Vacationland

For decades, Maine's state motto, and license plate subtitle, has been "vacationland." Some years back, I think they changed at least the motto to "Maine - the way life should be." I now have the license plate fixed on my car, and the other -the way life should be- has been rattling around in my head for the last couple years. Now that I'm actually here, I'm mulling often about what it is that defines Maine.

With the exception of a short 6 month stay in 1976 - when I was in my young "seasonal drifter" phase - Maine has always been vacationland for me. I don't know how many trips over the last 33 years I've made to visit family, friends, and this unique place and quality of life. But now, on the other side of the residency line, perceptions start to shift. In the peak of summer and tourist season, I too glory in the incredible days when they happen, but resent a little when they fall on a workday. My work of course takes me out and into this beautiful county, and into the rural and village homes of the little people I work with, so it's not totally like being left out. But it is of course different than wandering aimlessly over beaches or floating in the lakes and harbors tracking loons, waves, or white sails across the horizon. I've thankfully had several visitors this past month, most of whom were experiencing Maine for the first time, and wallowing in the wonders of Maine "vacationland." I've heard words and phrases like "Eden," "amazing," etc.

It's a little hard to descirbe what it feels like from the 'inside' looking out. Summer does have it's blissful moments, and it's great to share them with folks who head up Route 1 to see what all the fuss is about - and are lucky enough to grab one or a few of the peak summer days here. The local fish market has a phrase - "Summer people, some are not." You get really possessive about the magic that is summer in Maine, and just a little resentful I guess, about those who come and take it in while you might be working..... Vacationland takes on a differenet ring if you're the one working when others are vacationing. But underneath, you know that you get all of the days....good, bad, foggy, rainy, sunny, white light and impenetrable gray. You get lobster whenever you want, ruggedly independent neighbors, and more lakes, streams, mountains, and oceanfront than you can navigate in a lifetime.

The summer is one unending festival. Blues Festival, Lobster Festival, Boats homes & Harbors festival, country fairs, boat races of all dimensions. The tourists come, wallow, wonder, and leave again. Maine vacationland. It's a great place to live, share, and presumably, just be after it all moves to another dimension. I've not yet made it past the first season. Yet somehow, I'm wishing I had chosen one of the other license plates. Save the children, whales, working water front, loons, lobsters........... or just plain 'the way life should be.' Now that it's home, and I'm a residential working stiff.....anything, but "vacationland."

PS I AM grateful to all of you that have come to visit!! (and supported the local economy!!!....:) and as they say in the south.....Y'all come back now!

40 Days & 40 Nights

Ok, this one is for those of you who purport to be jealous of my new found Nirvana. Every silver lining has a cloud ---- or a month of them. It is now the rainiest month on record for Maine. Over 12 inches in the midcoast. The roses and peonies are drooping and exhausted. The tomatoes and basil are limping toward the hope of sunshine. Other plantings are of course loving the rain forest effects, thriving and soaring. The good news? My basement is dry(!!!) and the vapor barrier that I laid down last week over my dirt/gravel floor seems to be helping hold down moisture. The patience of all is tested. The newspaper talks about foot long leopard slugs, the seeds in my birdfeeder are all sprouting, all the doors and windows are swollen and sticking. The Department of Marine Resources closed the entire Maine coast to shellfishing because the heavy rains are flushing contaminants into near-shore waters and the red-tide phytoplankton is surging. It is hard to tell when it is misting or just heavy fogging. The rains are more obvious. Late last night, to cap this month of rain, we had a severe thunderstorm. No stranger to thunderstorms in Virginia - when extreme heat and shifting fronts regularly erupt in thunder and lightening and downpours, this one followed but another cool and misty day, and was a more unusual phenomenon - or maybe just the last straw. The dog was freaked by it, making me get out of bed to see if maybe the water was rushing into the house or something. Alas, all was well, and my dehumidifier along with my whole house air exchange system was cranking hard to do what it could to keep high humidity levels outside. I actually fell back asleep to a marvellous dream, and slept until 8:15 AM this morning - the latest since my arrival here 6 weeks ago. I am in no hurry for my morning walk today, but relish a big breakfast with the fresh farm eggs I bought from a coworker. I wonder if the hens' nests are molding.

