Multiple me
Tag: Downeast
I’m East of Acadia, if not quite Eden
I like to think that natural beauty can be found anywhere, but I have to admit that too often, what’s happened is that brute ugliness has prevailed in far too many places, typically as a result of greed. There’s no excuse for much of that, either. A little extra expenditure could have added grace to any development, created visual intrigue, lessened the harshness. Urban or rural or what’s in-between, alas.
Whenever possible, I chose career moves that opened me to natural or artistic settings and inspiration – along with opportunities to shine professionally. It’s meant avoiding suburbs, for one thing. Sometimes, though, it’s also meant invoking a sliding scale of value – you know, finding pockets of serenity within otherwise harsh localities. And then there were some other postings that principally industrial, even when it was mostly farmland. So it’s been a mix.
Still, as I’ve said, I came to realize that had I remained in my native corner of Ohio, I wouldn’t have been able to write poetry, the vibe was simply wrong. Or, if I had, it would have been much different from what I’ve done.
On the other hand, the four years I lived two hours east of Mount Rainier, back in the late ’70s, gave me repeated access to one of America’s greatest national treasures, often from lesser-known perspectives. What memories! And that’s before I turn to much of the back country and wilderness that was closer to our home. I even came to love the beauty of the desert where I was living, a landscape that initially struck us as hideous.
Now I’m finding myself dwelling two hours east of an even more popular natural park, Acadia. Already, I have glimmers of many backwoods and remote rocky shores to explore in-between.
Technically, all of Downeast Maine is also Acadia, the French name of the region. For most folks, though, Acadia means the park.
The biggest land mammal out west was the elk, while here in northern New England, it’s the moose. Just as the celebrated shellfish here is lobster, rather than Dungeness crab.
The fact is, for many people, either place is about as close to paradise as you’d find on earth.
And, yes, I’m feeling lucky – or especially blessed – that way.
This will be the Barn’s biggest year yet, I promise
It’s hard to believe the Red Barn has just passed its tenth anniversary. Frankly, I thought this blog would be going dormant by now, that we would have exhausted everything I have to say or show, but that’s not what’s on the horizon after all.
Instead, thanks to our downsizing and relocating to a remote fishing village with an active arts scene on an island in Maine (whew!), I promise you the best year yet. And, yes, Dover back down the coastline will still be a big part of the mix, but in a new way.
Each year, the Red Barn has changed its emphasis somewhat, and in doing so explored new fields while leaving others behind. Looking back, I’d say it’s made for a natural evolution. The poetry, for instance, has moved over to my unique digital Thistle Finch imprint. Much of the Quaker experience has gone to my As Light Is Sown blog. And newspapers just aren’t what they were, while their “war stories” fade into a foggy past.
During that decade, though, my novels were finally finding publication, and that provided a lode of new material and thinking to share with you.
Photography also became a much bigger part of the mix, thanks to my digital cameras, so much so that I can now claim shooting as one of my hobbies.
Add to that the bunnies and vanity plates and some wordplay, for a little fun, which will continue, as will the Tendrils.
The original visual artwork from my high school portfolio, alas, has been depleted. Let me confess that as the pieces came up, I often wondered why I had done this or that back then. There are some wild leaps of intuition that amaze me now, not that I’d ever venture such confidence these days. Ah, youth! (Sigh.)
What’s new this year is a close look at Eastport itself and the surrounding Bold Coast and Sunrise County. It’s a remarkable landscape with a host of fascinating characters and wildlife. Having been here a year now allows for some perspective in the discoveries, ones you, too, will be sharing. The encounters have opened a whole new world for me, even as part of upright New England. They’ve also revived many sensations I’d been forced to leave behind in the Pacific Northwest more than 40 years earlier. I hope to be able to convey that awe of natural wonder. I still can’t believe this landlocked Ohio boy looks out the window and sees the ocean daily.
The year also provided me with a writer’s retreat, long stretches of solitude while the rest of the family remained behind, apart from their festive visits.
I was already well into the first draft of my next book when we uprooted but quickly got back down to business here. Alas, after showing the manuscript to a circle of beta readers, it was back to the drawing board for a thorough reworking. I should have been suspicious when the book seemed to write itself. Without revealing too much, I will say the project keeps me connected to Dover but in a fresh way. You’ll definitely be hearing much more while it inches along toward publication.
The barn itself has become a memory, a symbol of the longest place I’ve lived in my life, and maybe even my roots in the farming heartland.
The way Christmas should look in New England
At the beginning of the week, we had a tease of the Christmas-card expectations of a white holiday. Whether it holds to the big day itself is always in question, and the forecast seems to shift hourly. Even so, enjoy the scene.
How this new life’s looking one year later
I’ve been living in Eastport a full year now. Admittedly, during the initial four months, I was commuting the 300 miles back to Dover every weekend or so, mostly to help declutter the house and prepare it for sale. What amazed us, though, was how quickly my loyalties switched – Eastport was where I felt at home, not the house I’d lived in for the previous 21, the longest of anywhere else in my life.
