Here’s the 2015 edition of Acadia-o-lanterns, a great way to keep Acadia on our mind even during the off-season. Happy Halloween!
Moose-o-lantern and Bear-o-lantern keep Acadia on our mind for Halloween.
We’ve had wildlife in Acadia on our mind, with recent blog posts about the topic, as well as a citizen science database we created on Anecdata.org, “Wildlife Sightings in Acadia National Park.” And we’ve also written about Bates-style cairns.
So why not a couple of Acadia-o-lanterns that incorporate those themes?
Moose, bear and Bates-style cairn for Acadia Halloween treat
Both moose and black bear are “present” in Acadia National Park, but moose is considered “rare” in the park’s species profile page for moose, and bear, “occasional.”
The historic Bates-style cairns, or rock piles to mark trails, were dreamed up by Waldron Bates, a late 19th, early 20th century trailblazer, and have become an Acadia icon. Don’t mess around with Bates cairns, which are arranged just so to keep hikers on the trail. But feel free to take pictures of them, and even carve a Cairn-o-lantern in honor of them, as we have.
It’s hard to do justice to the Bates cairn in a pumpkin carving, but hopefully including the photo we based the carving on, below, can help you visualize it.
Bates-style cairn featured in this Jack-o-lantern.
Each Bates-style cairn is unique in its coloring and shape, such as this one along the Dorr North Ridge Trail.
The Moose-o-lantern is perhaps the closest we’ll ever come to this mammal in Acadia, although we’ve seen plenty of them in Baxter State Park. We don’t think we’ll ever be as lucky as fellow blogger Donald P. Lenahan, who saw moose on Youngs Mountain and shared a photo with us for our blog. We’ve hiked Youngs a couple of times, but never even seen moose tracks.
Rare sighting of a moose in Acadia National Park, as captured by author and blogger Donald P. Lenahan, as he was exploring Youngs Mountain in August 2012. (Photo by Donald P. Lenahan)
And the Bear-o-lantern is probably as close as we’ll get to black bear in Acadia, too, although we’ve had occasional sightings elsewhere, such as in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the species is considered “common.”
You can’t tell it from the first photo above, but we incorporated the Bates-style cairn with the Bear-o-lantern, with the Porcupine Islands in the distance.
Below, the photo of the Acadia-o-lanterns in the dark helps bring out the cairn and islands a little better.
May Acadia be on your mind, too, during Halloween, and any other time of year!
Moose appears to approach Bates-style cairn from the left, and bear, from the right, in these Acadia-o-lanterns. Those are the Porcupine Islands in the distance between cairn and bear. Happy Halloween from Acadia on My Mind!