I have a little creek (aka drainage ditch) in my backyard that surges and swells, soaking the hostas and bog plants that I have planted there. The neighborhood children (aka hoolilgans) have a history of riding their bikes through my yard and over my little bridge to the next street. Despite many 'requests' to not play in my yard, they returned yesterday, somehow not understanding the firm NO I had issued only minutes before. I imagine myself finally attaining the role of Cloris Leachman, the ageing eccentric who lives alone and shuns the world in the movie "Prancer" -screaming "my floribundae! my floribundae!" as they sail through her gardens on sleds. They plaintively tried to assure me that my yard was the ONLY place that they could play, the youngest adding that maybe they could LIVE there and have their own little brook. How cool would THAT be??? Bicycle mud tracks, strewn candy wrappers, my fire wood thrown into the brook and flooding my gardens. I try to assure them that they are very smart and strong children (thinking noisy, insolent, unbridled, audacious) and will surely find somewhere else to play. OK, this weather is not bringing out the best in any of us.......

On my eventual walk, I took these pictures, trying to capture the essence of sog. Accompany them, if you will, by the steady drone of foghorns and the sound of water rushing through the sewer lines as you pass the aging iron street drains. For a few flickering seconds, the sky seemed to lighten. Would the sun make a guest appearance.....today?? Tho the heavens were grey, I swear I saw my shadow. I turned around three times to see if I was only imagining. I wonder if anyone is looking. If I am experiencing the polar opposite of the desert mirage. I pull off my rain parka (one of 6 varying styles and warmth that hang now in my mud room). When it is humid and low 60s, it is hard to tell if your body is chill and damp or hot and clammy. Splashing through a puddle in my treasured early pea green rain galoshes that Corrina rejected as a gift too garish, I return home to treasure another day off, a good book, domestic projects, and a prayer that the sun WILL return.....one of these tomorrows.

icons

The things we carry....

My dear friend said, "You'll know you're home when you hang up the thumb." I spent a couple days searching for it in boxes, crumpled newspaper, suitcases. Could I have possibly just thrown it out?? Of all the things you pack and unpack......and find a place for in your heart and homes....what is really important?

Honestly, a part of me was ready to push it all off a cliff. There's a scene in the movie "Up" (a good one, if you haven't seen it) where the ageing Carl Fredericksen, who is flying his beloved house filled with memories via balloon power to Paradise Falls - destination of his long-dreamed great adventure - realizes that he can't take everything with him. So he just starts hurling everything out the door into the abyss. It's really liberating - or at least was from my current perspective. You kind of realize that it's not the things, but the memories and experiences that we collect that carry us onward.

But then there are all of these THINGS that remind us of the memories....and somehow anchor us in space and time. So.....I started thinking about what really IS important when we transition from one place to the next?? I decided to imagine moving with only a 12"x 12" box, and figure that you could reaccumulate anything else that you might need for the next journey. What would warm my heart and provide me with a sense of home - and familiar -when I put my feet up in a next place?

When I bought this house two years ago, I spent about 6 weeks in Virginia buying furniture and household on Craigslist and at thrift stores, loaded a truck, and Walla! instant house / home. Whoa. Cool. Every time I visited, I realized that I had everything I needed.....and nothing more. I loved the simple comfort of my 'vacation home.' Oh sure, I was always cruising thrift stores to find a garlic press or wine glasses, or funky funstuff. But gone was the usual clutter of my life on every surface. And I realized that you can easily shift from one pair of glasses to another. And at some point....you could just acquire one new whimsy when you were ready to shed another. Some things of course....are not easy to discard - hence the 12" box.

So here I am, striving to keep it simple, and cherish the treasures of my memories, my dreams......and the contents of the little box.

Transitions...

Everything about this transition has felt right, telling me that it is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Well, OK, the move WAS greuling, and I don't think I've been that tired in......ever. Corrina (who drove my car up from Virginia), and Tag (who rode shotgun with me in the rental truck) were both ready to kill me before the journey ended. Tag (now 14ish) sat bolt upright in total shell shock the whole first (approximately 14 hour) day, refusing to lay down or sleep. Which meant that he was blocking my right rearview mirror the entire time, forcing me to stay in the right lane, and hope to hell that any merging traffic was intimidated by a midlife woman and a rigid dog driving a Budget rental truck. I also managed to have a tire blow out that day - really FUN! Did catch up with a good friend for coffee and dinner. And by the time we stopped at a hotel that would take the dog, because there was no way we were making Corrina's apartment in New York, she was yelling at me to get off the road and stop hitting things! (apparently I had clipped off a little road sign backing out of a driveway and bumped into a few firmly immovable objects in the parking lot..) I suppose it's good to have sane and sensible children tell you when you're being irresponsible and reckless, but they could learn to do so more quietly and respectfully! By the second day, I figure out how to leash the dog and jerk him down when I needed to change lanes. When we reached the Maine state line, I was too tired to move another inch. Corrina was yelling at me about what we were doing, and I was trying to explain to her that this is why they call them "rest" areas, and that in fact all those truckers and people were actually trying to rest, which is what I intended to do. I rolled up my window and closed my eyes. Shortly she was pounding on my window telling me that she was going on to Rockland (about two hours ahead. The dog was near comatose by then, so I didn't have to worry about him giving me grief. In fact, I was starting to think....maybe I won't have to build that fence for him when we get there... After a little power nap, I decided to head up the road myself, with the glare and scrutiny of night road repair crews checking my sanity between long stretches of isolated Maine beauty - obscured by night and exhaustion. I arrived at the house about a half hour after Corrina, around 2AM. We fell like rocks into comfortable beds, in a vacation rental that had just become -home.
I can only tell that story and admit how stupid I was to subbornly tackle so much of the move myself......because we survived, recovered......and mostly because moving here feels so right.

