-week sabbatical feminist project. I want to help clear a trail created by in 2015, I lived on the earthquake-prone central eastern girls and women who liberated themselves in spite of two coast of predominantly Buddhist Taiwan. Hualien is about generations of Japanese colonization, wartime traumas, a two-hour train ride from Taipei, where I was born. I was and nearly four decades of martial law. The trail has been relearning and learning Chinese beyond a four-year old's difficult to find, obscured by the debris of chauvinism, vocabulary and my college Chinese classes, a foreigner in institutional sexism, and misogyny. my fatherland. Often I was asked, ? From The word for a monastic in Chinese is chujiaren, literally, where are you coming back? I knew I was on familiar people who leave their family and home. Historically, ground the first time I returned in my twenties and bit into young women who joined the "vegetarian cult" were a fresh guava, my tropical version of Proust's madeleine. often perceived as uneducable, unmarriageable. Today, Taiwan's physical and social landscape matches my inner Taiwanese Buddhist nuns, bhiksunis, are some of the landscape more perfectly than any of the countries on the most well-educated women in the country. They choose four continents where I have lived. Sandwiched between to leave family and home to dedicate their lives to higher mountains over ten thousand feet high on one side and learning and service to all living things. In two institutions the expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the other, Hualien I visited, bhiksunis have chosen a path relinquishing the evokes a sense of possibility, spaciousness, extreme and self in service of humanity and the planet while challenging rugged beauty, and danger that concretizes paradox and traditional limits on women's freedom, autonomy, and challenges dualism. agency. 36 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Master Cheng Yan, a globally renowned bhiksuni, led an elderly man wearing a yellow hardhat, who cut the rope a group of nuns to establish Tzu Chi (Compassion Relief) tying the large plastic crate to the back of his scooter to Foundation, or TCF. Its university, where I studied Chinese, give me a lift. Over a delicate cup of green tea, Master Wu is part of an early-childhood to post-graduate educational Yin, the founding president of LBI, explained that Buddhism enterprise that includes a teaching hospital. Although TCF is Buddha's education, outlining what the monastic should is considered one of the world's largest Buddhist charities, do. "The temple is an educational institution," she told me. the nuns grow their own food and generate income LBI provides nuns with Buddha's education in preparation through candle-, incense-, and pottery-making. Cheng to teach laypeople the skills to live harmoniously. As a Yan, one of Time magazine's hundred most influential result, many older women students, some of whom never people in 2011, blends Buddhist precepts with Confucian completed a primary education, gain literacy in addition to values to encourage Taiwanese laypeople and TCF global inner peace. members to better steward the environment, "spinning Pema Chödrön often quotes Zen Master Dogen: "To gold from trash" through the recycling of plastic waste study the self is to forget the self." I am inspired by the into emergency blankets distributed to disaster victims. example of these women who reappropriate the tired Walking between abundant rows of fresh greens and fields trope of the self-sacrificing daughter, wife, and mother of cosmos, I marveled at the scope of an organization to transcend their gender and to redefine self-sacrifice that started out barely two generations ago during a in terms that make obsolete the self at the same time tumultuous era in Taiwanese history. that they embrace their solidarity with all of humanity. Where TCF takes a multi-pronged approach to ending Returning to my fatherland and relearning my mother suffering by providing access to quality healthcare through tongue, this taste of studying and forgetting the self its hospital and medical school, K-16 education guided by inspires a dispassionate passion for trail work-moving Buddhist and Confucian ethics, environmental education, a twig here, an armload of branches there, whole and humanitarian aid to disaster victims, the nuns of the downed trees, roots and all. Two sets of passports and Luminary Buddhist Institute (LBI or Xiangguang Si), focus my grandmother's land just might help me remember to their efforts on educating each individual. I arrived at the forget. steps of the temple on the back of a small scooter driven by Jing Si Hall, the main hall of Tzu Chi University, where faculty member Bonnie Tai spent seven weeks relearning Chinese during a sabbatical. Photos by Bonnie Tai. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 37 Once an island for social welfare, North Brother is now a protected refuge for birds. Following Typhoid Mary's death in 1938, Riverside Hospital later repurposed as an adolescent drug tr eatment facility, was closed for good in 1963. Photo by Gabriel Willow '00. Abandoned to Nature Gabriel Willow '00 and New York's forgotten islands Heather Candon '99 An eroding slab of concrete juts out steamboat General Slocum caught fire City's Audubon Society and the city from the southern edge of New York and ran ashore off North Brother. Department of Parks and Recreation. City's North Brother Island where More than a thousand people burned Large colonies of great egrets, snowy an armless swivel chair faces not the to death or drowned in rotten life egrets, and black-crowned night nearby console TV, but a bramble preservers that had been furtively herons are among a number of of winged sumac and honeysuckle filled with iron bars so as to meet colonial wading waterbirds who that have subsumed the island weight requirements. A decade or so raise their young here and on nearby since the last human inhabitants later, Typhoid Mary was quarantined South Brother Island, the seclusion left over a half-century ago. It's a in a one-room cottage that was part making for an ideal habitat. muggy July evening a few hours of the island's Riverside Hospital. before sundown. A city water taxi Tended to by hospital staff, she Origins idles offshore while some eighty endured twenty-three years of near- Gabriel, who was reared roaming the passengers gather on its top deck for isolation and squalor until her death woods in the even deeper seclusion the Brothers Island EcoCruise, led by in 1938, the hospital closing soon of rural Montville, Maine, is now Gabriel Willow '00 and sponsored by afterwards. The last humans left something of an urban denizen, New York City Audubon. Overhead, in 1963 after the hospital-briefly working as both an urban naturalist a black-crowned night heron wings repurposed into an adolescent drug and a DJ, deftly navigating both its way slowly across the fading treatment facility-closed its doors. the city's wildlife and its nightlife. sky, impervious to the crowd of In the years since, nature But between Maine and New York binoculars tracking its flight path. reclaimed the abandoned came Mexico. Having participated Given the human history of this infrastructure. Once an island for in one of COA's early Yucatan terms, twenty-acre island northeast of social welfare, North Brother is Gabriel returned after graduation, Manhattan, it's easy to imagine any now a protected bird refuge, one of spending three years exploring the number of ghosts have come home the city's seventeen Harbor Heron extensive biodiversity of the Yucatan to roost. In 1904, the passenger Islands, monitored by New York peninsula. He guided tours, designed 38 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE environmental education programs, participated in conservation efforts, and worked with a radical artist collective, creating installations in half-finished buildings and deserted construction sites. In 2003, Gabriel left Mexico for New York, intending to enroll in art school. He'd been planning to examine themes of urban ecology and urban decay, conservation and climate change through a conceptual, creative lens. He literally stumbled upon Prospect Park Audubon Center while looking for a bathroom. The staff knew a good thing when they saw it, approaching him to design the EcoCruises. He promptly wrote a script. The island cruises began soon thereafter with Gabriel offering rare glimpses into unseen and unknown parts of New York, places where wildlife has colonized the void left by humans. Meanwhile, he began teaching at Prospect Park Audubon Center, working his way up to senior naturalist. Abandoned and reclaimed Even in a city of eight million, Gabriel is a rarity. Only a handful of guides offer glimpses into New York's wildlife. And no one else takes the interdisciplinary approach that Gabriel does, blending urban exploration with natural and human history, glancing into what was, what is, and what might be. Above: Abondoned dock on North Brother Island. Photo by Gabriel Willow '00; below: "I think people want to reconnect Double-crested cormorants perch upon the "oneness" arch on U Thant Island. Photo by Heather Candon '99. to the natural world," Gabriel says. "I try to facilitate that through a An evocative storyteller, Gabriel the same time, it's also these stories human ecological lens. Rather than gives off-the-cuff observations of emerging from the past because looking towards the 'wild' or the passing scenery, every few beats these buildings are 150 years old or 'authentic', I show people the nature interjecting his wry musings. more. It's both a past and a future all around us, in overlooked urban "It's like a peek into the future," that we're glimpsing, and I see that nooks and crannies. There's no he says. "It's a little post-apocalyptic, as a form of renewal. For me that's separation between the wild and the but I think it's interesting to see the inspiring. A reminder that wildlife has urban, or