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.

That Maine Thing

We tossed around several hiking possibilities this morning before settling on our plan for the day: it had to be Acadia Mountain. Just a few minutes from our rental house, the hike features a steady and challenging climb through a balsam forest up to granite ledges punctuated by shrubby blueberry, juniper, and huckleberry, and opening up to amazing views of Echo Lake, Somes Sound, and all the little Islands in the Atlantic Ocean beyond. It's everything I love about hiking in Maine, and today our hike was quintessentially so: warm sun, cool sea breeze, photos at the summit, and lunch on the ledges overlooking the sound just below. When we spotted two bald eagles soaring a couple hundred feet away, I knew it doesn't get much better than that.

The Maine Idea

It wasn't on my radar screen. A friend invited me up to her place in Maine, but although I politely thanked her, I never really intended to go. Until... I spent the better part of the summer teaching summer school and shoveling plaster and lathe into a wheelbarrow, pushing it up to an open window on a makeshift ramp, and shoving it into a dumpster below with a rake. After five weeks of that? A 14 hour road trip seemed like a great idea.

That was 25 years ago, and it was true love from the beginning. A simple search of "Maine" on this blog will turn up many love letters to the mountains, ocean, granite, and spruce of the northeastern most state in the union. Since then, I have made the pilgrimage every year (or two, in dire times) for a week or two of cool breezes, smooth rocks, hiking, and lobster. Once? I even went in January, and I spent both my 40th and 50th birthdays there.

So it seems damn near impossible when I check my calendar that it has been four full years since last I set foot in Vactionland. And yet, there you have it. Fingers crossed, I'll be back there next summer, and until then I'll keep making those lobster rolls, pausing at any stand of balsam or pine along the local trails, breathing deeply at any hint of cool breeze, and collecting those smooth rocks.

I miss you, Maine!

GoPro or Go Home

I got a GoPro for Christmas a couple years ago, but until a week or so ago I had not used it. I think it's because on the one hand while I'm flattered that anyone thinks I do exciting enough things to warrant recording them, I don't always see it that way, and on the other hand, it seemed kind of complicated to figure out how to use it.

I did see a movie not too long ago where one of the characters was an aspiring moviemaker, and he definitely used his GoPro to film anything he thought was good, which gave me another perspective on my little video camera. I also happen to store it in the gear bag for my other camera, and so it was that the GoPro made it to Maine with us in early July. Not just there, but actually strapped to Kyle's pack as we climbed the infamous Beehive of Acadia National Park and recording our great adventure for posterity!

It turns out the GoPro I have is kind of complicated (at least to me!) and I did not have the proper equipment to view the footage of our conquest until I got home. To be honest, it wasn't at the top of my list then either, but this morning serendipity struck when I came across both the cable and the camera in a free moment and plugged them into my desktop. The on-screen message alerted me that it would take an hour to download, but that was okay, too, because I was on my way out to run some errands. (Don't worry, the 8 second recording of me squinting cluelessly into the lens downloaded immediately, and so I was able to confirm that I'm an idiot right away.)

Anyhoo, when I returned home a few hours later in a horrific thunderstorm, once my soggy groceries were put away, I sat down to watch Kyle's perspective of our climb ten days ago. WOW! First, it was a lot scarier on video than in person-- my palms were sweating just watching it. Second, do I really look like that when I'm hiking? It wasn't bad, but I didn't cut quite the mountain woman image I imagined, either. (Emily and Heidi looked fantastic, though!)

And last, I really wish I was back in Maine.

Peak, Crest, Crown, Apex, Pinnacle

What could make me practically skip up hundreds of feet on switchback granite steps clinging to the the side of a mountain in Maine? Was it the warm pine air punctuated by cool maritime breezes? The promise of wide granite ledges with amazing ocean views to the left and incredible mountain vistas to the right? The wild blueberry barrens with the first ripe fruit of the season lining the descent? The alpine pond filled with lilliputian water lilies and ringed by three mountain peaks?

Nope. It was just the chance to be hiking with people I love in a place I love, too.

P.S. Don't think you're off the hook... I still hate you, Maine!

I Still Hate it Here

I distinctly remember one moment of my first visit to Maine, over 20 years ago now. I was sitting in the passenger seat of my friend's minivan bombing along the twisty wooded roads of the quiet side of Mount Desert Island. On this early August afternoon the sky was a watery wash of cloudless cobalt and a cool breeze blew in the open windows. Mountains and sea filled our view and the tang of balsam filled our noses. "I hate it here!" I shouted over the rushing air.

My friend looked over, eyebrows raised.

"Because it's so perfect and I have to leave tomorrow!" I finished.

"Yup," she said and kept on driving.