As you know, I delighted in Dover. Some of my previous moves had left me homesick for a year or more – the colleagues I missed, the social and arts circles, the landscape and opportunities. Even in some of the less attractive places, there was something or someone I regretted leaving behind or unfinished.
This time, though, it felt more like dropping a fantastic perfect lover by being swept away by someone more exotic. You know, leaving a knight’s castle to go off to live on a shack on an island with a mermaid, even if she smelled like fish. (Remember, we’re talking about homes here, not actual people.)
Trying to sort out the reasons for the ease of my quick identity shift has been tricky.
I was at a point in my new creative project where extended solitude would be very helpful. And it was. You know, the writer’s retreat or arts colony.
Covid had also already distanced me. I was no longer swimming laps daily and seeing that crowd. Quaker worship and committee work was on Zoom. Choir in Boston was suspended. With museums and concerts canceled, there wasn’t even any point in taking the Amtrak down and back. And the research I was doing had enough resources online that I could finish the project. There are some questions that might be answered if I had a few weeks to spend in the reopened archives, but I’m content to leave off where I have for now.
Eastport has more of an active arts scene that Dover did, though there was plenty once you included a few neighboring towns. It’s just that the one here feels more organic, as you’ll likely be hearing. We have to be resourceful, since there’s nothing like Boston over the horizon, as there had been in Dover.
Getting back out in the wilderness has been especially invigorating, even if the years are taking a toll on my hiking abilities. Ditto for taking yoga classes on the waterfront here in town.
Did I mention meeting a series of fascinating people, all with rich stories and experiences?
Or the artists-in-residence or world-class chamber music performances by local pros?
Quite simply, I’ve declared this was my best summer ever. The prior highs had always had some big downsides – trouble at the office, upheavals in romance, unnecessary complications. Not so this one.
We had hoped to get the renovations under way, but all of the contractors have been booked out for a year – and even if we had one on the job, supplies have been hard to get, as is the case everywhere. The delay does give us a chance to plan more thoroughly for what we want to see done. And it did mean I didn’t have everything torn up for the workers. I’ll leave that for next summer.
Our first significant snow of the season
Since the ground isn’t frozen, this will melt off quickly. But it’s what greeted us when we woke up this morning.
My first exposure to a winter of heavy snowfall started off the day after Thanksgiving and continued, with one melting around Groundhog Day, until nearly Palm Sunday. That was Upstate New York, with around 130 inches of snow total.
The stories I could tell since!
Oh, my, what a summer!
This has been a summer unlike any other in my life, and it’s not over yet. Here in northern New England, the first weeks of September are typically among the best, especially for swimming in the ocean, though the water still hasn’t warmed up enough for that where I’m now living. It’s still in the upper 50s, like most of the nights.
While the Red Barn’s been posting mostly what I had scheduled before we landed the 1830s’ Cape where I’ve been living since the beginning of the year, blogging has felt like a special kind of housecleaning for me – this is the cycle I’ve left behind while gathering a ton of new material that will be featured in 2022.
One difference is that I’ve been largely on my own up here, but not alone. There’s teamwork involved, with visits as well as daily phone calls. And Zoom’s kept me in touch with many good friends and introduced me to more.
There’s a respect I get in being a year-’rounder in a small city where three-quarters of the population is what Mainers call Summer People. Now they’ll soon be going-going-gone and we’ll get back to our more essential, barebone state – what I call the remote fishing village with a lively arts scene.
Still, summer is when this place takes on a special life, one that often feels like a big daytime party that attracts people from all over the country. (I’ve seen license plates from all but seven states, but wouldn’t be surprised if Hawaii shows up.) And this has been the first time I experienced that as well as the ideal of summering on a Maine island. (We are connected to the mainland by a pair of causeways that lead through the Passamaquoddy’s Pleasant Point reservation.)
Here are ten highlights of my summer:
- Exploring unspoiled nature. The deep forests and rugged shorelines with their breath-taking views keep stirring up memories of the Pacific Northwest, which I left more than four decades ago. OK, my legs aren’t what they were back then, and the trails here are more arduous than the ones in the Cascades, so my jaunts have been slower and shorter – I’m simply ever-so-grateful to have this back in my life every week. And then I’ve been pleased to introduce these gems to the rest of the family on their visits. Oh, yes, I shouldn’t overlook the joys of being behind the wheel while driving along the rolling tree-lined terrain, an experience that has me reliving my first years of driving or later traipses in Upstate New York and Washington state – my, it does take me back but is here right now, once again.
- Fathoming the sea. It’s not that I haven’t been around ocean before – Dover, for instance, is on tidal waters – but this is the first time I’ve lived only a block from maritime activity. Many mornings I wake up hearing the foghorn on the New Brunswick side of the channel, one I can glimpse through our neighboring houses via our windows. Most days I get out on the Breakwater downtown, with its active fleet and cluster of sports casting for makerel. Better yet is getting out on a whale watch in a lobster boat or taking the passenger ferry to the town of Lubec and back. And then there’s beachcombing and tide pooling.