human activities and the different ways that the environment this amazing capacity to adapt." adaptive response of the life forms responds to abandonment. Most surrounding us." of these islands and places where A different perspective In summer he narrates three you're finding these birds nesting are The water taxi cruises north up the different routes, cruising the East little microcosms of abandonment. East River at about twenty knots, River past islands in the Lower They used to have buildings, the breeze offering a reprieve Harbor and into nearby Jamaica communities, infrastructure, from the city's punishing humidity. Bay. He also takes people out in the electricity, sidewalks-and all that's Cars stream along the FDR Drive, colder months to see the seals and gone now. And so you're seeing soundless in the distance. Midtown waterfowl that winter in the region. plants, vines, birds taking over. But at Manhattan's skyline appears to COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 39 harbor seals, even occasionally born on a New York City skyscraper. humpback whales and dolphins. Peregrine falcons have far more You've got ducks, geese, loons, and habitat thanks to bridges and grebes wintering out there. For skyscrapers, as cliffs were in short me, it's the most exciting thing, the supply in the eastern US." most compelling thing, to get New Midway between U Thant and the Yorkers out, re-evaluating their own Brother Islands lies Mill Rock, where city and seeing it from a different more double-crested cormorants perspective." silently adorn a near-leafless tree. Great black-backed gulls clamor Recovery along the shoreline of the thin Unlike its fellow islands, U Thant peninsula, their calls hoarse and Island, named for the third secretary low. Egrets cluster amidst the short general of the United Nations, is a willow and poplar trees towards the relative newcomer to these historic island's center. waters. Midway between Manhattan The late nineteenth and early and Queens on the southern tip of twentieth centuries saw egrets Roosevelt Island, this 100-by-200- hunted to the brink of extinction, foot islet was merely a granite reef plumage on hats being the rage of Homeschooled in rural Maine, Gabriel below the water's surface until late the day. Today, snowy and great Willow '00 has become something of in the nineteenth century, when egrets are on abundant display, an urban denizen, working both as an piano entrepreneur William Steinway perching on trees at the edge of the urban naturalist and a DJ. His Audubon EcoCruises reveal the wildlife colonizing set out to continue the trolley line islands throughout the East River. voids left by humans. Photo by Heather from his company town in Queens, "I think most native or lifelong Candon '99. underground to midtown Manhattan. New Yorkers are kind of surprised The rubble blasted to create a tunnel both by the proximity of these rise directly from the water, its under the East River built the reef strange, abandoned islands to the towers incongruous with the dense into a small island. Today, the 7 train city and the abundance of wildlife wilderness of the forgotten islands. shoots through the tunnel every found on them," says Gabriel. "Really The East River is the eastern few minutes while above a colony of charismatic, dramatic wildlife. boundary of Manhattan Island, and double-crested cormorants make U Charismatic megafauna. The egrets not a river at all, but a tidal strait, Thant their home. are pure white, they're very large, its flow reversing between ebb DDT almost spelled the they really stand out, and when I and flood every six hours. Subway cormorant's demise, as the pesticide look up, there are cormorants and tunnels burrow a hundred feet rendered their shells too thin. Eggs egrets flying overhead all the time. beneath the riverbed while bridges would break under the weight of the In the city's hustle and bustle, how transect the half-mile width from nesting parent. Today, the population many New Yorkers even look up? If above. Intermittent jet rumbles has rebounded. Cormorants subsist they did, they might be surprised at announce nearby LaGuardia on fish, diving underwater for their what they find soaring above them." Airport. Barges, speedboats, and prey. Because they can't fly when Surrounded by the country's most yachts travel the river's length just wet, they perch with their wings densely populated city, the desolate as steamboats and wooden ships outstretched to dry, as if always on structures and dilapidated buildings did a century ago. Before the first the verge of flight. of these islands serve as a reminder European charted a northward The cormorants rule the islet, of how quickly wilderness can course up the river in 1614, Lenape draping over an old metal arch and reclaim a place, and how resilient the fishermen speared striped bass from perched in the skeletal navigation natural world can be. their dugout canoes. tower. Against the taciturn steel Contrary to what many New skyline of Long Island City, the birds For more on Gabriel Willow's Audubon Yorkers believe, there's a lot of are an arabesque contrast of curves, EcoCruise, visit nycaudubon.org or wildlife to see. "I get jokes a lot," welcomely animate, seemingly facebook.com/urbannaturalist. Gabriel says. "Oh, you lead bird oblivious as to whether their nest is walks in New York, what do you look industrial or natural. at, pigeons?" He shakes his head, "If they choose a manmade bemused. "The waterfront has a structure to nest upon, it's because Having spent nearly two decades living lot of species you can see: nesting they presumably deem it suitable on islands, first in Maine, then in Spain, egrets, cormorants, herons. There for their requirements," Gabriel Heather Candon '99 is a writer living in are peregrine falcons, bald eagles, offers. "Many a happy hawk has been New York. 40 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Book Excerpt: "Thousands of Selves" By Liz Cunningham '82 Adapted from Ocean Country: One Woman's Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to Save the Seas Foreword by Carl Safina. North Atlantic Books, distributed by Random House, 2015 At age thirty-six, Liz Cunningham '82 was nearly drowned and temporarily paralyzed by a kayak accident. As part of her recovery she returned to the ocean, training to become a divemaster. Seeking out the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos where she first fell in love with the undersea world, she witnessed a four-degree @calypso spike in the water temperature that THE COUSTEA bleached a coral reef. Ocean Country is Liz's quest to understand that and Liz Cunningham '82. Photo by Eiglys Trejo. many other changes in Earth's oceans. It chronicles her journeys from her California home to the Turks and Caicos, Indonesia, and the Mediterranean, and her conversations with conservationists, fishermen, sea nomads, and scientists. Throughout, she offers poetic meditations on the state of the seas. Ultimately, this story of a woman emerging from paralysis to power is also one of finding true hope. Calling it "a stunning account of our endangered oceans," College of the Atlantic faculty member Rich Borden writes, "Time and again Liz Cunningham discovers threads of hope in people committed to reversing these tragedies. Taken together they unlock a hitherto unimagined and hopeful revelation. You can feel it in the author's heart. You will feel it in your own." The episode below is adapted from "Thousands of Selves," one of the concluding chapters of Ocean Country, set in the Mediterranean. A divemaster led us along what some point in their life cycle. The cave or crevice they consider home looked like an alpine rock face-the marine ecosystem balance relies on and several others close by which seascape beneath a rocky island it. they circulate to and from. These called La Gabinière-one of several There was a tap on my shoulder. groupers may have lived there all tiny islands surrounded by seagrass It was the divemaster, Pierre. He their lives, perhaps over thirty years. southwest of Marseille, known as the waved at me to follow him. The Large fish like this play an Îles d'Or. Clumps of seagrass grew current was light enough to make important role in healthy fisheries. in the crevices between the gigantic a go at swimming to Le Sec de la They have been shown to have boulders. Schools of slivery sea Gabinière, a seamount-a kind of exponentially more young than small bream chomped on it like little cows. tiny underwater island-just to the fish because more of their energy The northern light was so angular southwest. Soon the rocky edge of can be allocated to reproduction. that when one of the bream yanked the island vanished and we were It had been two decades since on a piece of grass at a certain angle, swimming in open water. A few I'd seen grouper that big. The Nassau its scales emitted a flash like a signal minutes later, Pierre turned around grouper in the Caribbean were mirror. and pointed downward. Forty feet now on the International Union for Seagrass meadows have an below, in the open sea, was an Conservation of Nature's dreaded abundance of life parallel to that outcropping covered with seagrass Red List of species at high risk for of mangroves. They are filled with and purple and yellow sea fans. extinction. But the grouper at Le juvenile fish, crustaceans, and As we descended, two enormous Sec de la Gabinière had been given anemones. The seagrass in the grouper, each over a yard long, a chance to grow old. And they Mediterranean is over a yard tall, came into view. They hovered in a hadn't done it in some far-flung with stocky, dark-green strands. cut between two knobs of stone. location, but in close proximity to Over 70 percent of all fish in the Their lumbering bodies barely one of the most populated areas of Mediterranean take shelter in it at moved. Grouper usually have one the Mediterranean. It was possible COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 41 because they lived in a marine