Meditations at the Power Plant (3)

 EVOLUTION

Queen Anne's Lace flower, opening

Early in nature's reclamation of the Power Plant site, wind-blown seeds of Queen Anne's Lace pioneered the return of vegetation to this forlorn terrain.

Common Blue Mud-dauber Wasp (left)
Silky Field Ant (right)
Cuckoo Wasps (top and bottom)

Insects followed to feed on their nectar and pollen. The sensory abilities and mobility of these animals distinguish them from plant life, in what may be seen as an evolutionary advance. Even small insects are remarkably sophisticated in their skills and determination.

The Silky Field Ant
(detail from photo above)

Plants are the foundation of life, though they lack the musculature and neural developments of animals. But all animals are dependent on the ability of plants to create organic life from the sun's energy, certain elements, and water.

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth
feeding on Pickerelweed

When a pond formed beside the Power Plant site tremendous varieties of plants were able to colonize it and attract animals into the niche, including this highly developed insect, a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird lent its name to the lookalike moth with remarkable hovering endurance. Perhaps they had to develop similar body proportions to make this feat possible. As a feathered warm-blooded vertebrate the bird has a much longer lifespan potential than the cold-blooded insect living within an exoskeleton.

Green Heron in the Pickerelweed

The pond's developing ecosystem offers an increasing variety of food and habitat to carnivorous birds like this Green Heron hunting for tadpoles, minnows, and insects.

Merlin, a small falcon

A Merlin surveys the arena around the Power Plant for prey with the large bulging eyes of a high-speed raptor on the wing. Its species has taken the power and agility of flight to a consummate level.

A Blanding's Turtle and a Painted Turtle

Turtles, having evolved protective shells mainly from the bony material of their ribs, don't need to rely on speed but often seek safety in water. They are reptiles born on land with scaly skin, distinct from amphibians born in the water with mucous-coated skins to keep from drying out when they emerge from the aqueous environment. Being cold-blooded, they have developed hibernating strategies to keep from freezing in cold climates like ours. Evolutionary evidence shows that birds have descended from ancient reptiles, their feathers deriving from specialized scales.

White-tailed Deer

Mammals lead wary lives. They generally hear, see, and smell you approaching the Power Plant before you are aware of them.

A young Coyote 

Rocky grout piles surrounding the former Power Plant present good denning locations for coyotes and foxes. Youthful curiosity occasionally brings them into contact with people.

Raccoon kits

Raccoons are among the most clever and adept of wild creatures, climbing trees with ease. Their long-fingered paws approach the maneuverability of our hands but they lack opposable thumbs to match human dexterity. Their shrewdness at times seems not far behind our own.

Surfacing granite blocks with a pneumatic hammer
(detail of photograph below)

Our species' shrewdness, dexterity, and tenacity drove the industry that so radically altered the landscape of Halibut Point.

Granite inspectors and workers at the Power Plant
Charles Cleaves photo, 1909
Courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

To accomplish it people converged in patterns shaped not just by physical but by social evolution. Aspiring immigrants bore the brunt of the arduous labor. Well-dressed supervisors organized the industry. Capital investors masterminded its integration to the burgeoning economy.

The trail today to the Power Plant

Evolution in its longest earthly timeline accounts for the geologic processes that create and decompose granite.  The stone originates in a superheated molten state near the planet's core, crystallizes below the crust, surfaces in the formation of continents, then erodes and eventually is subducted back to the interior in a vast recycling operation.

By this scale the colossal quarrying industry at Halibut Point is a highly accelerated but miniscule adjunct to the natural forces of granite decomposition. And so it is with the Power Plant, created, dismantled, and overgrown by shifting timelines.

Meditations at the Power Plant (2)

TRANSFORMATION

Site of the power plant today, at center

 Little remains today of the building that powered the granite industry at Halibut Point.

Lichens and blooming shad bush, early May

Natural elements have transformed the barren landscape. Bacteria and lichen spores carried through the air extend their colonies over sterile surfaces. The acids they release, and those from falling rain, make nutrients available to organic life. The physical forces of freezing and thawing, solar radiation, and weather break up stone into particles of sand and clay. Humus accumulates to improve water retention and soil texture. Pathways develop for the arrival of herbaceous and woody plants as the process accelerates.

The power plant c. 1909, center
Photo courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

The transformation of this lifeless terrain in the last century recapitulates the planetary development of the biosphere that evolved over billions of years.

Oxeye Daisies growing on the foundation

With favorable moisture in June daisy flowers blanket the power plant's remaining fragments of brick and concrete.

White-tailed deer browsing in the shrubbery

Reforestation proceeds by pioneering plants in the surrounding grout piles.

Cranberry blooming at the water's edge

The large cavity blasted out of the ledge beside the power plant fills continuously with ground water to sustain novel vegetation delivered by seeds from near and far.

Garter Snake closing in on a Bullfrog

The development of this little Eden draws diverse life, including the wily serpent.

The frog's narrow escape

Familiar Bluet damsel fly on lily pad

Once they arrive at the pond, certain damsel flies and dragonflies perpetuate themselves in the aquatic environment as egg and nymph stages beneath the water surface, to emerge as winged adults into our familiar world.

