News & Updates
IIT Winter Newsletter - Winter Skies on Islesboro
From the Director’s Desk - Winter Skies on Islesboro
Winter in Maine is marked by long nights that make you want to curl up by the fire and hibernate. BUT, if you get outside on a clear Winter's night on Islesboro, you will find the sky alight with an unimaginable amount of energy! We are fortunate, on the island, to be able to see such an unimpeded sky, with the lack of light pollution our rural living provides.
But, it could be even better! Dark Sky Maine is an initiative to retain and reclaim our nights' sky throughout Maine. An organization fostered by the appreciation of our night sky and the knowledge of the harmful roll that artificial lights play on wildlife and our own circadian rhythm. Dark Sky Maine works to inform and educate organizations, individuals and communities on changes they can make. IIT hosted, John Meader, local astronomer and then, Vice President of Dark Sky Maine to lead a Zoom talk in 2022. John discussed not only the importance of downward facing outdoor lighting for wildlife and human health, but the remarkable improvement it has on cost and effective lighting. If you’d like to hear the entirety of John Meader’s Dark Sky Maine talk, click on the link below.
Interested in learning more about Maine’s Winter Skies? IIT will be hosting a Star Party, led by John Meader, on Wednesday, February 26th at IIT’s Blueberry Hill Preserve @ 7:00pm. Join us then!
Interested in more resources? Follow the links below to learn more about Dark Sky Maine and the International Dark Sky program. Both sites provide excellent information on the Dark Sky initiative as well as links to Dark Sky approved lighting and other tools and resources.
IIT Winter Newsletter - New Data Tools for IIT!
IIT has some exciting new Data Tools we are using! Little Green Light, a membership database and Landscape, a land management program.
Exploring Little Green Light with Kizzi Barton
An essential part of IIT's fundraising efforts involves tracking donations and donor information. For nearly 20 years, the trust relied on Giftworks, a database commonly used by many charitable organizations. However, in October 2024, we made a significant shift to a new, cloud-based database: Little Green Light. The program had been on our radar for several years and we had heard from other landtrusts that made the switch and were very enthusiastic about LGL. Key factors in our decision included waning customer support from Giftworks on what was a bulky, difficult-to-navigate software, and the significant price difference. To ensure a smooth transition, we brought in an external consultant to manage the data migration and provide staff training.
So far, we’ve been thrilled with the switch! The new system has offered deeper insights into donation levels and trends, is far more intuitive, and provides the ability to access information remotely—a feature that has proven to be incredibly useful.
Exploring Landscape with Dan Tutor
When the weather has been especially bitter, and the trails are in good shape, I’ve been working with the new Landscape Conservation software Chloe discovered at the 2024 Land Trust Alliance Rally. It is proving to be incredibly useful in a variety of ways, from mapping trails to project management. We are looking forward to testing out the programs ability to aid in conservation easement monitoring. The software includes a mobile app specifically to be used by conservation easement monitors. It allows a monitor to fill out the reporting form, take photos and locate them on a property map using GPS, then submit the report to the office all at the same time, from their smart phone. This is a big improvement from the current method of filling out a paper report, taking photos with a smart phone or camera, and marking the approximate location and direction the photo was taken on a paper map before delivering it to the office along with emailing in photos.
I’ve so far mapped the boundaries of the preserves, and now I’m working to map trails by GPS, adding bridges and points of interest, and marking current and future projects. The software also can keep track of recurring and one-time tasks, site visits, along with many more functions, enabling more efficient project and time management.
IIT Winter Newsletter - On the Trails
On the Trails - Bridge Woes by Dan Tutor
This can be a quiet time for visitors to the trails. The ground is often frozen and streams are glazed with ice. Some days the wind howls and bites, like it did last Monday when Chloe and I walked the sandbar out to Hutchins Island. When it blows especially hard, as it has several times already, trees come down, and it takes a flurry of cutting and clearing to open them up again. I like to have this done within a week of a big blow, but sometimes it takes a little longer, especially if falling trees have damaged a bridge.
We had a few of these this year. The first was when a massive 30” diameter hemlock stub crushed a bridge section on Elaine’s trail. The 35’ tall stump was thoroughly colonized by Ganoderma tsugae mycelium that had turned large portions of trunk to the consistency of wet cardboard. The hemlock varnish shelf is closely related to the reishi - a renowned medicinal fungus with a glossy, lacquer red exterior. I love harvesting them to make tinctures or display around my house. I was impressed, but not pleased, when the rotten hemlock drove the 5’ steel posts holding up the bridge straight into the ground like finish nails. Luckily, the portion of the bridge effected isn’t essential, it was built at a time when beavers had dammed this portion of the waterway. The dam has since disintegrated, and the formerly flooded gully is now a small stream, easily crossed by the unaffected portion of the bridge.
The second bridge was a portion of the bog bridging at Broad Point that lifted and torqued. The cause of this is something of a mystery. No trees were down nearby, but its possible nearby spruce roots levered it up from beneath as the tree rocked in high southeasterly winds. In a testament to the bog bridging system we have adopted, this was thankfully easy to isolate and fix.