- Celebrating the Fourth. With the Canadian border still closed, this year’s festivities in Eastport were only half of what they’d normally be, but Old Home Week was still included, with its parades, contests, street dance, and reunions. I slept in through the annual blueberry pancake breakfast at our modest airport but have heard only raves from those who attended from our full household. As for the big show, I’m a stickler about fireworks – it’s not simply bang-bang-bang but a live-arts installation with the entire sky as a canvas and requires all the fine timing a good comedian relies on – and Eastport’s work from the Fish Pier definitely delivered. Next year, we’re looking forward to the additional pyrotechnical show on July 2, Canada Day, honoring our neighbors in New Brunswick across the channel.
- Enjoying a real-life Cheers. With the opening of Horn Run Brewing, downtown has a new social center. The place has a distinctive pub air, rather than a bar, and the marine views from indoors or the deck are bewitching. Rather than serving its own food, the brewpub encourages patrons to bring their own, especially from the new Bocephus gourmet sandwich shop a block away or Jess’ food truck, when she’s in town. The Horn Run has proved to be far more popular than its business model projected – it even ran out of brew on the Fourth!
- Meeting a lot of fascinating characters. Not just people, but eccentrics and others who bring experience and insight to even brief introductions on the street or out on the Breakwater – or at the Horn Run, for that matter, or a forest trail.
- Taking weekly yoga beside the harbor. The outdoor hatha sessions have been mercifully gentle, but it’s still humbling to have to confront what 45 years of neglect can inflict. And then, for the first time in our years together, my wife and I got to do the exercises together – twice!
- Sharing live music again. Rehearsing on Zoom just ain’t the same. But some informal gatherings in Pembroke were magical – one featured sea chanties and folk instrumentals, another focused on Sacred Harp shape-note singing. First-class chamber music recitals returned to the Eastport Arts Center, along with a knockout jazz trio and vocalist beside the harbor. And then there were the weekly gospel sings in Lubec.
- Delighting in art. In addition to its own resident painters, photographers, sculptors, and crafters, whose work is featured in galleries lining Water Street, Eastport welcomes artists in residence who work in a storefront studio downtown and engage the public. One had color samples for passers-by to use in identifying the color of the harbor and sky that she then used in painting a canvas mural of a day-by-day progression. Another collected strands of rope from the docks and shoreline to create an installation, albeit more modest than the mylar creation that filled half of the old North Church. I’ve been impressed as well by some of the locals as I drop in for the newest work on the walls.
- Cooking on my own again. I got truly spoiled, I’ll confess, and will never measure up to her immense talents, but it’s been fun reengaging in my own cooking again. I’m still rediscovering the basics, but in a kitchen quite unlike the one we left – I miss cooking on natural gas, and the induction hotplate and convection oven are tricky, as is the Montgomery Ward stovetop. My flavor-set’s been more Japanese than my wife’s Eastern Mediterranean take, but garden fresh produce and seafood are surprisingly scarce here. The weather’s been mostly cool, with only a few days above 80, so my usual August-September cuisine of tomato sandwiches never manifested. Lettuce, however, has proliferated, so big salads have been a staple. Now, if lobster prices would finally come down! I still haven’t indulged there.
- Seriously revising my next book. I should have been suspicious when the book seemed to write itself, but reactions from a circle of beta readers to my big history of Dover Friends Meeting and its bigger context in early New England sent me back to the drawing board. I’ve been engrossed in refocusing and restructuring the work, a project that’s been tedious on my end but quite satisfying when I revisit the results so far. It’s taken on a whole new tone, with a voice and presence quite distinct from what my professional journalist’s training would have permitted. How refreshing!
~*~
Let me also add observing deer closeup from my windows. You know, looking up while washing dishes or keyboarding.
Sometimes they hang around long enough I can really study them – a few spotted fawns for several hours, actually I love it when the adults rise up on their hind legs to pick apples from a branch overhead. They’re still enchanting, but when it comes to trying to garden, they are vermin.
So how’s your summer been?
Take a look at those big ears
I’ve never seen so many eagles in my life
American bald eagles are majestic birds, among the largest in the air. From the first one I saw, back in the early months of 1977, I’ve found the sight of them to be exciting and inspiring. I was, in fact, one of a handful of folks who saw that first eagle to return to the Yakima Valley of Washington state, an event that prompts one scene in my novel, “Nearly Canaan.”
Since then, I’ve seen hundreds, from the North Cascades and Olympic Peninsula to the upper Mississippi River and the Great Falls of the Potomac, and then New Hampshire and Maine, especially. I loved looking up while working in the yard or swimming backstrokes in the city’s Jenny Thompson pool and seeing an eagle or two overhead.
Since landing the Eastport house in December and all the drives back to Dover, though, I seem to be seeing them everywhere. One Friday, on my way to Dover, I counted a dozen along the way, followed the next day by another just a block away from the Red Barn. It helps, of course, to know what you’re looking for.
Now, I’ve finally been able to photograph one. I’m hoping for more.
The Breakwater at high tide
Jnana's Red Barn 