Spring in Maine! One day it’s in the 80s, the next frost kills the forsythia. After the bugless joy of winter, it’s ants in the mailbox and ticks on your pants and the brown-tailed moth microscopic poison in the air.  After the dead quiet of winter, it’s early-bird summer people walking down my lane talking on their phones on speaker and lawn-care companies revving up half a dozen leaf blowers and lawn mowers at once across the street.

I don’t say all this to sound like some grumpy old boomer, but more to point out to any aspiring writers that it’s easy to wax poetic about the change of seasons in Maine, but if you don’t want your book to be like thousands of others, get out there and find out what spring in Maine is really like. It’s more than just cute jokes about mud season.

So, that’s my writing tip for the day.

Just so I don’t leave you bumming out about ticks or leaf blowers, I’ll share some photos of my recent forays into Maine spring, which don’t have either. I normally would shut myself into the house, because of the ticks, the ants, the brown tail moth and all that other stuff, but my dog Willow doesn’t care about those things. She wants her walks. [An apology to anyone reading this on their phone. I know the mobile app squeezes photos into a funhouse abstract, but that’s technology for you.]

What the hell? I know! The photo doesn’t do this — whatever it is — justice. Made of wooden slats and patched with a variety of materials, this thing — whatever it is — is a good 15 or so feet high and several hundred yards long. Leaking all the way. The sound was spectacular. Kind of like a powerful waterfall combined with heavy rain. My first and continuing thought was “Is this supposed to be doing this?” Some how, some way, it’ll go in a book. But even if it weren’t useful, it was the highlight of our walk. And our day. It’s along Messalonskee Stream in Oakland.

Also along Messalonskee Stream, in another part of Oakland, we caught this old skeleton of a mill. Hard to get a good photo with a dog pulling on the leash and a steep dropoff down to the water. On the other hand, the fact it’s hidden in the trees makes it more interesting.

Willow, for whatever reason. loves loves loves Capitol Park in Augusta. Maybe it’s that 199 years of stuff in the ground for her to sniff and dig at. I love Capitol Park, too. I have a great affection and pride for our State House and the park. The fact that I grew up blocks away and it was part of our childhood playground is only part of it.

One of the walking paths at Capitol Park, early spring before the leaves started coming out. Even so, it may be hard to see the State House dome through the branches.

Capitol Park was established in 1827, the same year it was decided Augusta would be the capital. Take THAT, Portland. It’s Maine’s first planned public space, and the Legislature coughed up $373.13 for the initial work. It shrunk from 34 to 20 acres after it was determined the State House would occupy the high ground at the west end of the park. At the end of a straight line down the middle of the park from the State House is an obelisk dedicated to Gov. Enoch Lincoln, who died in office in 1829. It’s not really clear what the monument is and when we were kids we called it “the four dead guys obelisk,” because it has the names of four guys we’d never heard of on it and it’s on top of a mausoleum.

The park was used as an encampment and parade grounds for troops during the civil war, then cattle were allowed to graze there for much of the rest of that century.

The Olmstead plan for the park had more trees and paths that what the legislature would fund, The State House is across the street from the top. This is from the state’s application for the National Register.

In 1920, the park was more formally laid out when Gov. Carl Milliken (no relation) commissioned the Olmstead Brothers (yes, THAT Olmstead) for a formal design. Top Portland landscape architect Carl Rust Parker was hired to carry it out. He had some more big ideas to enhance the Olmstead plan, but the Legislature didn’t want to pony up the money. The Olmsteads liked a lot of trees, twisty paths, natural features, and more. That was a lot to ask I guess, of a Maine Legislature that was probably grumbling about how it’d been just fine the way it was and why pay money to change it?

Parker  had to pare things down (goodyby zoo! so long pond with native fish!) but he still managed a nice facelift.

One of his elements, a stone speaker’s rostrum toward the back of the park, still exists. It directly faces the State House and is in excellent condition. I’ve never seen any speakers there. I’m not sure if anyone even knows what it is anymore.

The Olmstead, and Parker’s, plans for native trees also was pared down. That said, Parker still managed to get his way on some of it, including a nice grove of native pines that Willow finds particuarly exciting. The stately decidious trees that today line the paths that cirecle the park’s perimeter and cut through it vertically are thanks to Parker and his vision.

Willow likes the grove of twisty little pines near the back of the park.

Many of the original trees were elms. They were killed off by Dutch elm disease last century, but by 1983 had been replaced by red oaks, which now tower over the paths as though they’d been there all along.

One of Willow’s favorite spots is a grove of pines, one of Parker’s additions, at the back end of the park, where things get a little wild because of the geography most notably a ravine that would likely be favorite place if I would ever let her go in it. Access to the river was cut off in the mid-1800s when railroad tracks cut through, and now there’s a road there was well.

Capitol Park remains remarkably unchanged from what it was 199 years ago. It’s not fancy. It’s a long swath of green from the State House down to the Kennebec River, with symmetrical paths, some benches and trees. When you’re in the center and look west toward the state house, the trees frame the view. It works the way stuff like that is supposed to work — simple, yet effective, dignified and welcoming at the same time.

Trees frame the State House, looking west from the cente rof Capitol Park.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. One thing that really burns my butt is when the local newspaper misspells the name as Capital Park, with an “a.” Just an editor’s note: Capitol is the building, capital is the city or place of government. You’re welcome. I expect papers from places like Portland not to get the name right — after all, even though it’s the capital, Augusta is considered some exotic backwater that only exists as a euphimism for state government. But in reality, whether the city and suburb folk like it or not, it’s the heart of Maine’s history as a state.

If you live in Maine and have never checked it out, you should. Despite any bells and whistles, it’s a really pleasant place to walk and hang out. An underappreciated piece of Maine history, as well as our lives now.

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And our final spring photo of the day. A couple of weeks ago, on our nightly walk around the block, Willow stopped to smell the roses. Literally, of course.

It was the night before Mother’s Day, and the church had put out a bucket of roses for passers-by to take home for their mom’s for Mother’s Day.

Nothing grumpy about that!