safeguards threatened plant species. miles along the coast of Australia. preserve whose boundaries were Then, in the fall, like an exhausted Another, just below the Everglades, respected. snail, the island coils into its shell for covered over five thousand square *** the winter, and the two hundred or miles. There were miles and miles of "We don't know it, but we have so inhabitants savor the quiet. seagrass, from the Mediterranean to thousands of selves," Naima Andrea When I arrived in early October, Mexico to New Guinea to Zanzibar. Rodríguez, a staff member at the things had already settled into a And mangroves and plankton and World Wide Fund for Nature office hushed peace. I stayed in an old villa forests and rainforests-all pumping in Barcelona, had told me when retrofitted into a hotel next to a small out oxygen. We might go without we were talking about biodiversity. nineteenth-century church with plain food for months, water for days. But She meant that it wasn't just the windows, a clock, and a prominent air? Minutes. organisms in our guts that keep us bell tower. In front of it was a dusty A houseplant would never healthy, there are microorganisms in square with a flock of white pigeons. look the same. Photosynthetic our nasal passages, mouth, and skin, The brass key to my room had a organisms are the Teddy Roosevelts and all of them keep us healthy-the hollow ring at one end, like the key to of all life-they speak softly, but "human microbiome." an antique trunk. carry a big stick. They pump out oxygen and sequester carbon. "A *** To save lives, we must save square meter of seagrass," Nicolas The next morning the dive boat Gérardin, the Port-Cros National the thousands of lives that motored to the rocky point of Park operations director, had told make each one possible- Porquerolles called the Médes. It me, "produces twice the volume of was sunny, and the water was almost oxygen in twenty-four hours than a from a blue whale to a as smooth as a glass mirror. There square meter of tropical forest, up speck of plankton. had been several weeks of unusually to fourteen liters of oxygen per day." calm, windless weather. As I sank One acre of seagrass absorbs over into the sea, I was startled by how seven thousand pounds of carbon a Each of us hums with life; each clear the water was. It reminded year, the equivalent of the emissions of us is a busy orchestration of many me of the gin-clear water in the of an average car traveling over three creatures. The passenger manifest underwater caves of the Yucatán. thousand miles. for the ark has been updated: to save The rocky terrain was covered In some areas of the lives, we must save the thousands of with bright orange sponges and sea Mediterranean, scientists have lives that make each one possible- lettuce, a type of algae that grows estimated as much as a 30 percent from a blue whale to a speck of in flowery swirls. I hovered in a loss of seagrass beds in the last plankton. sand channel and peered sideways fifty years due to damage by fishing into the tall seagrass. There was an gear, dredging, pollution, and poor *** ultrafine fizz, tiny bubbles on the anchoring techniques. There are three major islands in the surface of the seagrass blades and in I recalled that over 50 percent Îles d'Or-Levant, Port-Cros, and the water. of the oxygen in our lungs comes Porquerolles. La Gabinière is just "No," I mused. "It couldn't be!" from plants and algae in the ocean. southwest of Port-Cros. When we But it was: oxygen. Nicolas had told me that scientists finished the dive, the boat crossed If you'd asked me the day before call seagrass "the lungs of the to Porquerolles, where I was staying. if I understood photosynthesis, I'd Mediterranean." Portions of the rocky islands thrust have said, "Sure. Carbon dioxide in, up out of the ocean like alpine peaks. oxygen out. What's not to get?" *** There were over six miles of open But now that truth came fully After sundown I went for a walk. A water between the two islands, but alive. I could hear my noisy breath dirt road led past an ornate wrought- halfway across, white butterflies through my regulator. I had thought iron gate and wound up a steep hill fluttered over the waves. As we got of breath as inhale and exhale, through a dark canopy of pine trees. closer to Porquerolles, the scent of but now I was vividly experiencing Some bushes with white flowers pine trees filled the air. another dimension of it, a key emitted a fragrant scent. The air was In the summer, tourists flock to and rather large-scale one: the silky warm. At the top of the hill, the Porquerolles and take in the rocky biosphere. harbor came into view. The water vistas and wander trails through the I turned slowly in the water was calm and windless. The road forest and the olive and fig groves with my fins; all I could see were led inland to an eighteenth-century maintained by the Conservatoire the seagrass meadows. I recalled windmill perched on an overlook. Botanique National, the national seeing NASA images of them taken Below, the moonlight illuminated botanical conservatory, which from satellites. One spanned 770 olive and fig groves and the forest. 42 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Sunset over the Mediterranean. Photo by Liz Cunningham '82. From across the island, a lighthouse fishing or rendered lifeless by coral *** flashed. bleaching; mangroves choked by There was a narrow dirt road that Everything felt so vivid. I logging runoff; entire coastlines that went south, to the other side of the remembered the French woman once provided fish to feed hundreds island, a little less than an hour's I dove with when I first returned of villages now nearly bereft of stroll. It was close to dusk and I to the Turks and Caicos after over marine life; coastal wells inundated wanted to see the sunset. Pine trees a decade-how she said, "I must with salt water, leaving families formed an arc over the road. On recover my sensations," when she scrambling for the money just to either side were the fig and olive explained she'd need to get used drink clean water. groves maintained by the botanical to being underwater again. And I The world was so much more conservatory. The rows of scraggly remembered that "everything is cruel and greedy than I'd ever trees converged into the hilly alive" sensation I'd felt diving in the fathomed. It felt like what last shreds distance. reef. Now it wasn't just in the ocean of innocence I'd retained had been The island is a "garden island"- that I felt it. Sea, sky, land: the world stripped off. But a second innocence sea and land are both cared for. This was more alive. Some recovery was slowly growing in its place. Like is true of many coastal parks around beyond my own imagining had an offshoot sprouting from a felled the world. "Wildness"-wilderness- occurred. I wondered if that intense tree, its roots were sturdier and less will need to enter its second sensation of aliveness-that "hum" easily vanquished: the willingness to innocence. The first was not chosen; of life-might be the thousands of say yes, to begin again, to trust, to the second will have to be. And it will selves that Naima talked about. risk. be our choice. But the price for that openness had I retraced my steps to the hotel. Another dirt road appeared, been high. My travels had afforded In the middle of the night a warm veering off to the right. It too was me a searing first-hand view of the wind stirred. The lace curtains over lined with a rhythmic row of evenly damage wrought upon the seas: the windows billowed like the sails of spaced trees. The evening's angular coral reefs pulverized by dynamite a boat. light had grown rosy and golden. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 43 A hundred or so yards away I saw They'd found something they loved us. To the south and west and east a woman standing still. She looked to do that contributed to making the there was nothing but the open transfixed. I didn't dare disturb world a better place. waters of the Med. her. I imagined for a moment she And I had too. Just before I left for Europe I'd might have been a botanist at the I'd published some articles. read the book Blessed Unrest by Paul conservatory, lingering in the last I did my first radio interview in Hawken. He described how he'd glimmers of evening light before over ten years. And I was starting began to wonder if we really knew walking home. to understand something: one of how many people around the globe I kept walking toward the south the world's most belligerent lies had joined the effort to preserve side of the island. I remembered is delivered in the guise of the the earth and protect human asking Annie Aboucaya, one of the seemingly innocuous words: "Don't rights. He searched the government park botanists, when she had really bother, your voice won't matter." records and tax census data of known she wanted to become a How many times had I thought many countries to see how many botanist. that myself? But the day after I'd organizations were devoted to these "You mean the flash?" resolved to find a way to be a part causes. she joked with a self-deprecating of ocean conservation efforts, I "In trying to pick up a stone," smile. The term flash is slang for a watched a TED talk by Sylvia Earle, Hawken writes, "I found the exposed revelation in French. the founder of Mission Blue. Her tip of a much larger geological "Yes," I grinned, "the big flash." words caught my attention: "I formation." His calculations led wish you would use all means at him to believe that there are over We might go without food your disposal-films, expeditions, a million organizations devoted to the web, new submarines-and sustainability and social justice, for months, water for days. campaign to ignite public support for the largest social movement in But air? Minutes. a global network of marine protected history. Social psychologists Paul areas, hope spots large enough to Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson save and restore