The Coywolf of the Baskervilles

Ok...not everything about lake living in Maine is moonlight and magnolias. These lakes can be...kinda creepy.

After last night’s spectacular sunset, and another delicious dinner, my wife and I went to bed. The last thing she says to me is this...

I’m setting my alarm for 7 am. I know that you’ll get up earlier than that. When you do, check out the lake and if it’s good kayaking conditions, go ahead and wake me up.

I hate this type of request. Especially since, for Pam, good kayaking conditions essentially means...anything but a hurricane. I exaggerate...but only a little. So, I wake up at 5:45, make my coffee and see this...

First of all...yes, the dock does look like it is floating in midair. And, yes...the lake is still as glass. But there are two problems with these “kayaking conditions”...that fog and the fact that it is 40 freaking degrees outside. So, what’s a husband to do? I step outside to take the picture above and that’s when I hear a new sound...the mournful howls of either wolves or coyotes coming from the north end of the lake. Any minute I expect Sherlock Holmes to materialize out of the mist, hot on the trail of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Do I dare send my wife out in this?

I go back inside and Google... wolves and coyotes in Maine, and discover that there is rumored to be a new hybrid of these two creatures roaming the Maine woods...the coywolf. Perfect! Leave it to the land of a Stephen King to give birth to a new species of creepiness.

Since sitting down to write this, the lake is transforming before my eyes, as of this moment looking like this...

The blue sky brings a more cheerful vibe. The appearance of the first duck of our stay seems odd. Maybe he also heard the coywolf and decided to head for the safety of the water. And now, the crow of a rooster peels across the glassy depths. Good Lord! Never a dull moment on Quantabacook.

A New Mood

And now...a windy day. It started blowing last night, making strange noises outside in the unique, pitch black darkness of Maine. In September, when most of the cottages on the lake are empty, there are not enough man made lights to compete  with the night, making the darkness feel primeval. On a clear night the stars feel close enough to touch. It’s at night when you are most aware of your status as a visitor, someone from away. During the night a gust of wind made a sharp, screeching noise that woke me up. It was 2 o’clock. I could have drifted back to sleep easily enough, but I was curious. I slid open the door to the deck and felt the fresh wind in my face, cool and damp and smelling like rain. I stepped outside and strained to make out the dock, the edge of the deck...anything. It was like gazing into a dark tunnel of nothing...black as coal. For a moment it brought a suggestion of what it might be like to be blind. I waited for my eyes to adjust. I waited some more. If not for the one house light in the cottage a half a mile across the way, I would have been completely disoriented. I decided to stop fighting it and just stand there with my eyes closed, and let my other senses do the work. The smells of the lake drifted by, spruce trees, the mild briny tang of lake water, the mossy staleness of wet dirt. Then the whistle of the wind in the trees, the rhythmic ripple of waves against the rocky shoreline. I get the distinct impression that this is not my home. But, maybe it could be.

This morning, the sun shines and it’s 63 outside, which will be the highest it gets today, we’re told. Tonight we are in for a low of...40. Each day brings something new here, a different perspective, a different mood. The next two days will just be Pam and me. It will be quieter, lazier, more contemplative. This is good. How many times in life are we afforded the chance for quiet, thoughtful laziness?

Not often enough...

Week One in the Books

Week one on Quantabacook draws to a close today, and what a week it has been. Great weather, terrific food, and this incredible lake have combined to give us a wonderful seven days. We’ve tooled around in Camden, visited a lighthouse, had blueberry pancakes, clam chowder, and lobster rolls. We have kayaked, paddle boarded, fished, and swam. We’ve had three campfires, played Mexican Train and Farkle, read books and enjoyed at least ten meals Al fresco. Oh...and we’ve enjoyed the great company of these guys...

Gordon and Leigh Ann Fort have listened to us brag about Maine for over ten years now. Bringing them here for a week was fraught with great risk. Would this place live up to all of our non-stop hype? Unless the both of them are world class liars, they seem to have loved everything about Maine nearly as much as we do. Gordon has put me to shame in the fishing department, pulling in fish like Roland Martin on steroids. Of course, the vast majority of his haul has taken place safely hidden from anyone’s view, while he slips around some forgotten cove in his kayak. Nevertheless, I know when I’ve been licked. Well done, bud.

