A Good Idea Gone Bad

This photograph could be characterized in many ways. Some would use words like peaceful or relaxing to describe this scene. But, if I were asked to name this particular photograph I would use different words. The Calm Before The Storm. A Good Idea Gone Bad. Minutes Before Mayhem....come to mind.

So, yesterday was a very mixed day for me. On the positive side of the ledger was another glorious sunny day on a lake in Maine, where no matter what happens, it’s always a good day. When bad things happen in Maine it’s all extremely relative. Generally speaking, the folks back home don’t want to hear you complaining about how hard it is to find a car wash—while you’re lazing around for a month on a lake! “How about you wash the car yourself, you lazy bum?” Nevertheless, just because we’re in Maine for a month does not mean that bad things can’t happen...which brings me back to the idyllic photograph above. It all started when my wife ( See: Genesis 3:12 ) had an inspiration while we were sitting on the end of our dock enjoying the sunshine:

Pam: Wouldn’t it be fun if we took our beach chairs out to the swimming float? That way we would have a better view of the lake and the way it floats around in circles, it would be like being on a ride at the Fair!!

Me: (in my head. NOT spoken aloud) Or, like being on that plate inside a microwave. (Spoken aloud) Sure. Sounds fun. Let’s just float out there with our chairs.

Pam: No, I was thinking of kayaking out.

Me: Ok

She went first. She got into her kayak. I handed her the chair, her paddle, her beach towel, and her bag of stuff...since my wife goes nowhere without her bag of stuff. I followed closely behind carrying my chair, my beach towel, with no bag of stuff. I mean...why?

Anyway, I watched with muffled laughter as Pam struggled mightily trying to hoist her beach chair onto the swim float (Pro Tip: Irony alert!). In the process of her clumsy efforts, her beach towel got soaking wet, but she eventually got the chair on the float and her kayak tied off with my gallant help. Speaking of gallantry, I offered her my dry towel for her use as I wrung out her wet one. She looked at me with those adoring eyes and sighed, “My hero!!”

I must admit that while we were out there it was kinda nice. Pam was right. We had a nicer view, and the 360 degree rotation of the swim float was fun. So far, her inspiration had proven to be a great success. But, after packing up Pam in her kayak for her return trip to the dock, I began surveying my options for leaving the swim float and like Abe Lincoln right before the play was about to start, I thought, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” There was nobody to hand me the chair, and the wind had picked up. So I fit the chair in the kayak all cock-eyed and catawampus. Then I thought, I’m going to have a hard time fitting my legs in what’s left of that little opening, maybe I should get it first then reach for the chair? But, as is my custom when presented with any dilemma, I chose the brute force option...”No problem, I’ll make it work!”

I didn’t.

As soon as my bottom hit the seat, it became clear that there was too much weight on the starboard side of the kayak. Then, things started to go in slow motion. As my vessel began its rightward tilt I grabbed for the swim float in vain. The next thing I know I’m flailing around in ten feet of water with a capsized kayak and a folding beach chair drifting away into the depths. I grabbed for the chair, retrieved it, then it promptly opened, serving as a giant sail behind me as I struggled to reach the kayak before it too drifted off. All of this time, Pam is oblivious to my plight, unloading her chair onto the dock, triumphant in the knowledge that she had come up with such a fun idea!

As I was pushing the upside down kayak forward with one hand, and dragging an open beach chair through the water behind me with the other, dog paddling like a madman, it occurred to me that my cell phone was in the pocket of my swim trunks.

Finally, after the longest 90 foot swim of my life, I managed to reach the dock, throw the beach chair onto the deck and struggle up the steps, totally exhausted. I was able to save the kayak and the chair, and myself from a far worse fate. Pam did check to see if I was alright first...but then asked, “Honey, where’s the towel? That was my all time favorite towel!”  

“I would imagine it’s at the bottom of the lake,” I gasped, gulping for air, as Pam quickly got back in her kayak to begin her ultimately unsuccessful towel search and rescue operation. “Don’t worry,” I yelled. “We’ll send Patrick or Jon down to look for it when they get here!!” Pam yelled back, “But, I LOVED that towel!!”

The lesson here guys, if you’re wondering, is never be all gallant and offer your wife your ratty old black and white striped towel you bought at the Dollar General to use while you dry out her favorite towel in the Universe. If not for that stupid mistake it would have been my ratty towel that sunk to the bottom of Crawford Pond. Problem solved!!

Here Comes The Sun

Finally. The Chamber of Commerce just whipped us up a day...

I have nothing to add to these pictures except to say that this is why we come up here for a month. 

Heading out this morning to play golf. 

A Cloudy Tour

Went into Camden this morning. While Pam was busy spending our kids’ inheritance at Once A Tree, I roamed the town in a thin cool mist taking pictures of various landmarks.