the ocean, the blue had documented a similar cultural "If there was one, it was when heart of the planet." upwelling through focus groups I began to work with the botanical She'd sent out a call-strong and and social surveys. Beneath their conservatory on Porquerolles." clear. I heard that voice, her words. I overturned stones were millions of The conservatory saved seeds of felt needed. people. endangered plant species in a "seed Walking down the dirt road, I "Could it be," Hawken writes, "an bank" that had the seeds for over asked myself something so simple I instinctive, collective response to a seventeen hundred species. Annie felt embarrassed that I'd never really threat?" The threat that the earth has told me that they had germinated asked myself this before: "What if I a "life-threatening disease, marked some seeds of threatened species really lived as if my voice mattered?" by massive ecological degradation and cared for them until they had and rapid climate change?" But a grown into small plants. movement? Where's the figurehead? "There was a day we went Close to the southern edge of the The manifesto? Might it be like the into the wild to replant them," island I followed a narrow trail co-management committees I had she gestured with her hands, as if through the woods. It brought me to encountered in Spain, in which carefully putting a plant into the a bluff overlooking the ocean. I found fishermen, scientists, NGOs, and ground. "That was the big flash." a perch on which to sit and watch government administrators were She grinned, adding, with emphasis, the sunset. The stone was still warm managing a fishery together on equal "Because we gave these endangered from the day's heat. I remembered footing-bottom-up, community- species a second chance." what Annie had told me about the based, decentralized? I kept walking. But a few Maures Massif. I was sitting at the I recalled some wooden diving moments later I glanced back; the top of an ancient mountain range. goggles given to me by a Bajau sea woman was still there, lingering. I The sea turned blue-violet nomad in Sulawesi. A similar set of wouldn't see another soul that night and a slice of moon rose. There goggles had been given to Jacques until I returned to the village. Annie was nothing but open ocean until Cousteau by a friend when he was and many others I'd met had found Africa. What is it about distances? young man. The moment Cousteau their place in the growing linkage of Mountaintops, great expanses of put them on and swam in a harbor people at work to preserve the earth. water-they bring something out in in the south of France was the 44 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE the olive groves and out onto the jagged coast and the wide, southern expanse of sea. Twenty-one percent of royalties from Ocean Country are being donated to the New England Aquarium's Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF): neaq.org/mcaf. That is the percentage of oxygen in each breath we take, over half of which comes from plants and algae in the ocean. MCAF aims to protect and promote ocean biodiversity through funding of small-scale, time- sensitive, community-based programs. Liz Cunningham '82 is also the author of Talking Politics: Choosing the President in the Television Age. She The hand-carved wooden diving goggles that Liz Cunnigham received from a Bajau sea has written for numerous journals nomad in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Photo by Liz Cunningham '82. and newspapers and is cofounder of KurtHahn.org, the web archive epiphany that began his lifelong enough to change the course of for the founder of Outward Bound love of the sea-he could see clearly civilization? The runaway industrial and serves on the board of Outward the abundance of life in the ocean. I locomotive-change that? Something Bound Peacebuilding. For more visit realized my entire journey had been deep inside me shuddered, bolted lizcunningham.net. like donning a pair of wooden diving awake-the sensation of a gigantic, goggles, but it wasn't the undersea beautiful force afoot in the world. world that they revealed. It was all Don't discount the invisible plus signs. the people who worked to make Even if you can't do the math, don't change, thousands upon thousands quit. upon thousands of "selves." I remembered how two years "A beautifully written memorr that shows us the ocean through Cunningham's eyes, with grief for what is lost, awe for what before, bluefin tuna seemed doomed I'd lingered too long. The trail back to remains, and glimpses of future redemption." ROZ SAVAGE, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, to extinction. Pegged as the most the road was pitch dark. But soon the author of Rowing the Atlantic and Stop Drifting, Start Rowing "hopeless fishery in the world," the moonlight illuminated my path. The activists working to save it refused road was now a soft tunnel of trees to quit, despite terrible odds. Then and singing crickets. in the fall of 2012, bluefin stocks Suddenly there was a bolt of OCEAN ticked upward. All the efforts all light. I stopped. Fear rippled through around the world-quota reductions, my chest. Then it was dark again. I COUNTRY moratoriums, position papers, resumed walking. awareness campaigns, documentary Another flash. One Woman's Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest To Save the Seas films, lectures, books, all those "Who's there?" I squawked, and efforts-had added up. Nearly swirled around. invisible plus signs had caused these It was the broad sweep of the seemly disconnected efforts to save lighthouse's beam, which had just the "most hopeless fishery in the been turned on. It moved swiftly LIZ CUNNINGHAM world." and then vanished, leaving a fleeting FOREWORD BY CARL SAFINA But could that "largest social path of light and long shadows that AUTHOR OF BEYOND WORDS: HOW ANIMALS THINK AND FEEL movement in history" be powerful flickered through the trees and COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 45 ALUMNI NOTES 1976 1980 UNKNOWN SKIES UFO STEVEN DONOSO A crew who first met when the Steve Donoso's new book, Unknown this plus being a wife, mom, full- college began in the fall of 1972 Skies: Leslie Kean and the Case for time corporate employee, and head gathered for a picnic this summer. Rational UFO Investigation, is an in- family chef. "Endorphins are magical From left in photo, Kate and Eric depth interview with investigative things," she writes. Henry; Craig's wife, Beth Dilley; journalist Leslie Kean who has former faculty member Susie been researching and reporting on Lerner; Katherine Hazard; Craig unidentified flying objects. The book 1993 Kesselheim; Katherine's daughter explores key aspects of a persistent A web of alumni has reinvigorated Emma; former faculty member and and controversial scientific mystery. Bar Harbor's 1932 Criterion Theatre. president Steve Katona; Katherine's Heather Martin joined the newly friend lan; Jim Perkins and his wife, renovated, and now community non- Jeanne; and in front, Alexandra 1991 profit theater as director. She works Conover '77 (a 1973 arrival) and her Jason Alderman has moved from the with Michael Boland '94, board husband, Kermit. San Francisco Bay area to Portland, president; programmers James Pike OR. He is now VP of corporate '06, Colin Capers '96, MPhil '09, communications for Knowledge and faculty member Jodi Baker; 1977 Universe, the nation's largest staffers Rowan Kase '15 and Taylor Barbara Acosta writes, "I am private provider of early childhood Thomas-Marsh '15; intern Gus coordinating a Spanish-English dual education and care. In this newly DenDanto '18; and the rest of the language program and loving the created role he oversees external merry band of volunteers and staff. challenge. After more than 30 years and internal communications, and Heather is now living on Ledgelawn in education with English language events management. Jason was most Avenue with her boys and planning learners and 20 in research and recently Visa's VP of global corporate many a raucous potluck. evaluation, who knew I would find communications and public affairs. my home back in a school district? He also writes a weekly personal Now I get a chance to work with finance column carried in some 500 1994 administrators and teachers to apply newspapers, including The Huffington After 10 years of teaching middle all that research to real life and real Post. school and leading professional kids." development for teachers, Leah Melissa (Relyea) Ossanna is in Bar (Zuckerman) Barcan now tutors Harbor expanding the endurance middle and high school students, and 1978 sports adventures that began with works with their parents to improve Storyteller Jackson Gillman her first MDI marathon in 2012. In educational outcomes. A certified life performed a full weekend for adults 2015 she was first female finisher in coach, Leah helps people manage at the Mystic Seaport, CT, Sea Music a snowshoe marathon, ran her first and reduce the stress of parenting, Festival. This fall he is part of Cirque 50-mile trail race, and completed education, menu planning, and de Sea stage comedy for the 6th her first Ironman Triathlon. She also cooking through her company, Home International Oyster Symposium in completed several other marathons without Stress. She lives in Boston Woods Hole, MA, and also brings a and 50k races and will run her first with her husband and two boys. nautical show to Florida. 