In other bridge news, we have removed the bridge we installed over the Marsh Pond breach at Hutchins beach for the season. This was the plan from the beginning, as we feared any winter storms, like the ones that caused the breach last year, would seriously damage it. The bridge has been moved to safety for the winter, and will be reinstalled on taller posts in the spring. This fall extreme high tides (over 12’) left the bridge submerged at peak high water. Raising the bridge, a foot or more would keep it above the highest tides. The tide also flooded a significant portion of the dune leading to the bridge, so we are considering adding sections at both ends to extend it.
If you’re out hiking the trails this Winter, make sure to take care on snowy, icy slopes, and enjoy the beauty that Winter in Maine holds.
Did You Miss One of Our Talks?
Many of Our Zoom Talks are Recorded. Click on a link below to view some of our past topics!
December Stars and Planets - Star Party w/ John Meader
Predicting Sea Level Rise and Flooding in the Gulf of Maine
Art Installation, Broad Point Preserve
Art Installation by Corinna DSchoto at Broad Point Preserve
“Interiors” Installation by Corinna DSchoto
Its not often we encounter something unexpected on the IIT trails. Maybe you will see a new animal or plant, or perhaps a new piece of bridging, more often someones lost hat. This summer we experimented with something new and a little surprising on the Broad Point trail - a public art installation by the sculptor and artist Corinna DSchotto. Her piece, interior, fresh from its debut at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland was installed on the site of the old cabin out on the Broad Point trail looking down Gilkey’s Harbor. You may remember the old stone fireplace there, harkening back to a different time.
I came across Corinna’s work in February of this year, through my friend Rachel Romanski, who was the assistant curator for the CMCA at the time. Corinna is a professor of sculpture at Mass Art, and runs 10b, Boston’s only alternative art space, a hole in the wall lab for artistic experimentation. Living in a city where storage space is a luxury, she was looking for a home for the large steel sculpture after the show at the CMCA closed. Her request was that it could be experienced by the public in an outdoor setting. Rachel floated the idea out to a group of friends, and I was immediately interested. I was intrigued by the geometric lines of the piece. It looked like a drawing made in two point perspective rendered in three dimensions.
The sculpture is based on the architectural drawings for a widely available modular home design. It consists of a number of rectangular frames, which, when viewed from different angles, suggest the lines and planes of the proto house they take their inspiration from. In a gallery setting, these frames create an experience akin to the inverse of looking at static art on walls. As the viewer walks around the piece, each rectangle frames a different angle of the gallery and its art and occupants, shifting with the viewers changing perspective.
Only a few months into my job with IIT, I was apprehensive about bringing up the bold concept of installing a public art piece in one of the preserves, but Steve, Chloe, and Robyn received the idea enthusiastically and encouraged me to move forward. I contacted Corinna and we exchanged a flurry of emails, then met for coffee in Rockland, and finally she came out to tour some of the preserves. There were several locations that I thought could be good candidates for a sculpture. The Hinkle Preserve came to mind, with its easy access and short, neatly looping trail. Another option I thought of was putting it somewhere out on Hutchins Island. I imagined the impression of surprise and wonder it would elicit as it was discovered by hikers. But perhaps the most intriguing idea was the old cabin site Broad Point. As it turned out, this was Corinna’s favorite spot too. Coincidentally, the footprint of interiors is precisely the same size as the foundation of the old cabin that once stood there.
Once we had the spot located, the next challenge was getting all the materials out to the end of Broad Point. This was no easy task. The deconstructed sculpture was in 14 steel frames of various sizes, with the largest being 8 feet by 10 feet. We considered carrying the frames out one by one, but this would have been a considerable physical challenge. After some thought, we decided to use the IIT canoe as a kind of barge to float all the frames out in one trip. To accomplish this, we laid all the frames flat across the canoe, then gathered 4 pieces of blue dock foam from around Broad Cove, and lashed them to each corner of the stacked frames where they hung off the sides of the boat. This created a kind of outrigger craft, with the frames balanced on the canoe and held stable by the foam. Our plan was to load the canoe up near the Mill Creek bridge at high tide, and ride it out to Broad Point as the tide receded. We partially succeeded, but loading up took a little longer than anticipated, and the first part of the voyage consisted of dragging the cargo-laden canoe across the shallow mudflat until we had enough water to paddle. From there it was a short cruise to the end of the point, where we unloaded everything and carried it up the bank to the chimney.
Cleaning up the site was another challenge. The old cabin had been intentionally demolished by controlled fire, but what Corinna found when she started to dig channels for the base of the sculpture was a layer of broken and melted glass, along with hinges, door knobs, and other household hardware. We collected several buckets of glass and artifacts in the process of putting up the sculpture.
The sculpture was installed in July, and piqued the interest of many who walked the trail. On August 5th, a reception was held out on the point. Rachel Alexandrou, a local forager and food artist based in North Haven made the evening magical by preparing a feast of locally collected flora and fauna. The tasting menu included such delicacies as black trumpet jam, local oysters with lovage mignonette and pickled magnolia flower, spruce tip Irish moss pudding with chokeberry sauce, and green crab broth with wild greens. Approximately 50 people showed up to see the piece in its new home and hear Corinna talk about its genesis and journey to the preserve. In contrast to the gallery setting, out on Broad Point the lines of the sculpture become frames for the stunning natural setting. As the viewer walks around the installation, these windows hold views of fern fields, a grove of hardwoods, oak and apple trees hanging over the beach, the view down brackets channel, and our ubiquitous gaunt-but-charming spruce forests. The response from the public has been enthusiastic.