So, today they both head to the airport to fly home. It will be just Pam and me for a few days, then Ron and Paula roll in Monday. This will give me time to recover from an unfortunate mishap which occurred on yesterday’s morning run. I was at the 1.5 mile mark and just hitting my stride, enjoying a great run, when something popped in my right calf. At first I thought it was just a Charlie-horse type cramp, but it never went away, and I spent the rest of the day limping around, not being able to put any weight on my toes. This. Or I gotta it’s better, but still tender. By the time Monday rolls around it should be good as new. So for this weekend, I’ll have to restrict myself to more sedentary pursuits...kayaking, fishing, reading and eating...ie, the same exact things I’ve been doing since I got here...minus the running!

My Mistake

Our first taste of bad weather arrived last night. As we sat around a cozy fire, a mere ten feet from the water’s edge, we saw heat lightening across the lake flashing sporadically, revealing a bank of menacing clouds. Soon, the wind changed direction and freshened. Before long our cottage was being lashed with sheets of rain. This morning, the skies are low and cloudy, the water is up and it’s barely 50, with a stiff breeze. Not a lake day, so we will go exploring.

This morning, as I surveyed the scene, my guard dropped for a moment and I made the mistake of pulling up the news on my iPad. All of the screaming headlines were of Kavanaugh and a decades old allegation of sexual misconduct of some kind. There was wrangling over when the accuser would be heard and why the Dems withheld this information until the closing days of the hearings. Hillary Clinton, who can always be counted on at times like this to offer clueless, irony-free comments, opined that Kavanaugh’s accuser...deserves the benefit of the doubt.  Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky could not be reached for comment.

Setting aside the question of guilt or innocence in this matter for a minute...I’m staring to think that the most terrifying words in the English language for any judge in America are...Congratulations! The President wants to nominate you to the Supreme Court! Who, in their right mind would want to endure the kangaroo court/character assassination/clown show that is the Judicial Committee Confirmation Hearings?? Let alone, subject your entire family to it??

Listen, I don’t really have an opinion on Kavanaugh. He’s a judge, man. What do I know about legal philosophy? Nothing. And neither do any of these preening Senators, who only know what their party talking points tell them. Like all judges, the man has a paper trail of decisions and opinions, some of which I would probably agree with, some not. But, he seems smart enough and qualified by education, training and experience. Here’s what I do know...since he was nominated by a Republican President, the Dems are doing everything in their power to prevent his confirmation, including, apparently, trolling through his high school yearbook for dirt. When it’s a Democrat President’s turn, he or she will nominate someone equally qualified, and the Republicans will pull out every trick in the book to prevent confirmation. It’s the way the game is played. The fact that many years ago it was not this way is irrelevant. Many years ago, people rode horses to town, but that ship has sailed too.

So, apparently, Monday is a big day at the circus. The question everyone seems to be asking is will she show up to testify or not? If she does, it will be yet another low point in our political life, the latest in a long line of bar-lowering embarrassments, a further deterioration of public discourse.

In other words...2018.

But, come what may on Monday...I won’t be watching. My morning will be filled with a round of golf, and my afternoon with lake recreation. I’ll have to find out what happened by checking out my Facebook feed. That should be a blast!

What A Day

Yesterday in Richmond was a nightmare for a lot of people. Tornadoes were tearing through the city, trees crashing through people’s homes, roofs lifting off of buildings, and hysterical dogs being comforted in cramped laundry rooms by hard working pet sitters. While all of this was taking place, we were up here having what will go down as an all-timer...one of the best days in Maine...ever. I hesitate to write about it for the same reason that you don’t announce to the world the great news of your promotion at work while visiting a friend who is on his death bed. Timing, after all, is everything. Farting and belching is all very well and good around a campfire with your buddies, but farting at a funeral would be horrible, and nobody in his right mind would let out a long, sloppy belch during the hushed beginning of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Time and place...there’s one for everything, I’m told.

So, at the risk of being thought an insensitive lout, I will tell about our incredible day anyway.

It started with Pam and I taking Gordon and Leigh Ann into Camden for breakfast at the Deli. We felt like tour guides, walking them around that beautiful place. We showed them the library, with its sweeping views of the harbor. We walked them down Commercial street, past the Smiling Cow and Sea Dogs. We strolled along the bay where the schooners were filling up with passengers for day cruises. We took them to the famous foot bridge beside River Ducks. It’s hard to describe how much fun it is to introduce friends to a place that you love so much.