100-mile trail race in November. All 46 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 1996 Jim Kellam married Shannan Jones- Kellam this summer and is now a WHY I GIVE proud stepfather of two girls, 12 and 17. He's also had a sabbatical from Elizabeth-Anne Saint Vincent College. (Cobb) Ronk '12 1999 On the 25th of every month This year's James Jones First Novel I receive a text-message Fellowship prize was awarded to notification from my bank Josie Sigler for her manuscript, The that reminds me that I used Flying Sampietrini. to live by the ocean. I pause in the memory of snow and the taste of it with maple 2000 syrup. I recall the first time Melinda Casey-Magleby received a I saw contra dancing, joined master's in mathematics for teaching picnics on mountainsides, at Harvard this spring and continues and smelled freshly exposed to teach math and science to 8th seaweed. I relish the few short graders at Brooke Charter in Boston. years I lived in a place where She and her wife welcomed their my professors cared about second daughter, Mae Scout, this my theories, my peers were summer and are thrilled to have two dynamic innovators, and I didn't have to worry about venomous snakes. I little girls keeping them busy. am a member of the Black Fly Society which allows me to seamlessly give a monthly paperless donation to COA. Although my donation is small in the grand scheme of things, it impacts the alumni donor percentage just the 2001 same. Noah Krell and Lia Wilson were married at Two Lights State Park in I joined the Black Fly Society because I need a monthly reminder that Cape Elizabeth, ME, this summer. Take-A-Break is not a figment of my imagination, but I also donate so that I They met in San Francisco in 2009 can aid COA in bringing the experiences I had to future students. while Noah was pursuing an MFA in photo, video, and performance. Plus, I got a really cool sticker. After two years living and working in Brooklyn, NY, they have moved back to Portland, ME, for a more reasonable quality of life. Noah is State Theater, also screening so glad he picked them to be his pursuing a master's in social work at elsewhere in New England for the mommies. the University of Southern Maine. Halloween season: erinenberg.com. Cory Whitney presented two papers at the 38th conference of the Society 2003 of Ethnobiology at the University of The film Arabel, by Erin Enberg, California Santa Barbara. Both were was an official selection at the New based on his recent participatory Hampshire Film Festival, Maine ethnobotany explorations with International Film Festival, Emerge indigenous elders in Laos and Film Festival (winning Best Maine Vietnam, and show positive trends Film), the SENE Film Music and Arts between uses and conservation Festival in Providence, RI (receiving practices of indigenous plants, honorable mention for Best suggesting that traditional cultural Cinematography and Best Sound uses for plants may be conserving Design), and the Harrisburg-Hershey biodiversity in the region's rapidly Film Festival in Pennsylvania. Her Katy and Amanda Hollander deteriorating forests. The findings next film, The Poet, premiered at welcomed Henry Wilde Hollander also support a systems theory of Damnationland, an invitation-only on July 5. They are loving getting to human ecology developed by the showcase of dark films at Portland's know this new little human and are indigenous peoples. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 47 2004 Gulf of Mexico and monitoring reef 2009 Andrew Moulton and Amanda fish assemblages on offshore oil Muscat Moulton '06 are living in and gas platforms using remotely Leeds, UK. Amanda is a high school operated vehicles. In February science teacher at Allerton Grange Marianna married Mikey Steen; they School. Andrew is homeschooling welcomed their son Marlin to the Emmett, 2, working part-time at world in April. Emmett's Steiner kindergarten, and pursuing a master's in education. He Anna Goldman left her position at blogs at andrew2014.globalblogs.org The Field Museum in August to begin a graduate program in tropical forest ecology at the University of Hong 2005 Kong. Sam Miller-McDonald completed This fall, Santiago Salinas joined the his master's of environmental faculty in the biology department of management degree at the Kalamazoo College. 2008 Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in May. Zach and Paige '06 Steele From left in the photo are Daniel introduced Henrick Guthrie Steele Rueters-Ward '10, classmates Philip to the world on Aug. 4 at 6:47 a.m. Kunhardt '11 and Hale Morrell '12, "7 lbs. 3.4 OZ. 22.5 in. and perfect in Sam, and Robin Kuehn '10. every way." In January 2016, Nina Therkildsen 2010 starts as an assistant professor Andrew Coate received his master of conservation genomics in the of divinity from Boston University Department of Natural Resources at School of Theology in May and plans Cornell University (where Matt Hare to seek ordination as a Unitarian '84 also teaches). Most recently Nina "This has been a year of accelerated Universalist minister. He has started was a postdoctoral research scholar change and transition," writes a new position as director of religious at Stanford University's Hopkins Kate Hassett-Barnabas. "In May education at First Church Jamaica Marine Station. I graduated with a master's in Plain Unitarian Universalist. social work from the University of Southern Maine. In June I packed Last March, Taj Schottland began 2007 up all my experiences, filled my car working as a coastal adaptation with plants, balms, and treasures, specialist for the National Wildlife and moved to the Boston area Federation. Though based out of the with the love of my life, Frank. In Northeast regional office in Vermont, July we got married at Cambridge most of his time and energy is City Hall! In early August I passed focused on the New England coast, the Massachusetts state licensure working with community partners boards and became an LCSW. I am in implementing nature-based now working in downtown Boston as approaches to protect ecosystems a shelter specialist, providing clinical and human communities from the assessment, crisis intervention, impacts of climate change. and advocacy for sheltered and After completing a master's of unsheltered homeless individuals- environmental management with the job I have been dreaming of for 2011 a focus on coastal environmental years. I am thrilled to be doing this On May 20, Philip Kunhardt IV management at Duke University, work! It hasn't been all sunshine married Laura Torre, an Argentine Marianna Bradley Steen serves and butterflies, but thanks to my and Spanish national, and graduate as a biologist with the Louisiana supportive network of family, of Yale Law School. Philip, the son of Department of Wildlife and Fisheries friends, and some amazing mentors, trustee and fellow alumnus Philip in New Orleans. Working through teachers, and cheerleaders at COA Kunhardt III '77, will complete his the Louisiana Artificial Reef Program, and beyond, I have maintained master's of forest science degree in she's also studying alternative gear buoyancy while fully embracing the December at Yale School of Forestry for yellowfin tuna in the northern art of perseverance." and Environmental Studies. The two 48 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE have moved to midtown Manhattan, which recently opened the first but make regular forays out of the solar bakery in Haiti and launched grey urban sprawl and into the green a #FreeTheSun campaign to expand FLY countryside. solar energy, partnering with World Vision International; Boond After completing a master's of library Engineering and Development, BLACK SOLICE and information degree at McGill Ltd.; and ChocoSol Traders. GoSol University, Megan Laflin drove is releasing free construction across Canada to Vancouver Island to guides and offering workshops begin work as a librarian at Pearson to ensure the spread and impact College this fall, moving from an of sustainable, low-cost, solar East Coast island to one on the West technology for projects like solar Coast. roasting of chocolate. COLLOR ATLANTIC OF THE 2012 2013 Through her work at the Cincinnati Jane Nurse received a Chevening Zoo & Botanical Garden, Maggie Award, funded by the UK's Foreign Garcia is pursuing a master's in and Commonwealth Office, to pursue JOIN THE biology within the Advanced Inquiry a master's in environmental law and BLACK FLY SOCIETY! Program at Miami University. She is sustainable development degree at also a direct support professional the University of London's School through Living Arrangements for the of Oriental and African Studies. She The Black Fly Society Developmentally Disabled. was one of some 2,000 scholars from was established to make 137 nations chosen from 36,000 Hudson Krakowski is working applications. Following her studies, donating to the Fund for as client administrator with Jane will return to the Caribbean to COA easier and greener. Patron Technology and acting in work in environmental policy and the webseries Brothers which is advocacy. about to film its second season: We hope you'll join this brothersseries.com. After working for two years as a swarm of sustaining donors COA admission counselor, Eliza In May, Jess McCordic received Ruel moved to South Portland, ME, by setting up a monthly an MS in biology from Syracuse to be closer to her family. She is online gift. It's the paperless University with the thesis, now helping high school students way to give to COA. "Discrimination of age, sex, and prepare for college as an advisor at individual identity using the upcall TRIO Upward Bound at University of of the North Atlantic right whale Southern Maine. Follow the instructions at (Eubalaena glacialis)." She continued coa.edu/donatenow, or if as research assistant in SU's Parks Lab through July and is now a 2015 you want to give by mail: research assistant with the Pacific Casey Acklin is co-author of "Effects Whale Foundation in Maui, HI. of natural enrichment materials on The Fund for COA stress, memory, and exploratory 105 Eden Street behavior in mice" published in Lab 2012 Animal 44 (7). He has been offered Bar Harbor, ME 04609 Hale Morrell received a master's a position as a research assistant (Please make checks out to in forest science degree from for Gareth Howell at The Jackson College of the Atlantic.) the Yale School of Forestry and Laboratories. Environmental Studies in May. She spent the summer with the West Questions? Virginia Land Trust writing baseline The alumni board meets four times Call 207-801-5625. documents for their properties. a year and welcomes new members. For more information, or to send Urs Riggenbach has been working your news and notes, contact Dianne for the Finnish startup, GoSol.org, Clendaniel, dclendaniel@coa.edu. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 49 Donor Profile C.W. Eliot Paine: Passionate about Nature The year was 1968. Father Jim Gower had just taken a parish on Mount Desert Island. Les Brewer, Father Jim's old high school football pal, was a Bar Harbor businessman. Come summer, MDI boomed; the rest of TRAST the year it struggled. How can we improve life on this island year-round? the two friends pondered. They gathered others to discuss solutions, among them the Reverend Cushman McGiffert, Jr. Soon his young cousin, C.W. Eliot Paine, a horticulturist, joined them. Now retired as the executive director of Cleveland, Ohio's 3,600-acre Holden Arboretum, Eliot recalls those early days. "My elderly cousin Cushman McGiffert was inviting me to these erudite meetings with Les and Father Gower and several others-I wish I remembered their names. I was the youngster; I was only there because I was a cousin and interested in ecology and nature." Those legendary meetings led to the creation of the small, hands-on, democratic, environmentally focused College of the Atlantic on the shores of Frenchman Bay. Meanwhile, across the island and out on Blue Hill Bay's Hardwood Island, another educational program was being launched, the Maine Island Ecology Program. This three-week summer session for high school students was founded by the "youngster" Eliot, along with his friend Dennis Wint. The concepts were remarkably similar: immerse young people in nature; get them peering into tidepools, examining beaver dams, noticing bird nests during the day, and constellations at night. Each summer for twenty- five years, Hardwood's ecology program changed the lives of the thirty participants who hailed from a diverse array of locales across the country. "We didn't ask about their academic background. The only requirement for admission was an interest in nature-in butterflies, exploring low tide zones, trees, ecology," says Eliot. "And what the students were saying Photo by Linda Paine. was, / never knew other kids were interested in what I'm interested in-the out-of-doors, nature." Having grown up summering at nearby Moose Island extended summers on his cherished island. For despite Bar, Eliot was passionate about nature-and about his busy, involved career, Maine held sway. So did College education. At the time he was Holden's education director. of the Atlantic. From 1979 to 1985-some of COA's hardest He also served on the board of the Student Conservation years-Eliot served on the board of trustees. Association, which places students as volunteers in the "What kept me involved? The college fulfilled all of the nation's parks and forests. promise that I heard discussed at those early meetings- After many candlelit evenings-Hardwood had no bringing an intellectual environment to Mount Desert electricity-Eliot and Dennis outlined the Maine Island Island, providing worthwhile employment for intelligent Ecology Program. In 1970, the Cleveland Museum of people who now make their home on the island, and Natural History agreed to sponsor it. Eliot was the educating students who are now working in far reaches of botanist, though after the first year work kept him the world doing great things. It is a marvelous, marvelous in Cleveland for most of the summer. The program idea." continued until 1995 when Eliot retired and could spend -Donna Gold 50 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE COMMUNITY NOTES In addition to other summer In July, Rich Borden, Rachel Carson developing an installation based on activities, including hosting the Chair in Human Ecology, took part the "dead end road" in Otter Creek. Waterbird Society at COA with in a weeklong training seminar at With support from the Kathryn Davis Katherine Shlepr '13, John the New York Center for Jungian International Fund, Dru also spent a Anderson, William H. Drury Studies in Rhinebeck, NY. In August month as one of eight international Professor of Ecology/Natural History, he attended the centennial meeting artists-in-residence of diverse media collaborated with Acadia National of the Ecological Society of America. aboard an expeditionary vessel Park in monitoring eagle activity on As a member of the ESA governing through Scotland's Shetland and Thrumcap Island. board and chair of the human Orkney islands with the Clipperton ecology section, Rich organized, Project. Having connected to local chaired, and presented at a special weavers, historians, ornithologists, session on the history of human archeologists, and artists, Dru is ecology. He is now editing the now working on a response to the collected papers from the session, to journey. be published jointly by ESA and the Society for Human Ecology. As part of a series sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council, Gray Cox, faculty member in philosophy, social theory, and peace studies, spoke on "Threats to National Security Posed by Artificial Intelligence and The film by art faculty member Robotics" at the Winter Harbor Nancy Andrews, The Strange Eyes Public Library in July. In October of Dr. Myes, screened at The Maine he presented the talk "Artificial International Film Festival and Intelligence and Existential Threats: the New Horizons Film Festival Rogue AI and the 'Smarter Planet" to in Wroclaw, Poland last summer, the Maine Society of Eye Physicians and in New York City and Ohio's and Surgeons annual conference in Wexner Center in the fall. In August, Ken Cline, David Rockefeller Family Bar Harbor. His latest album, Sleep The Shoulder Land video festival Chair in Ecosystem Management and Baby, Sleep, lullabies and songs screened On a Phantom Limb. Protection, continues to work with of peace, is available at graycox. Interviewed by filmmakermagazine. Acadia National Park to coordinate bandcamp.com. com, Nancy said, "I didn't want to faculty and student work in the make a rhetorical film, but I want park, especially geared to the 2016 people to think about the limitations centennial of ANP and the National of understanding the world only Park Service. At the George Wright through their own senses that our Society biannual conference in perceptions are individual, and as Oakland, CA, he coordinated a species actually quite limited and the workshop Re-Envisioning subjective. And therefore, what we the Application of the National think we know might not be quite Environmental Policy Act Within so fixed and solid as we believe." Land Management Agencies with In early September, Nancy shot a ANP's Chris Buczko. And with John short film in Chicago co-directed Anderson, and (left to right in photo) When not overseeing the TAB line with Jennifer Reeder and featuring Chris Phillips '15, Miguel Provencio as dining room manager, Jennifer Michole Briana White. She also '17, Maya Rappaport '15, and Czifrik can be found taking her exhibited drawings, videos, and Erickson Smith '15, he attended the goats and sheep for long walks in sculptures at the MIFF gallery and is Science for Parks, Parks for Science: the woods and letting local children serving as a contributor to a project The Next Century conference in play with them on the land that she sponsored by the Patient-Centered Berkeley, CA. and Caroline Smith, Sea Urchins Outcomes Research Institute, "After Café manager, farm in East Trenton. The ICU: A Collaborative to Improve Art faculty member Dru Colbert Says Jennifer, "I have a three-legged Critical Illness Survivorship." spent much of her spring sabbatical ram who is always a challenge to COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 51 Parent & Family and shear, but C.J. Walke [Peggy went to Japan to talk with a Rockefeller Farms manager] was group of scholars about COA's Alumni Weekend a real pro and got the job done!" educational model. October 9-12, 2015 Dave Feldman, faculty member Carrie Graham, manager Some 100 friends and family members in physics and mathematics, of COA's George B. Dorr of students attended classes, went and Anna Demeo, engineering Museum of Natural History, on outings, and enjoyed glorious fall and physics lecturer and presented an insect catching weather. They were joined by some 50 director of energy education and identification workshop to alumni and guests, including (pictured and management, received a young campers at the Friends in third photo) Megan Smith '90 $20,000 grant from The Maine of Taunton Bay's summer day (also mother to a first-year student), Space Grant Consortium to camp in July. As part of her Jessie Greenbaum '89, and Megan's support students in energy- work at the Mabel Wadsworth son Rocco DenDanto. related campus projects, as Women's Health Center she well as the development of helped to organize a Women's a textbook by Feldman and Equality Day rally in downtown Demeo on their course, The Bangor, ME, to promote Physics and Math of Sustainable awareness of reproductive Energy, and other work. This rights and other feminist issues. fall Dave is teaching a new massive open online course, or Working with Sarah Hall, Anne MOOC: Introduction to Fractals T. and Robert M. Bass Chair in and Scaling, via the Santa Fe Earth Systems and GeoSciences, Institute. The course is part Spencer Gray '17 spent the of their Complexity Explorer summer creating a GIS-based project: complexityexplorer. bedrock geologic map of Mount org. Also, a paper Dave co- Desert Rock and Great Duck authored for Chaos was selected Island. In June, Sarah took for the "25 Articles for 25 Years" three students from her South collection, celebrating the 25th American Earth Systems class to anniversary of the journal. Peru to explore the intersections According to the editor, the of geology and society in choices "represent the depth the Cordillera Blanca region. and breadth of nonlinear During July and August she science