Public Art Work in Maine

I have testified many times in this space of the quirkiness of Maine. Where this oddness comes from is anyone’s guess. I hold the view that when you have to endure Maine winters, such endurance lends itself to eccentricity, in point of fact—entitles you to it. This morning I took Miss Lucy for a peaceful, 45 degree stroll down the narrow lanes of Lermond Pond, which just yesterday we learned is pronounced LerMOND instead of LERmond. This makes us zero for infinity in correctly pronouncing the lakes and rivers in Maine…but I digress.

Yeah, so first there’s this…

If you look closely you will see the drama unfolding above. Yes, this is an epic sword fight between two aspen knights. We do not know the specifics of this dispute but each fighter appears determined to prevail. A visitor from Virginia is left to ponder what went through the mind of whoever put this scene together.

Now, we come to a wine-drinking elderly couple who have Lucy completely flummoxed…

Try as she might, Lucy was unable to get either of them to acknowledge her presence, leaving her puzzled and with hurt feelings.

Finally, someone decided to take a fan blade out of either a standard floor fan or a 1966 Impala, paint it a fetching bright red, then nail it to a random tree without comment.

Again…to each his/her own, but the question remains—why?

Every lake we have ever stayed on in Midcoast Maine has featured this sort of thing. We love it. Everything about it and what it represents—this place is in every way, different.

Where does this trail lead? No telling.

One For the Books

Today was as perfect a fall day in Maine as anyone could dream of. Although the morning dawned cloudy, by 9:30 the sun was bright and the water calm and cobalt blue. To make the day even more special, the clear skies and bright sunshine brought temperatures into the high 60’s and low 70’s. There was no question about what we would do today. All plans were jettisoned and the perfection of the day accommodated by spending all day on the lake.

For me it started with a morning fishing trip on which I caught exactly zero fish. But, like all fishing trips on lakes in Maine, the trip itself serves as its own reward…

The water levels here are two feet below normal due to an extended drought. This might have something to do with the below normal fishing results. But, there’s certainly nothing wrong with the fall colors.

Somewhere during my adventures, I came upon a rather brave loon who seemed totally at ease with my presence. He let me pull my kayak to within 20 feet then appeared to pose for me while I snapped several pictures…

Of course, whenever I go off in the kayak to go fishing, I leave Lucy at home. She is not a fan. So when I got close enough to the dock to be recognized, I saw her launch herself off the dock to serve as my welcoming committee…

Pam spent most of her day on her paddle board, often with Lucy swimming along beside her. There is nothing she enjoys more.

After such a delightful day, Ron and I sat on the little deck next to a gas fireplace while the moon rose across the way…

Tomorrow promises more of the same, but then the weather turns more seasonable with temperatures back down in the upper 50’s.

Disappointment and…Beauty

Today was supposed to be our big day. We were going to drive up to Toddy Pond in Orland, Maine with Tif to view a property that we had our eye on for over a week now. It checked off nearly every box on our exhaustive list. We were excited at the prospect. But late yesterday afternoon we got a text from Tif with bad news. There were already several bids in on the place and ours would need to be submitted by noon today! Our appointment to view was at 11:00. In addition, Tif suggested that a bidding war was taking place and she thought the winning bid would be close to 800K. The asking price was already at the top end of our budget, so that’s that. Very disappointing. But, any beautiful, wonderful thing in life is worth waiting for. So we go back to the drawing board and wait for something else. 

Its difficult to stay disappointed for long in Maine. I woke up an hour ago to this…

Last night we all sat down after dinner to watch the Sunday service from our church. In the message, David talked about the fact that our souls need to be nourished. We need to feed our souls, and one of the things the soul is hungry for is…beauty. If beauty is one of the things that restores the soul, then I am in the right place.

What a Morning

My day began at 6:00. That’s when I walked into the living room of the cabin and saw the lake still for the first time since we arrived two days ago. I kept glancing at it as I made coffee and emptied the dishwasher. After my chores were complete, I took a seat on the sofa. In keeping with my goal of limited interaction with the news, my laptop lay on the coffee table undisturbed. I took this picture with my cell phone…

I had turned on no lights. The gas fireplace in the corner gave off some heat, which was needed since it was 35 degrees out. I sat in the darkness, the only sound, the hum of the gas flame. Then suddenly it turned itself off, and I found myself surrounded on all sides by silence. I could hear my own breathing. Then I began looking across the lake at the shoreline. There is a ridge, then a mountain in the distance. On top of the mountain is a communications tower which you can barely make out against the pale morning sky. Just to the left of the tower there’s a thin line of brightness. I realize that this is where the sun will rise. I become transfixed by the spot. The line became brighter. At 6:55 the top edge of the sun peaked out over the ridge. I squinted. Within minutes, the light from the sun from 93 million miles away began to fill the cabin with a golden glow. I felt its heat against my face. I took another picture…

Then, in some bewitching trance, I found myself standing on the dock wearing a thin pair of pajama bottoms and a short sleeve t-shirt with a fishing rod in my hand. On the very first cast, I pulled in this little guy…

I stayed out there for fifteen minutes or so before I realized that it was pretty cold. When I turned around to walk up the dock back to the cabin, it was blanketed in sunlight…

Now Ron’s out there trying his luck…and its not even 8 o’clock. 