Here and there

Morning, Maine, Midcoast

Where I am, wanted, wandered, and arrived. On planting roots...

Strange, when the strings of plans made weave together and finally form the tapestry of change anticipated. And then the exploration, the wondering, the musing about the change that has and is unfolding. The gardens of our life...

Three years ago the idea of buying a house in Maine was percolating. Almost 30 years settled in the Piedmont of Virginia - a place that everyone who knows, sighs and says, "Oh, it's beautiful there!" Beautiful springs, mild winters, abounding cultural and natural amenities. A community I had come to know, friends, coworkers, work that I loved. A community blessed and chided by a great and lofty university. Academic and intellectual conversations galore. But also pretentious, segregated, sometimes more pompous perhaps, than in fact, progressive. Yet supportive of great arts, talent, and in it's own sidestepping way, diversity and change. Charlottesville, Hookville, C'ville. I love it there, and especially the great friends I made and keep. And will always have a root there.

Midcoast Maine. Rockland in particular. Leaving Wisconsin about 35 years ago, I said, "I will never live in the north, or in a small town again." Hah! Never say never. Rockland - raw, simple, direct. Again, an area of great beauty. Rolling hills to the ocean. A shoreline peppered with quaint and unique towns and villages, offshore islands, sailboats, lobster boats, windjammers, and kayaks. More art than seems possible for such a remote corner. Lots of retired and retiring folks - some ageing well (boating, building, creating, biking, painting, gardening, walking.....) others not. Life is not easy here, or for the wimpy. Winters are long, summers divine and intense. And so, here I am, trying to make my way, make sense of my move, and the unfolding third act of my life.

It makes a lot of sense to seasonally drift between the two locations and homes - if one can somehow manage two houses 900 miles apart. Not exactly what they recommend in the real estate investment manuals. Tho that is the plan...for now. I can't imagine missing out on the unparalelled beauty of springtime in Virginia. When snow turns slowly to mud in Maine, and the dogwoods and Azaleas are blooming down south. But my ageing bones started to reject the long hot and humid summers there. Already my energy is adjusting. It is June, the days are very long, and it is still springtime here. My tulips were blooming when I arrived mid May, and lasted a month! My kitchen garden is now planted in the raised beds off my deck, and the thought of picking fresh salads and veggies just off my deck through the summer - when the cicadae chorus is blaring and leading the insect orchestra in Virginia. Oh, they do of course have bugs here. The infamous black flies are reportedly subsiding, tho I haven't seen a one. I live a couple blocks from the ocean, and they don't lite here. There are of course mosquitoes. May even be the state bird for the size of them. But oh the lilacs!! Most of them bloom for Memorial Day weekend, and are now fading. But there is a Korean dwarf variety that blooms a couple weeks later, and they're now permeating the air - around the two planted at my stoop steps, and in the 40 yard long row of them edging the harbor on my morning walk. Simply intoxicating. The lupines are also peaking now. The fields are laced with them as you drive up and down the coast or into the hills. I am having a hard time staying away from the plethora of amazing garden centers that also abound. The season is so intense (and ultimately short, I suppose) that you can almost hear things growing. I love that you can grow rhododendrons, azaleas, weeping cherries.......favorites from Virginia springtimes.....but also delphiniums, beach roses, lilacs, and of course lupines.

And so the seasons, like the locales, are pretty nicely spaced for drifting between. If my work were as portable as I wish, I'd be quite content to shift north and south from Maine to Virginia - maybe with Februarys spent somewhere father south -like Costa Rica, Thailand, or Ecuador. But before I start shifting my horizons (I just got here!!) I know that I am very lucky to just be here.......and there.

My hands are dirty, my muscles aching and more toned from the digging, building raised beds and fences, my dreams stretched, and my heart is happy.

Planting new gardens.