We made it back to the lake around noon, after a quick trip to Hannaford’s to buy steak and lobster for Gordon and Leigh Ann’s 35th anniversary dinner. The skies were blue and the high temperature peaked at 76. We spent the afternoon swimming and fishing, kayaking, floating, and snacking. A couple of naps were taken. By 6:00, we all knew that at some point we were going to have to leave the dock. I mean, dinner was not going to fix itself. But, just about the time we were ready to head back to the house, the looming sunset would reveal a new color, a tapestry of soft pink, purple and red. Needless to say, dinner would have to wait.

Eventually, we enjoyed a marvelous meal out on the deck, the tenth consecutive meal we have taken outdoors. We made Gordon and Leigh Ann tell us all about their wedding day and honeymoon. Just about the time they were about to bore us to tears ( just kidding ), we decided it was time to have a fire, and s’mores...

Just a fabulous day, by any measure.

Oh, and it should be noted that Gordon claims to have caught several fish during his kayak trip around the cove, which was conveniently hidden from anyone’s view. He bragged about catching these fish with surprisingly few details. No pictorial evidence was supplied, so he asked me to take him at his word. He gets a lot of mileage out of that missionary thing. 

We Have Guests!

It’s already happened. I’ve been here less than three full days and I already have no idea what’s going on in the world. I know about Florence, but only vaguely. It made landfall. There was lots of rain. The television in the cottage has been on once, for maybe 30 minutes while I watched ‘Bama lay waste to Ole Miss. That’s it...the sum total of my knowledge of current events.

We have guests. Gordon and Leigh Ann arrived yesterday afternoon, and as you can see, have figured out this place quite well. That pea soup fog didn’t stop my wife from launching out in her kayak about thirty minutes ago to God knows where. It’s as if she has a magnet in her heart that pulls her toward the lake.

This morning, we are taking our guests into Camden for a blueberry pancake breakfast at the Camden Deli and a little walking tour of that beguiling town. Then, mid morning we will head back to the lake for a day of fishing, swimming and lounging, topped off by a steak and lobster dinner tonight on the deck to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary.

There are worse ways to spend a day in September.

Pam’s Capital Idea

I know this has happened to you before, a memory of some delightful event or place from your past grows exponentially with each telling and the passage of time. Before long, your memory of it has mushroomed into legend. Then, when you revisit this place years later you think...Huh...that wasn’t at all as cool as I remembered. It’s like when you tell your kids what an awesome movie Billy Jack was, then you find it on Netflix one night and you make them watch it with you, and fifteen minutes in, you’re totally embarrassed by the sorry excuse for a plot and the atrocious acting. Well, I was a little worried that the same thing would happen with our second look at Loon Landing. Although it’s only been 12 months since we first came here, this place has taken on a legendary place in our Maine memories as...the absolute perfect place. Everything about it...perfect. The lake. The location. The dock. The guest cottage out back. The deck. The proximity to Camden. Everything.

Our second look yesterday afternoon insured that Loon Landing will never be dethroned from the vacation pedestal it sits upon. If anything, this place is more gorgeous than we remembered. Of course, it didn’t hurt that we arrived to blue skies and 74 degrees! But, the owner of this place (aka..the luckiest man alive on planet Earth) has done some additional landscaping that have improved the grounds, and also expanded the dock to twice its old size. There still remains a very short list of shortcomings...no closets, small bathroom, tiny kitchen...but everything about this place stirs within me a couple of emotions that I seldom ever feel in this life...envy and covetousness. If this guy would be willing to sell this place to me, I would move heaven and earth to buy it, even if it meant I could never, ever retire.

Pam deserves a shout out for coming up with a brilliant idea upon our arrival in Camden at 2:30 yesterday afternoon. Check in time wasn’t until 4:00, and we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. She says...How about we have an ice cream cone at River Ducks for lunch, then do a grocery run at Hannaford’s before checking in at the lake? Then, as soon as we get to the cottage, we can put all the perishable stuff in the fridge, leave everything else in the car, put our bathing suits on and spend the rest of the day on the dock?? We can unpack after it’s dark...I don’t want to miss any time on the lake! For dinner, I’ll send you up to The Fraternity Village store for Italian sandwiches, and we will eat them outside while the sun sets.

Yes, my wife understands Maine better than anyone I know. A brilliant plan, it was. We finally had unpacked everything and properly set up housekeeping by 10:00 last night. This morning, the house was super chilly at 52 degrees, and the lake was fogged in at 6:15...

But, now it’s 7:45, and it’s already lifting...

God, what a beautiful slice of creation...