Looking Back: The Naturalist's Notebook Annex
Northeast Harbor, Maine (2013-18)
We opened our second Naturalist's Notebook space in a former fish market on Main Street in Northeast Harbor in 2013. We call it the Annex because it's much smaller than our Seal Harbor space, though it's still a lot of fun.
Our welcome sign reminds visitors that we Earthlings are all on a wild ride.
At our interactive specimen table (quickly convertible into a playing surface for what we called "specimen table tennis"), nature-minded artists and non-artists of all ages tried their hands at sketching or coloring birds, flowers, turtles and other natural forms that were illustrated on our drawing prompts.
We introduced our gold-framed, spectrum-color-coded Reframing History timeline of the universe in Northeast Harbor in 2015.
Forward-thinking visitors posed in the timeline's final frame, which represented the future. We loved that this visitor was reading The Human Age, Diane Ackerman's thoughtful exploration of how our species has come to dominate and alter the natural world.
In small diorama installations we examined the state of the world's endangered wildlife.
At the end of the 2018 season we decided to close our our Northeast Harbor space, which was shoebox small but offered its own unique shop-and-think experience—interactive, playful and filled with knowledge from the world's greatest scientists and naturalists. Thanks to all who visited that sweet mini-Naturalist’s Notebook!
Visitors shopped, learned, drew, examined bird and insect specimens, took part in interactive installations and immersed themselves in a space that had the feel of a 19th-century naturalist's lab/studio,
If our Seal Harbor space is designed as a 13.8-billion-year outdoor environment, the Northeast Harbor space represented the interior study of life by scientists, naturalists and artists. It was the studio, the lab, the study.
The free Island Explorer bus system on Mount Desert Island includes a stop right in front of our Northeast Harbor Annex.
But all of it carried the fun twist of The Naturalist's Notebook. The Annex, like the Seal Harbor Notebook, was about curiosity and learning and creativity and delight. It was about nature and science and you.
Our human specimen interaction gave visitors a unique perspective on the other species of animals that we Homo sapiens collect, study and display.
Northeast Harbor explorers mee the young Charles Darwin, who was holding a replica of the HMS Beagle, the ship on which he traveled the world.
The Natural History Tree represented a branching out of our 13.8-billion-year spectrum-coded timeline of history, with colored lights and ornaments of stars, planets, animals and plants placed in their proper time period. The universe formed at the base of the tree; today and the future decorated the top.
You thought we were kidding when we told you that we played specimen-table tennis in Northeast Harbor? The specimens included moths and butterflies from Bernd Heinrich, turtle shells from David M. Carroll, local shells from Pamelia Markwood Neff and birds from College of the Atlantic. Visitors could look down through the tabletop at the specimens and sketch them.
Northeast Harbor is one of Mount Desert Island's loveliest villages and a popular sailing spot.
The build-your-13.8-billion-year-brain section was filled with books, puzzles and interactions.