Vacationland

It is impossible to be grumpy about anything, even being stuck for hours in holiday weekend traffic outside of Boston, when you are able to watch the sun set over Western Bay, eat soft shell lobsters for dinner while early fireworks sparkle over the island across the way, and then be perfectly gobsmacked by all those HUGE stars smeared across the black velvet sky.

Hello, Maine!

Sky Island

Josh was a little ways ahead of us and almost to the summit of Hawksbill Mountain when he stopped suddenly. "It smells like Maine up here," he called. He should know. We've been telling him to roll down his windows and smell the Maine since he was six. There's a place on the Turnpike just south of Portland where the balsams are so fragrant that it doesn't matter if you're going 70; you can always catch that quintessential scent.

I looked up to where Josh was standing and noticed a gnarly balsam just to his left. I pointed. "That explains it," I said, but that was really only half true. There just aren't too many of those trees here in Virginia. We climbed the rest of the way to the top and enjoyed the 360 degree view of Old Rag, the Appalachian Trail, and the fall color blanketing the hills and hollows below. On the way back down, I lingered more than a moment beneath that balsam before continuing on to the hardwoods below.

It turns out that we had hiked to a "sky island", a place where the altitude allows a totally different ecosystem. The boreal forest we passed through was actually a vestige of the ice age, a time when the climate there was much more similar to, say, Maine, today.  Too bad they didn't have any lobster on that island, too!

One Morning in Maine

My sister's family is heading home to Atlanta tomorrow, so when I saw a copy of One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey today in a gift shop in Lubec, I bought it for the kids, hoping that whenever they read it in the future it will remind them fondly of our vacation here.

This evening Annabelle and I sat side by side on the couch with the book spread across our laps. I turned to the imprint and saw that it was published in 1952. We began to read; the story is about Sal, of blueberry fame, waking up one summer morning to find her tooth is loose. The illustrations and text continue her tale as she scrambles down to the rocky beach past a fishing eagle, loon, seal, and flock of sea gulls to meet her dad who is clamming.

Culminating in a trip across the bay by row boat to visit the village which is little more than a dock, garage, church, and general store, is a charming story, but to me the most notable thing is how little has changed up here in the last sixty years.

Saturday Night Special

I was born on a Saturday night fifty years ago today, and this morning I sat on a gigantic deck overlooking Pinkham Bay in Steuben, Maine considering my birthday dinner. My whole family has traveled thousands of miles from Minnesota, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to spend the week with me, and nothing could be more special than that. Even so, we have to eat, and meals are always a celebration for us. I knew there would be lobster, of course, but what else should we have?

When we were kids, our usual Saturday night dinner was steak, french fries, salad, and sauteed mushrooms, peppers, and onions. My mom bought an economical cut of beef, grilled or broiled it, and then sliced it thin. A few shakes of Lawry's seasoned salt and it was the finest of entrees to us. My dad peeled the potatoes and hand-cut them for the fries. He also cut up the onions and peppers-- and that is most of the cooking I ever remember him doing. As for the salad, iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, celery, and tomatoes with Wish Bone Italian dressing was a delicious compliment to the meal. We loved it.

2601 Saturday nights in, I decided to go with a classic, updated to be sure, but the steaks are grilling right now.

Schoodic Sound Bites

The bottom of the ocean here is much like the shore-- granite ledges and boulders.

Where's my journal? I need to draw some of this.

Follow me! I see the blue slashes!

This is the best hike we've done so far, and it's really close to our house... why haven't we been here before?

Did you ever think 10 years ago that you'd be doing these hikes at 73 years old?

Actually, I'm thinking of how it will be ten years from now.

Flip flops might not have been the best choice for this hike.

That was only one mile?

I've been thinking the whole way that this whole forest reminds me of a Harry Potter movie. Awesome!

She did it in flip flops!

New Trick

You know it's been a good day when your dog falls asleep in the car on the way home... sitting up.

Look Upward

After four days of solid rain we finally saw a rainbow today. It was in the eastern sky near sunset and so Annabelle, Courtney, and I stood on the beach in our wellies, sunset before us, rainbow behind. I would say that it was a lovely ending to the day, but just a few minutes ago I noticed the setting moon casting a looooong reflection that resembled nothing more than a silver razor clam over Pinkham Bay, and when I stepped out to admire the view, a godzillion stars in the night sky blinked at me, so now I'm thinking that that might be a fine ending to this day.

Little Cat Feet

It was raining again today, so Heidi, Louise, and I headed east to Machias. The town itself was a bit underwhelming, but the fog we encountered along the way almost made up for it. As we rolled along the coastal highway, the sea was invisible, but gray stands of balsam and fir emerged from misty shrouds at the edges of ghostly blueberry fields. It was never a solid bank of gloom; we could always see just far enough ahead to wonder what else was out there, and it shifted so that what was visible might be completely obscured when next you looked.