The best beer joint in town has fallen victim to COVID-19. Cuzzy has left the building.

The Owl and Turtle is thankfully still in business but closed on Sundays.

I wish our bank and Post Office looked like these guys.

Very disappointed to learn that The entire summer season of concerts, plays and shows at the Opera House were cancelled because of COVID. Town offices are still open, however.

The A-Frame on the left is, believe it or not, a Walgreens. The small building right next door somehow survived the great shutdown of 2020. Zoot’s Coffee Shop is a favorite and my daughter will be happy it still lives on!

The corner of Mechanic’s Street and Elm Street, an intersection prominent in the Academy Award nominated movie Peyton Place.

A memorial erected at the base of the flag pole in the center of the town Commons...right besides the Church with the iconic steeple seen from every house in town.

While taking pictures in the Common I heard muffled voices singing. I followed my ears and found this hearty congregation around the back of the church braving the elements for a worship service.

Since the Owl and Turtle was closed, We drove into Belfast to shop at Left Bank Books. Bought a couple of novels with either Maine themes or Maine authors. That should be enough to keep me busy for a couple of weeks.

 

Pierre

We have been in Maine for eight days now. It has been sunny for two and a half of those days, the rest either cloudy or rainy. This morning it’s raining again. It’s also been...chilly. Yesterday, July 4th, I was in long sleeves, wrapped in a towel on the dock, a breezy 66 degrees. But, it has been my experience that...the weather...is at the top of a long list of things about which I can do absolutely nothing. Other items on that list would include, traffic backups, toll booths, stupid people and the continued existence of yogurt. Try as I might, I can affect no changes to these things. Traffic backups will continue to happen at the worst possible time, the sand-pounding idiocy of the toll booth will frustrate me for the next millennia, stupid people will always be among us—they turn up everywhere— and people will continue to claim that yogurt is wonderful, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, especially its rancid, foul smell...like a teenaged boys sneakers drenched in sour buttermilk. Nevertheless people will persist, loading it up with fruit, granola, and anything else that helps them choke the stuff down, all the while claiming that it’s delicious. 

Much has been made of the giant pink flamingo who lives at the next camp over from us. Pierre, first appeared in a photograph I took the day we arrived...

Unfortunately, due to all the inclement weather, Pierre has been totally ignored, having gone eight days without use. Consequently, Pierre is going through the various stages of grief, having gotten stuck on depression, as these troubling photographs attest...

The neighbors have even gone to the trouble of bringing around Pierre’s child to cheer him up...

...so far to no avail. I will keep you all posted on his recovery.

I’m thinking that I’m ready for another trip into town. We’ll grab some breakfast at either Camden Deli or Mariners, then stop in the Owl and Turtle to pick up a few books and who knows what else. We’ll take more pictures this time. Camden is the type of town that is beautiful no matter the weather.

The House Library and July 4th

Every house we have ever rented up here has had one thing in common. Books. If you live in a place like Maine where it isn’t fit for humans half the time, books are a necessity, not unlike food and water. What else to do when there’s a foot of snow on the ground and more on the way? Each house has a collection of books, some of them bought for renters to read. I can tell because their spines are straight and unwrinkled, usually John Grisham or Elin Hilderbrand. Isn’t that what people read over the summer? But sometimes I stumble across a gem.

The first week at Loon Call I found one that frustrated and a second that beguiled. That’s always the chance you take when you open an unknown book. The first one I picked up was Kingdom of Fear by the frustrating Hunter Thompson. The Gonzo-Journalist who had appalled and amazed me 40 years ago with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, now frustrates me. Where did all of his nihilism and arrogant self indulgence get him? A self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The older I get, the less patience I have with narcissism, no matter how talented a writer the narcissist may be. Reading Thompson at 62 is a much different experience than reading him at 25.

Then, as if God knew I needed a mental shower, I stumbled across this book...

It was stacked under several Ken Follett books. When I saw the endorsement from Oprah, I almost passed. In truth, this is by far the most girlish book I’ve ever read. I don’t say that as a criticism, just an observation. The author was unknown to me, a German named Nina George. This book was written in German, later translated into a couple dozen languages. Parts of it were tedious, other parts too predictable for my taste. But it was so beautifully written, even as a translation. Incredible. And, unlike Thompson, entirely hopeful and celebratory of life. 

I do this every time I come up here. I plow through a half a dozen novels...because I can. I have the time. My attention isn’t divided. But now, the library at Loon Call Cottage has been exhausted and I must hit up the Owl and Turtle for reinforcements.

