In the 1920s, sixty percent of Maine's 800,000 people lives in the countryside or in coastal remote villages. Each community wove family, work, and religion into a unique set of relations and identities. More than three out of four Northern Maine people are native born of native parentage and this homogeneity reinforces a strong sense of tradition. Towns and villages provide the essentials of life: barbershop, blacksmith's forge, general store and a scattering of professional offices, churches, harbors, mills, and artisan shops. These local services provides goods and equipment for the farm family and processed their corn, grain, fish, livestock, dairy products, wool, timber, and hides. Activities follow the patterns of nature: horizons expanded during summer and contracted in mud season; the pace of work quickened as the days grew warmer, culminating in the fall harvest. This continuity lent credence to the sense of permanence.
In a hundred subtle way, everything in Maine countryside moves with the seasons. Isolation generates independence and a strong sense of individual responsibility. Families work together, eat together and hunt, fish, and gather berries together. Children settle near their parents, and generations come and go around the home place, guided by a culture of hard work, adaptability, and competence. Men works in the woods, sea and fields, and women tend the home, the garden, the barnyard, and the henhouse. They bath kids and wash clothes in tubs in the kitchen and send them off to school clean and well groomed. Farmers and fishers mix commercial activity with subsistence, meaning growing larger vegetable gardens and keeping livestock for family consumption, selling pulpwood and fish, maple syrup, or firewood.
Climate and fog
Being August, one of the warmest month, the temperature is around 68 F. The waters of the Bay of Fundy heat up and cool down at a slower rate than the air around them. Being of heavy salt content, the air over the water is heavy in saline content, while the water temperature seldom exceeds the 45 F. Despite being summer time, the cooling waters and the breezes from the Bay are producing a comfortable and refreshing atmosphere.
Nevertheless, there´s a thick, damp and murky fog that wisps across the beach and permeates the whole town. The fog is the most conspicuous weather condition produced in Greyton by the Bay of Fundy.
A huge volume of North Atlantic Ocean rushes in and out of the bay two times a day every day. When this water crashes into the Fundy Islands is mixed. This brings cold water to the surface. The cold Fundy waters encounters warm moist air over the land. As the air cools, it condenses to form millions of microscopic water droplets in the air.
The heavy coastal fog of Greyton is also produced by other two important factors. One is the high density of sea spray and microscopic airborne salt crystals produced by big and strong breaking waves. The other important source of condensation nuclei for the fog is the kelp seaweed. The seabed off Greyton coast is filled by kelp forests. This seaweed releases particles of iodine, which in turn become nuclei for condensation of water vapor, contributing to generate the heavy and persistent fog that diffuses directly throughout the coastal city of Greyton. [/FIELDSET]
Tides in Greyton
Greyton lies at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, which is dominated by the highest tides in the world. These are known as semidiurnal tides, meaning that there is a high tide twice a day and a low tide twice a day. These tides can then be classified as solar semidiurnal and lunar semidiurnal tides. Each day there is a solar high tide and a lunar high tide as well as a solar low tide and a lunar low tide.
High and low tides do not occur at the same time each day, every high tide is approximately 12 hours and 25 minutes later than the previous one. This means that, from day to day, high tide occurs about 50 minutes later than the corresponding tide the previous day.
In Greyton, the difference between the highest high tide and the lowest low tide can be up to 35 feet. As with any bay or basin of water, there is a natural period of oscillation, as water flows back and forth from the mouth to the head of the bay. Once set in motion it acts like a pendulum, taking only a slight nudge to overcome friction and maintain the amplitude. The Bay of Fundy is 400 km long with an average depth of 75m. These conditions create an oscillation rate that corresponds very closely with that of the tides outside the Bay. Every day, the tide moves 3.5 million cubic feet of water in and out of the Bay of Fundy.