Stephen King is from Maine. Enough said?

Remote Control

"I wish we had a teleporter," Kyle said on the trip back from Bar Harbor today to our rental house in Steuben this afternoon. "I would just transport myself to the front door and walk in."

"You wouldn't have a key," one of the older boys helpfully pointed out. "Why not just transport yourself inside?"

"Good idea," he agreed.

My thoughts went in a different direction. In these days of incredible and extreme connectivity, it seems that everywhere is nearby. Not only can you email or skype or facetime anyone almost anywhere in the world, you can have almost anything you want delivered to your home within a week.

As for this place? Relative to my home in a busy metro area it takes a long time to get anywhere from here, but even in the last two days I've noticed my perspective changing with each landmark I am able to remember and recognize. The distances seem shorter.

How different the Down East Maine coast would be if people could teleport here. It is wild and beautiful partially because it is so remote. If anyone could just pop in and pop home at will, well, the mosquitoes might have a lot more to eat.

Ground Water

There are many things I like aboout Maine, but one of them is the temperature of the tap water. Back in Virginia there's no such thing as cool drink of water much after Memorial Day. Not so here-- it is icy cold from the faucet all year long.

I have been drawn to this state since the first time I visited here seventeen years ago. To be honest, it was only courtesy that led me to accept a new friend's invitation to visit her family's summer home on Mt. Dessert Island. When I arrived, the brilliant 80 degree days in mid-August certainly turned my head, but it was the combination of ocean, mountain, and forest that won my heart.

We were driving down yet another road lousy with views of lobster boats, light houses, forests, and granite ledges, our windows open to the balsam and salt air, when it all became clear to me. "I hate it here," I said. "There will never be any place better. The coast of Maine has ruined the world for me."

My perspective has been tempered over the years since then, mostly by mosquitoes and long drives, but this evening after the rain clouds cleared to a painfully blue sky, Treat and Josh and Kyle and Isabel and I did a most remarkable 1.5 mile hike through field and forest and leading to a lovely cobble stone and sand beach, and as if that was not enough, there was lobster for dinner and some ice cold water from the tap.

The Rain in Maine

Dateline June 23, 2012, Somewhere on I-95 between Augusta and Bangor

It's a long way from our house to the place we are staying for the next Two weeks, some 750 miles, but usually it's a trip that I enjoy. The Atlantic states are like so many stepping stones that we hopscotch merrily over on our way to Vacationland; an hour or so in each one and then it's on to the next.

Even so, when you hit the Maine border and realize that there are still more than three hours to go, road weariness is a hazard. We customarily shake it off by making a quick pit stop to stretch our legs and smell the Maine. One deep breath of the balsam and salt air restores us.

Today torrents of rain started just as we crossed over from New Hampshire and sadly, smelling the rain didn't have quite the same effect. Still we slog on, because a soggy vacation is still a vacation.

Pleasant Company

Our godson, Josh, has been spending three or more weeks with us each summer since he was six. At that time, his mom was a single parent working hard and long, and as much as she missed him, those weeks were fun for Josh and a break for her. Over the years we’ve traveled to Maine and California, done Niagara Falls a couple of times, and camped out on Lake Erie. When he was younger, we used to enroll him in a summer program, too. He played soccer, went to roller blade camp, learned to sail, and took art and photography courses. We always try to have a lot of fun whenever he’s around.

Things have changed for his family—his mom has married a great guy and Josh has a younger sister and brother now. At 14, the time he spends with us now is summer tradition, but it’s also a chance for him to be the only child he was for the first 10 years of his life. There are other boys in our family close to his age, but he spends a good amount of his visits in the company of two women n their 40s. We worry that he’ll be bored with us, but so far it’s always worked out.

Take yesterday, for example: we’ve arrived in Maine a couple of days ahead of the other half of our group, which includes the other boys, so the three of us were on our own on a rainy Sunday. The night before, we had established that despite the big flat-screen TV in our rented house, television reception was limited—although we did all enjoy the broadcast of the graduation ceremony for the 15 8th graders at the local grade school. (Yes, we really watched it on public access; it was just the thing after 12 hours in the car and a nice lobster dinner.)

When Josh got up, he surprised us by tuning the radio to a classical music station, which we ended up listening to all day. “The radio is a lot like the TV,” he said, “not many choices.” He had noticed a breadmaker in the kitchen and pulled out the recipe book tucked neatly beneath it and decided to make garlic herb bread to go with the corn chowder we planned for dinner. When there was a break in the weather, we all headed down to our rocky beach, and 84 pieces of sea glass later we declared Josh King of the Beachcombers. And at the end of the day, while the bread baked and the soup simmered, he and Heidi sat side by side knotting colorful embroidery floss into friendship bracelets.