Pam just left the house in her morning kayaking outfit, a bright pink athletic ensemble with a sky blue Camden, Maine baseball cap. She will disappear into the  fog and by the time she returns it will have lifted. It will be time for breakfast. Then, who knows? It’s the 4th of July, a national holiday which has suddenly fallen out of favor in our woke new world. The people around this lake still celebrate it if the booms, cracks and pops from last night are any indication. We will celebrate it too. I’m still grateful for my citizenship, if a little less triumphant. The sins of America do nothing to dampen my appreciation for her virtues. Show me another country without flaws and I’ll show you a country without great responsibilities or accomplishments. We struggle with our past sins. We wrestle with how to atone for them, but we move forward with gratefulness.

Larry, Louise, and Jeremiah

This is the Dunnevant Compound on Crawford Pond. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to take a photograph of anything out on this lake that doesn’t feature the increasingly forlorn Pink Flamingo lurking in the background. Nevertheless, I thought you might like to see where we spend most of our time here on sunny days. Yesterday was picture perfect in that regard, perfect in every way except for the item which appears in the extreme foreground of this photograph. Yes, my lucky lure has lost his luck. Still, I will persist, since the idea of fishing is nearly as much fun as catching actual fish. At least for me. The waiting, the anticipation, then the startling surprise when you feel a strike, it’s all part of a process that can be endearingly slow. In that slowness you find rest and joy. It’s a mystery that someone with my antsy temperament would find it so satisfying. Maybe its the things you see while fishing...

Meet Larry. Or maybe this is Louise. It’s maddeningly difficult to distinguish the sex of loons from a distance. It’s also difficult to get a high quality close up of these majestic creatures. They are camera shy and mercurial. As soon as your camera is ready they slip under water with one silky flick of their head, then they are gone for a minute or so before they pop up just as silky 25 yards away, having done God only knows down in the depths of the lake. Our cove is the domain of Larry and Louise who prowl this terrain with confident nobility. When we first arrived, on one of our first appearances on our dock, both of them rolled out of the deep just off the end of the swimming dock to inspect the new arrivals. After satisfying themselves that we were harmless and not from Massachusetts, they both went about their business. It may be the most comforting part of living on a Maine lake for a month, the fact that our presence is acknowledged by a pair of guardian loons who are keeping an eye on us.

Oh, one more character you all should meet. Unfortunately, I have no photographic evidence of his existence, but believe me, he’s here. He lives in the reeds and lily pads just off the the right of the walkway to our dock...Jeremiah the Bullfrog. This guy sings to us...LOUDLY...mostly in the evenings. We can hear him all the way in our upstairs bedroom 100 feet up the bank on the hill. He has a deep baritone and only knows one tune, one note, but he has that note down and sings with great enthusiasm. When his inelegant grunt intermingles with the the plaintive call of Larry and Louise, well...it is something else in this world.

Picnic, Anyone??

Yesterday, the weather broke. After almost three days of rain, the clouds cleared and released us out on the lake in earnest for the first time since we arrived. I took the kayak up around the big island towards the north end of the lake. They call it the 100 acre island. It was granted to the State of Maine many years ago by the three families who owned it in exchange for a pledge by the State that it would remain undeveloped and open to the public for exploring. I fished around the nooks and crannies and marveled at the beauty of a place that has been untouched by modern schemes of progress. To give you all an idea of the size of Crawford Pond, here are some photos to provide a frame of reference:

The blue dot is Loon Call Cottage. In our little cove the view is blocked. We can only see our cove, but paddle in a kayak for three minutes and suddenly the entire expanse of the place opens up. To travel the entire circumference of the lake would be 11 miles. The surface area of the lake is 596 acres, it’s average depth is 50 feet.

In this shot, the blue dot is Crawford Pond. It’s a 27 minute drive to Camden and the harbor of Penobscot Bay. I have circled the other lakes we have stayed on in this beautiful part of the State, Hobbs Pond, Meguntecook, and Quantabacook. Pemiquid Pond is just south of this map near Damarascotta, where we have also stayed.

This map of the entire State gives you an idea of why they refer to this part of the State as Mid-Coast Maine.

So yeah, this was my kayak adventure yesterday, a 3.66 mile meandering get to know you paddle which included a lot of gawking, a bit of fishing, and some picture taking. One particular picture stands out. It is so thoroughly Maine...I laughed out loud when I saw it. The people who live on Crawford Pond, like all lake livers, mark areas of shallow water with buoys of some sort, sometimes with colorful retired lobster trap buoys, sometimes with simple plastic milk jugs. But, in a beautiful cove towards the north of the lake, I turned a corner and saw THIS:

Picnic, anyone? When I got closer I noticed the lovely touch of plastic roses in a vase secured somehow to the center of the table because...well, what’s more inviting than a centerpiece of roses on a picnic table in the middle of a lake?

I. Love. Maine.