historically and today." worked on two National Science They were picked for their Foundation-funded curricular importance, "their impact on the development projects, one direction of nonlinear science, constructing teaching modules and to reflect the variety of to enable educators to use exciting research in nonlinear geodetic data in introductory science." aip-info.org geoscience classes, the other establishing a professional Jay Friedlander, Sharpe- development program targeting McNally Chair of Green and environmental STEM students. Socially Responsible Business, Anna Demeo, and COA students Jamie McKown, James Russell were featured in a front-page Wiggins Chair in Government article in the business section and Polity, continues to of The New York Times for their document the earliest history work to integrate renewable of intercollegiate debate in the energy projects into the US. He also presented a series classroom. Over the summer of new findings to the biennial Jay attended a Changemaker NCA/AFA Summer Conference Summit at Middlebury College, on Argumentation in Utah. gave a featured presentation on Jamie's project is the first of creating abundance at Maine its kind: he has systematically Start-up and Create Week, and cataloged some 900 previously 52 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Sunblind Almost Motorcrash by Daniel Mahoney Published by Spork Press, 2015 COA lecturer in writing Daniel Mahoney's letterpress book is a collection of reviews of imaginary albums by imaginary bands. The collection, described as prose poems/microfictions, investigates, says Dan, "the distance between sound and how we use language to describe sound." Dan sent his "reviews" to some bands he liked-and in reply received some music written to his reviews, so the book also includes a cassette. Yes, a cassette. Here's the title review: Orange Over More Orange Artist: Muebles Pasados de Moda Album: Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence Label: Akon The first few notes of Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence feel like a blurry soundtrack of 1974, like some holiday couple on a walk near a river in Buenos Aires or La Paz or Lima. A down tempo warble bass line and slither-saturated wheeze ESSSS SUNBLIND drift color the mix and mix up that romantic ALMOST sun-on-water feel. Treated guitar licks sound like meandering dustups of languid planets or MOTORCRASH blissed out morning launchpads over super- daniel mahoney fuzzy otherdrift. The picture on the discsleeve is nice too. Orange over more orange. On Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence, a skittery FX dronestep blurs into echoes of hypnotic low-end whir, like an undulating crosswind or an unhinged heart-of-the-sun gauzescape bleeds into late afternoon drift and distant riversparkle. The textured expanse teems with lumber, spring days perfectly caught in a drifty hyper-saturated sprawlcore. An all-sun wrapped around a borrowed sweater. A super drugged- up male sun. A hazy sweater wearing South American sunblind almost motorcrash. All you need is time and headphones. The textures are an opal-hewn hiss of gauze and drum and slow heaving organsound blown in from an open- ocean endlessness. Half into it, the bifurcated spectacle does something that I, frankly, can't explain. Reverb laden guitar hooks serve as a long-distance pulse to the song, a wet whir-warped echo chasm between sun-bleached bonedry and over- grown moistureary. Guitars whir, wah, hover over radiant insect sound, until slowly entombed by other silences in the songfabrick, like warm nights in tumescent laundryhouses, or smoke rising in the drifting periphery where lunatics hold their lunatic ceremonies. So fucking awesome! By the end of the movement, we enter into an enormous enfolding of endless spacebliss and superdistant reverbed harmonica rivertwang. Past and future turn together like a bin of old 45s unearthed by a race of cosmic beekeepers and used as postcards to distant satellites. Silence: More Profound Than Pure Silence grooves, rumbles, croons, thrums in the ovulary steam baths of non-stop swirlcore and we emerge from it soulful, murky, warped: our singular transient bodies turning to transparent cinematic soundfields. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 53 In Memoriam Ann Sewall July 8, 1932-June 18, 2015 Ann Sewall and I were husband and wife for almost two decades. I loved her. I respected her. We didn't always agree. We argued; and if anything, our disagreements strengthened our bonds to one another. Ann was direct. It was not hard to discern her views. They were her views as she was incapable of dissembling. All her relationships-and not just with me-were marked by gentleness and kindness. My how I miss her. Ed Kaelber, founding COA president Tinker Bunker November 28, 1931-April 10, 2015 Tinker Bunker, carpenter, Jackson Laboratory research assistant, Mount Desert Island Hospital registered nurse, and licensed Coast Guard captain, also taught carpentry and construction skills to COA students in the late seventies. Roc Caivano, former faculty member in architecture and design, remembers that Tinker embraced COA's community-oriented ethos, directing students as they built bus shelters around the island. DG unknown debate events that took Research and Education project Geographic Society funding for place before 1910. examining whether chipped alder (a research in South Africa examining common resource for Maine farmers) the role of climate and substrate can be a useful soil amendment. chemistry on lichen diversity. Also Previous plantings were of tomatoes his students lan and Ella Samuel and brussels sprouts. They've found '16 received Garden Club of America that the chips don't hurt yields and scholarships funding their senior can suppress weeds. Suzanne also projects, and Liam Torrey '17 participated in a crop breeding received its Summer Scholarship workshop at the University of Maine. in Medicinal Botany. At the New Additionally, she is on the board of England Botanical Conference in Maine's fledgling Wild Seed Project, Northampton, MA, lan and Nishi working to increase the use of native presented posters on the serpentine plants in all landscapes so as to biota of Massachusetts, while Ella, Development associate Amanda conserve biodiversity, encourage Nishi, and two others presented the Mogridge, formerly Amanda Ruzicka, plant adaptation in the face of poster "Mycoremediation in the face married Alan Mogridge, the CEO of climate change, safeguard wildlife of anthropogenic environmental the MDI YMCA, on the lawn behind habitat, and create pollination and damage" both there and at the The Turrets on June 20. migration corridors for insects and Mycological Society of America birds. The first issue of the project's Meeting in Alberta, Canada. Also Writing from the Norway University journal includes an essay by Steve in Alberta, at the Botany 2015 of Life Sciences, Suzanne R. Morse, Ressel (see page 55) and an article conference, lan presented ongoing Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair of about Emily Dickinson's and William research with lichenologists at the Botany, is in her sixth season of David Thoreau's interest in native Field Museum while Ella and Nishi spending the fall teaching in its plants and herbaria, highlighting the presented her current research. agroecology master's program. Two COA herbarium. Nishi has had numerous recent of her students are now working as publications, and co-edited two organic consultants in Florida with Along with five other scholars, special issues of the Australian Jose Perez '09. In June, Suzanne including lan Medeiros '16 and Journal of Botany, titled Ultramafic worked with C.J. Walke to plant Nathaniel Pope '07, Nishanta Ecosystems: Proceedings of the 8th black dry beans as part of the third Rajakaruna '94, faculty member International Conference on Serpentine season of a Sustainable Agriculture in botany, received National Ecology. These include eight 54 COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE papers by Nishi and colleagues. her visiting professorship in climate For additional publications and change leadership. She spent two presentations, visit nrajakaruna. weeks in October on the Swedish wordpress.com. island of Fårö at the Ingmar Bergman estate finishing up several writing projects. From servicing field and construction work on COA's islands to private charters and education groups, COA's M/V Osprey had a full summer calendar, writes Capt. Toby Stephenson '98. Projects included deploying hydrophones into waters off Mount Desert Rock for master's research by Planned Giving The essay by biology faculty member Chris Tremblay '03, deploying Steve Ressel, "The Secretive Life OceansWide oceanography camp's Hank Schmelzer & Cynthia Livingston of the Four-Toed Salamander," remotely operated underwater appeared in the first annual Wild vehicle to study the Frenchman Bay We chose to provide for College Seed magazine, published in June. floor, field trips to Bean Island with of the Atlantic in our estate plan In July, Steve attended the annual Jean Masseau's COA drawing and because we want to help its future and Society for the Study of Amphibians painting class, taking out National sustainability. For us, COA represents and Reptiles meeting at UKansas Park Service divers to capture images values critical to providing a broad- along with Matt Messina '16 of Acadia underwater for the 2016 based education that is essential to (pictured), who presented the poster, centennial of ANP, and conducting build a better society for today and "Breeding by the Sea: Coastal Bluff several field trips for the August tomorrow. Vernal Pools as Breeding Habitat for Waterbirds Society Conference Whether in the sciences, arts, Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma hosted at COA. or the humanities, COA students maculatum)," summarizing represent a level of idealism, inquiry, preliminary data on salamanders Education faculty member Bonnie and activism