If these don’t seem to be the typical activities of your average baseball playin’ cross-country runnin’ teenaged boy, you must admire a kid so comfortable in his own skin he'll do whatever seems fun at the moment with whomever might be around.

Another Snow Day

The storm yesterday reminded me of another snowstorm a couple of years ago. In January of 2008, I traveled with a friend and colleague to Maine to spend a week observing at Nancie Atwell's school, The Center for Teaching and Learning. We arrived in Edgecomb on Sunday night, just ahead of a major Nor'easter, but we weren't concerned. My friend had had the foresight to rent a four wheel drive vehicle, and plus, this was Maine, we shrugged, surely they knew how to handle whatever snow there would be.

The next morning my cell phone rang. "This is Nancie Atwell," the voice on the line said. "Is this Tracey?" After getting over the initial shock of actually having Nancie Atwell herself call me, I realized that she was telling me that school was canceled that day because of the weather. She arranged to meet us for a couple of hours that morning anyway to go over the rest of the week. I couldn't decide if I was disappointed, relieved, or exultant... the joy of a Snow Day is a powerful thing.

At 10 AM when we left CTL, after having met Nancie and seen her school, the snow was falling fast. Faced with an unexpected free day, we set off in the storm in search of a late breakfast. The roads were terrible, but my friend navigated them admirably, and before too long we found ourselves on a nearly deserted Main Street in Damariscotta. A restaurant called The Breakfast Place seemed just right, and we parked in front and made our way inside. A cheerful group of rather grizzly Mainers was leaving as we came in, and those gentleman gave us a thumbs up as they passed.

Inside, we were the only customers, and the waitress led us to a table in the back that looked out over the water. Lobster boats bobbed on anchor buoys in the snow. I ordered a poached egg and crab cake on a homemade English muffin with coffee. There were Trivial Pursuit cards on the table, and we took turns quizzing each other until our breakfast arrived. The food was good, and our conversation wandered to books; my friend recounted the entire plot of Walk Two Moons right up until the end. There she paused. "Do you want to know what happens?" she asked, and I nodded, completely charmed by the story, by the setting, by the food, and by the company.

Back at our hotel, we spent the rest of our day talking about Atwell and her school and about teaching and teaching writing as the snow piled up and up. I didn't feel trapped at all-- the promise of the week ahead seemed as boundless as the expanse of drifts outside the sliding glass door and as long as the icicles that formed drip by drip on the overhang that sheltered it. And it was a good week, a great week, really, but in the end, my favorite part of it was the snow day.

Porch Time

We bought a couple of Adirondack chairs for our deck today. I use the term "deck" loosely-- it's really much more of a balcony, but the architects that designed the place labeled it a deck, and what can I say? That grandiosity has legs. We used to have a table and chairs, and while it was nice to eat out there a few evenings a year, there really wasn't enough room for anything else, and so our limited outdoor space went mostly unused. We decided to give the table and chairs away, and since then, the deck has been like a blank canvas just waiting for the right vision. Today we found it. Every summer, we take my nephews to Maine for a week. The place we rent is an old fisherman's house right on Eastern Bay across from Mount Desert Island. It has a porch that wraps around three sides in the back. There must be eight Adirondack chairs all lined up looking out over that half-acre lawn down to the mussel beach, across the bay, and right up to Sargent Mountain, the second highest peak in Acadia National Park. I have the same view from the bed I sleep in each year, and I can't help thinking that it wouldn't be a bad place to draw your last breath, provided that the windows were open, and the morning marine mist had burnt off, and the sun, or at least the moon, was shining on the mountain across the way. Every day when we're there we have porch time. In the beginning it was Aunt Tracey declaring forced togetherness: join me on the porch boys; you won't regret it, but if you do, please keep it to yourself. For less than an hour we would all sit on those chairs and read, or draw, or play guitar, or write, or, okay, Josh was allowed to pound wiffle balls into the yard, but that was his way of communing with himself and the place and the rest of us, which was all I wanted, and what made the whole trip worth it. It wasn't long, though, before I'd take my notebook and some coffee out there and through the screen I'd hear one of the boys ask another, "Is it porch time?" and the Adirondack chairs would fill. Back home, I missed porch time, and last year the end of vacation coincided with my desire to re-introduce a common "circle time" at the beginning of most classes to my sixth graders. Nancie Atwell famously has a rocking chair, and I wanted something like that in my classroom, too, so when I walked into World Market and saw their Adirondack chairs on clearance, I knew what I should do. We don't call it porch time in my class, but it's as close as I can manage inside four walls, miles from any ocean or mountain. It's a time and place to share our reading, writing, and thoughts, and I think it goes a long way toward building community with my students, and to be honest, there are times when the view from that chair is just as breath-taking or more so than the one from that porch in Maine.