Night walk lets visitors sense new side of Acadia Rangers lead groups on tours through summer

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Fireflies flashed, comets flared and bats flew Wednesday night as a group of visitors used all their senses to experience another, starlit side of the park.

Though the five participants in the ranger-led program “Knowing the Night” traveled only two miles along the carriage roads as dusk slipped into darkness, it might have been a thousand.

The dimming light and the slow pace allowed them to shake off the cares of home and their human dependency on sight for a couple of hours.

“I loved it,” Richard Balekdjian of New Jersey said after the walk. “I’d never seen a satellite before, and I heard the frogs and I felt the bats.”

The walk, one of the park’s four fee-charging programs, was introduced last summer and is designed to let visitors add scientific, experiential information about night in Acadia to their usual, sunlit biking and hiking adventures.

“A lot of people associate fear with the absence of light,” Ranger Lisa Girardin said at the walk’s outset. “Few people come out and explore the night.”

Girardin, a naturalist who has worked at the park for three years, explained to the group that humans are one of the few species that are primarily diurnal, or active mostly during the daytime.

Walking quietly outside as the sun goes down opens up a new world of animal sounds, she said. Other senses are heightened as the sense of sight becomes less effective.

The ranger had the visitors form small groups to walk along the road as one person in each group closed their eyes.

The balmy night air was filled with the sounds of crunching gravel and giggles and the smell of bug spray and fir trees.

“You’re feeling the person’s arm guiding you and you’re also feeling the ground beneath your feet,” Janine Balekdjian, 12, of New Jersey said.

The group stopped at an opening in the road that showcased Bubble Pond and the long, arched crest of Cadillac Mountain silhouetted against the darkening skies.

Girardin took advantage of the clear night to give an astronomy lesson to the group, pointing out the bright Summer Triangle and Cassiopeia constellations.

“A lot of times people aren’t that familiar with the sky, even though we’re with it all the time,” the ranger said.

Her lesson was punctuated by excited cries from Richard Balekdjian every time he spotted a satellite flashing across the sky. His New Jersey home is in a developed area where stargazing is not so easy, he said.

“There’s a lot of houses, a lot of light pollution,” he said. “This is a huge thing for me.”

During the walk, the visitors learned that the north star actually changes over thousands of years, owls can fly almost silently and why Wintergreen Lifesavers really do spark in the dark.

“I thought it was very interesting, learning about how different senses react to the coming of night,” Janine Balekdjian said. “I felt better than I usually do at night, because I just learned about the senses.”

“Knowing the Night” meets Wednesday and Friday nights throughout the summer and costs $10 for adults and $5 for children. Call 288-3338 for reservations.