Thanks, Ruthie!

My friend Ruth is the person who first brought me to Maine. I met her in 1991 when we were both starting a masters program to get our teaching degrees. When she was growing up, her family had a small summer place on Mount Desert Island where they spent most of every summer, and she and her husband were building their own place on 7 acres they had recently purchased on the island. Ruth invited me to come up any time, and I finally did in the summer of 1995. After teaching summer school and shoveling several tons of lathe and plaster out the window and into a dumpster as part of a home renovation project, a road trip to Maine seemed like a good break. 

And it was. I clearly remembering rolling along in Ruth's minivan, windows down, past coves and inlets and through balsam-scented woods, and skirting pink granite mountains. "I hate it here!" I said, "because it's perfect, and I have to leave."

But I've come back many times in the last 27 years. In the early days, we used to stay with Ruth and her two young sons in the ever-evolving cabin. First it had cardboard walls and plywood floors, and we slept on a futon in the nook outside the bedroom. Mornings were spent watching VHS recordings of kids television shows, because there was no TV reception, and afternoons we packed lunches and carried the boys up and down mountain trails, picking wild blueberries along the trail. I usually bought the NY Times on the way back and did the crossword puzzle while the kids napped. Then we would have a lobster picnic down at the beach and play games until an early bedtime, so that we could get up and do it all over again.

But I couldn't keep Maine to myself, so soon I started renting places where we could bring family, which was awesome, but we didn't spend as much time with Ruth. Circumstances and COVID had kept us away six years, and a couple of weeks before we headed up here for my birthday week, Ruth let me know that she had room for us if we wanted to extend our vacation for a couple of days. When we pulled down the unimproved  gravelly road last night, it had been many years since I had been to Ruth's place, and many more since I had spent the night here. 

It is still a pretty rustic place, although the cardboard has been replaced with knotty pine and the floors with carpeting, tile, and hardwood. There are also a couple of bedrooms downstairs and extra bathroom, but the kitchen is still small, although extremely functional. It was almost like muscle memory as I made pancakes this morning on the American Serviceware griddle while Heidi and Ruth sat at the linoleum topped table. Then  had to sit in my favorite chair for a minute and play the theme song from Katie and Orbie before we packed lunches and headed out for a beautiful hike on a nearly deserted trail (despite it being Independence Day weekend). The land was managed by a group other than the park service, so the dogs could run off leash along the stream and up through the woods to the granite ledge where we ate our lunch, and Lucy was one happy pup.

After the hike we returned to the house to shower and chat until it was time to order lobster rolls and drive over to Pretty Marsh for a picnic dinner. As the sun set over the western islands, we saw a seal and a dolphin fishing herring in the cove, and an osprey chased a bald eagle along the shore. Returning home once again, we sat outside in the fading day as the stars came out and coyotes howled not too far away.

And even though I have to leave tomorrow, I can't ever say I hate it here again.