fundamental to the breeding in high saline vernal Tai presented "Teacher and Youth leaders of this generation. The holistic pools. Matt was assisted by Zoey Leader Development in Nepal" at concept of "human ecology" assumes Greenberg '16, and Wade Lyman the Association for Interdisciplinary a genuine personal commitment to '15. Studies Conference in October. society, and that appeals to us. Examples of rigorous learning and Zach Soares '00, audio-visual application are plentiful and inspiring: technology specialist, has been a THE VITRUVIAN HEIR COA's "monster classes," which volunteer at the Bar Harbor Fire combine several courses into one Department for a year. He attended class, are models of interdisciplinary the Maine State Fire Academy this experiential learning; some students summer and hopes to be certified as gain entrepreneurship skills through an interior firefighter. the Hatchery while others go off to study in places around the globe. Doreen Stabinsky represented COA COA's leadership on environmental at climate change negotiations in KILBOY issues has become a standard other Bonn, Germany, in June, September, colleges seek to emulate. We see and October, joined by several COA Rebecca Hope Woods, director of students engaged, learning, and students in June and October. In creative services, recently illustrated creating. August she participated in a meeting The Vitruvian Heir, a steampunk novel In short, we are continuously of experts on climate change by L.S. Kilroy, published by Little Tree inspired and delighted by what College adaptation, and loss and damage, Press. She also juried Jacksonville of the Atlantic represents and offers. convened by the UN Secretary State University's annual Mini-Works We feel fortunate to be part of the General in Cairo, Egypt. In September on Paper exhibit, and won first place COA community, and know that Mount she was a panelist at a forum on the in the novice women's division at the Desert Island highly values the college Paris climate negotiations at Uppsala New Kids on the Block Crossfit 321 as a partner. University, where she continues competition in Topsham, ME. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 55 Dur Back Pages The Problem of Bar Island It was 1971. COA wouldn't start for another year, but that summer it explored the possibility of a problem-centered, human ecological curriculum through an intensive pilot program. Wesleyan freshman Gray Cox, now faculty member in philosophy, social theory, and peace studies, was one of the dozen students. Faculty included a biologist, a political scientist, and Bill Carpenter, who continues to teach literature and writing at COA. At the helm was Ed Kaelber, founding president, who believed that education ought to provide the tools to solve the world's numerous problems. The idea, recalls Bill, "was that on the journey from the problem to the solution you would find your education." To begin, they only had to look out the window. Just offshore lay uninhabited Bar Island. Land was for sale on this island of deep woods and spectacular cliffs, connected to Bar Harbor by a tidal bar. It offered the perfect setting for a problem-solving workshop. Students, teachers, and administrators swarmed the island. As they bushwhacked from the perimeter into the interior, they discovered the ruins of an old mansion that is still crumbling into the island's south end. "What is the right stewardship of an island-public or private?" Bill recalls wondering at the time. "You could have hundreds of people on it-over against one single family. Someone was hogging the commons; but then, thousands of visitors can severely stress a landscape." The students were charged with determining the problems-and connecting with the community to research solutions. Working alone, each student took on a project. At the time, a permanent causeway to the island was being proposed. Was that sensible? What would be the impact? create posters for Hancock County Sitting in the kitchen of the local state representative, Gray nonprofits in a design class and study the learned how such a decision would be made, gaining essential details of diplomatic treaties in advance insights into state government in the process. of attending United Nations conferences. When COA began a year later, students had the choice For Bill, that old crumbling mansion on of three workshops addressing immediate problems: a Bar Island led to reflections on the past tanker had grounded off Peaks Island in Casco Bay spilling and a course in Maine coast history and 100,000 gallons of oil; a company sought to mine the peat architecture co-taught with faculty emerita in Washington County's Great Heath; and just off the coast, JoAnne Carpenter. The ruin still haunts him. whales were endangered. But now, responding to feedback "It didn't look out to sea but to the glamour from the pilot program, the issues were approached as a of Bar Harbor, showing itself off, Gatsby- group. like. If we were to visit now, it might lead to The curriculum continued evolving, favoring student a course on inequality." choice. Though no longer mandatory, problem-centered classes thrive, with local expanding to global, so students Story and photos by Donna Gold. The Heart of a Tree Nimisha Bastedo '15 Excerpted from her June 6, 2015 student perspective at commencement humans have five fingers. Think And these questions and our about the six-fingered man in The work connect to other people's Princess Bride." questions and work in ways that I'm sure many COA classes have we might never have imagined, also pondered trees' hearts and the coming into COA. Realizing this was anatomy of our hands. What I find comforting. Because it would be harder to imagine is our professors frightening if we thought we had to giving us a, Well kid, the world is like find all the solutions on our own. this, answer. I think we came to COA When I leave, I plan to return because we knew there was more to home to northern Canada. Thinking learning than that. about becoming a teacher there, I'm If searching for answers about still filled with questions: How can I tree hearts or hands, we would do help a child learn when they come to it quite like a kindergartener, with school without breakfast, or weighed a flood of questions. Now if you're down with anxiety from an unstable thinking "after all we've invested into household? What if this instability is our graduates you're telling me that caused by poverty and alcoholism they're still asking questions like a and environmental degradation, kindergartener?" I can assure you, symptoms of larger structures of Where is the tree's heart? Yes! Our questions just might sound a power and racism imposed on these This could sound like the little more intellectual. communities for over one hundred beginning of a love poem, or part of We still have the curiosity of years? a COA student's commentary on a kindergarteners precisely because Realizing how much is out of painting. COA hasn't fed us answers. Instead, my hands and beyond my scope of But it's actually the question of a we've been asked, Well, what do knowledge, I could give up. Or I could sixth grader in northern Canada. This you think? This can be frustrating. invite other people into my questions young girl was sitting in a tree, quite Answers, after all, give us direction. and build connections between my seriously wanting to know where the They help us decide how to actually work and theirs. tree's heart was. I looked up at her. do things. What we may not realize is Questions are essential. But She waited for an answer. that we've learned to see answers as I hope we never underestimate Um I could have said, "Well starting points for new questions. the power of conversation-of all kid, biologically speaking, trees So, I had a vision that I would types. The ones about daunting, don't have this muscular organ you prove just how profound we've interconnected problems and the speak of, though as vascular plants, become by sharing some of the ones that begin with the simple and they do have a form of circulatory questions currently on our minds. wonderful things of the world. system." But knowing this girl had But when I asked my classmates So, I'm standing underneath spent six years in a mainstream for questions, what I found were that tree. And the young girl is still school, I worried she might let such conversations. Really interesting looking down at me from her branch, an answer extinguish her curiosity. ones. About hope and lifecycles, waiting for an answer. Where is the I wouldn't have worried if she were motivation and community, human tree's heart? Finally I say, "That's a a kindergartener-nothing. can ecology and chickens, about what it great question! What do you think?" extinguish their curiosity. About a takes to change people's minds. And it led to quite the conversation. year earlier, in a kindergarten class, Condensing these conversations About how the tree's name was a student was looking at his hand to a single question was impossible. Martha, and what the tree might do very intently. And then at his friend's Like our classes, our conversations when the students weren't around, hand. And then my hand, counting might start with one question, but and whether or not it hurts when her under his breath. they quickly evolve as we each branches break. Finally, he asked, "Hey!" Why do add partial answers which then By the way, if anyone has ideas we all have five fingers?" become kindling for more questions. about where a tree's heart could be, I could have said, "Well kid, the It's through this collaborative let me know. Because I'm still very structure of our hands is a product questioning and answering that our curious. of natural selection." Or, "Not all collective understandings grow. COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE 57 COA NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID AUGUSTA, ME PERMIT NO. 121 The College of the Atlantic Magazine 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609