Lobster Trap Tree – 2012 -2016

The first one I saw in 2012 was amazing and it gets better every year! From the days of stacked traps and colored lights we now have a wider base with doorways opening the inside with cantilevered traps opening up the center of the tree for a great view from inside, a look at the dome and viewing a light show of Christmas Colors on the floor. (The lightshow with its colored moving dots of light brought back memories of college…but that’s another story!) The stack is tighter and now the traps are color coordinated Yellow and Green by level and the colored lights have given way to energy efficient white LEDs.  The yearly engineering advances allow for more and more hand painted buoys from the kids at Art Haven. Hard to imagine anything more spirit lifting than just walking past the tree, not to mention spending some time in it and around! I met two photographers who were waiting for the light to go down and then were going from Gloucester to Rockport, ME and Portland to capture some other trap trees. Their take? Others might be a little taller but none are better than Gloucester’s tree!