Painted Skimmer dragonfly on Loosestrife flower

Dragonflies use flowers as hunting perches for preying on smaller insects. Everything about their metamorphosis, their appearance, and their fast, agile flight mesmerizes observers of all ages. 

Spicebush Swallowtail on Pickerelweed

Butterflies seek out flowers to exchange pollination services for nectar. These progeny of different kingdoms are crucial to each other's needs.

Great Blue Heron foraging in Pickerelweed colony

Birds are the apex visitors both in creation and harvest of the pond. Quite possibly, and by chance, they have introduced varied germs of biologic life to this isolated spot as those species cling to, or pass through the digestive tract of, these boundless creatures that ultimately benefit from maturing ecological niches. 

*  *  * 

In last week's meditation I traversed from the currently blooming Japanese Andromeda through photographs of plants blooming successively later in the spring, without adequately noting that those flowers are not yet on display in the local landscape. So no, the site of the erstwhile power plant, while extraordinary in many ways, is not seasonally precocious. My meditation leaned to  mood rather than clarity.

Meditations at the Power Plant (1)

 

Japanese Andromeda

En route to the shoreline, after passing the main quarry there's an intersection of five roads at Halibut Point reminiscent of Five Corners in Rockport, where the State Highway meets Broadway and Main Street. Here a quiet trail leads down to the site of the old power plant.

The Andromeda blooming

At the entrance to this trail an ornamental shrub is currently blooming, earlier than almost anything else in the landscape. It's a domesticating touch most likely introduced by the Webster family when they founded the Pitcairn Park recreational venture during the 1950s.

Cellophane Bees mating

The Andromeda grows in a relatively warm, sheltered location. It helps sustain one of the earliest of insects to break hibernation, the Cellophane Bee.

Red Maple flowering

Nearby, a large Red Maple tree puts forth its exquisite early spring flowers.

The quarry in operation, 1913
Painting by Leon Kroll

In its operational era the quarry had a central power plant feeding all the drills, pumps, and machinery by compressed air hoses ducted through a culvert beneath perimeter road. It is located at the far right of Leon Kroll's painting.

The power plant foundation today

Presumably the power plant was coal fed. Getting the fuel to the site must have been a labor-intensive operation in itself. Louis Rogers, one of the Directors of the Rockport Granite Company, told an interviewer late in life that keeping the quarry free of infiltrating ground water was the biggest expense the business faced.

The site, elevated railroad bed to the rear, ocean beyond

The train pictured in Kroll's painting moved salable granite blocks down to the shipping pier at Folly Cove and disposed of useless stone on the Overlook grout pile.

Stone terracing

Some of the granite was finely honed into structural features around the power plant. Beside it lies a small quarry now filled with water. Sometimes it is referred to as a "motion", but that term should be reserved for small pits excavated manually by independent operators, often during periods of unemployment from the commercial quarries. These can be found in the woods throughout Cape Ann and supplied local building projects, or paving stones taken to market by ox cart.

Green Frog and blooming Watershield,
Brasenia schreberi

The astonishing reclamation by nature of these sterile industrial zones will be the subject of the next Meditation.

Farewell to Winter

 

In the harshest part of winter, winds off the Bay formed icicles sideways along the shore.

Snow Bunting

Snow Buntings still managed to forage now and then in the coastal moors.

Lichens, ice, and minerals decorated quarry walls under the opposing influences of sun and shade.

Song Sparrow

As the snow piled up meadow residents gleaned the slim remnants of last year's bounty.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Arboreal birds searched tree crevices for morsels of food.

Mild temperatures this week have started patterning the quarry surface after the monotonous whiteness of sheet ice.

Alternate thawing and freezing has created glassy crystals and reflecting shards.

The melting enriches the beauty of elements beyond what was and what will be.

Hooded Mergansers amid ice floes

Transitory Hooded Mergansers find the first open water at Halibut Point as a very brief stopover on their way to northern breeding grounds.

The Merganser pair yesterday

Early risers can enjoy this fleeting moment between winter and spring.

Winter Thrushes

 

Hermit Thrush

A couple of shy Hermit Thrushes braved the cold months at Halibut Point. They would appear now and then at the edge of the wood line scuffling through the leaves in search of food.

It's a challenging time of year for birds that are primarily insectivores.

Hermit Thrush in cedar tree

The solution to survival lies in diet adaptation, adjusting to concentrate on fruit in trees and shrubs.

Standing on ice

During frigid weather even water can be scarce. Some birds drank at the edge of the quarry where sun-warmed stone melted a thin band of ice.

Robins eating privet berries

Robins, another member of the Thrush family, have successfully contended with similar problems. They have sometimes been present in large flocks this the winter.

Robins in the snow

Their adaptation is a surprising departure from traditional lore viewing Robins as the first sign of spring.

Eastern Bluebird this week

A few resident Bluebirds have been the cheeriest members of the Thrush family recently at Halibut Point. This one's day started at 17˚.

Bluebird in Sumac tree

Like the other species it adapted to available food. 

All the thrushes bring melodious voices and flashes of color to their environment.