After I get something to eat, I plan on taking a kayak out to discover what this lake is all about. While I’m doing that, the rest of the world will get busy with all of its drama. Good people will do battle with bad people all over the world, like every day in the history of mankind. Good things will happen. Bad things will happen. The markets will either rally or fall. But for today, it will have to get along without me.

The Joys of Quirkiness

After a terrific night of sleep, I wake up to this view and 43 degrees…

Lucy is at her post, supervising all of my morning routines…

The house we rented is lovely, although not without its quirks. But a lake house without a level of quirkiness is not a lake house at all. For starters, we couldn’t find the carafe for the coffee maker. When we finally did, we discovered that it had a huge crack in it. The prospect of having no coffee this morning was too horrible to contemplate so I texted the indomitable Tif Ford at On The Water in Maine last night around 6-ish explaining our crisis. Within an hour the owner of the house, (a big league quirk in her own right), shows up at the house with a brand new Perculator… 

This was the coffee-maker of choice for my parents not to mention millions of Americans before Mr. Coffee came along. As I write this I am enjoying my first cup of coffee from a percolator in probably 30 years. Frankly, its not bad at all, although it will take a few pots before I figure out how to get the right brew strength. There are other options here..a French Press and another single cup thing that also looks French somehow. Hard pass. 

Beside the coffee kerfuffle, there’s the case of the wall clock that bellows out a different bird song at the top of every hour…

My Mom had one of these and it was the subject of much trash talk back in the day. I would harass Mom about it nearly every time I was over at the house. Of course, Mom’s version of the birdsong clock was defective. The owl, woodpecker and eagle didn’t work, and all the others sounded garbled and grotesque, like a recording of Helter Skelter played backward at the wrong speed. Oh the fun I had giving Mom grief over that clock. Anyway, this one works perfectly, which is even worse than a defective one. Last night we are all sitting on the sofa busy with nothing…

…when the screeching song of the Purple Martin starts bouncing off the walls! What in the Sam Hill?? Oh, its just the clock!!

Finally, there’s the matter of the haunted ceiling fan…

Aside from the obvious issue of it being the subject of many side-eyes from Lucy, our girl having a long and troubled relationship with the appliance, this particular model seems to cut on and off of its own accord, independent of human instruction. Everyone remembers it NOT being on when we arrived at the cabin, but while we were eating dinner we all noticed that it was on. As day follows night, the women in the house complained about the draft it was causing and asked Ron to turn it off. Thus began an hour long search for a switch that would perform this simple task. Turns out there was a remote control in one of the bedrooms that had been employed to operate the bedroom ceiling fan. But for reasons that are unexplainable whenever it was used in the bedroom, it had the opposite effect on the one in the living room. Quirky.

Lucky for us, Lucy has made her peace with the overhead menace…

This morning we are heading into Camden for the Harbor festival/book and craft show. Awesome pictures are sure to follow.

Travel, Day One

Rolled out of Short Pump at 6:45. First five hours went very well, with only moderate traffic. Since we have Lucy with us, we can’t stop at a fast food joint to eat. Instead we look for a rest area. We found the perfect one at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center in Interstate 81. Lucy was perfectly well behaved. The facility was immaculate. However, I was inappropriately dressed, my shorts and thin t-shirt ill-equipped for overcast skies and 53 degrees. Pam could not resist snapping the following photograph:

The second five hours was going quite well until the minute we crossed the Connecticut line. Getting through the Bury’s is always tough, but it was only 2:30 in the afternoon, most emphatically not rush hour. But alas, it made no difference. The 40 miles or so that is required to get from Danbury through Waterbury, took forever. By the time we pulled into our hotel just east of Hartford in the suburb of Manchester, we had been on the road for exactly ten hours, having travelled 582 miles. This only leaves us a measly 4 and a half hour trip tomorrow.

Upon our arrival at our Hotel, Lucy was ecstatic, and insisted on a bout of romp-on-the-big-bed-fun…

I plan on going for a three mile treadmill run in the morning, then hitting the road by 8:00. When we arrive in Camden the first order of business will be buying a fishing pole…since I left both of mine in my garage!! Oh, I’ve got all my gear, all the lures, a brand new reel etc…but no fishing poles. But, if you think that’s bad, one year on a summer trip Pam forgot to pack her bathing suits. So, I suppose it runs in the family. Lucy never forgets anything.

Once More

Today will be a chaotic and busy one. It always is. That’s because in 24 hours we will once again be leaving for Maine. This time only for two weeks and we are bringing my sister Paula and her husband Ron along to celebrate her retirement from 45 years as an educator. We will also be bringing Lucy along to supervise, a job she takes quite seriously. Originally we had planned on leaving Saturday, but then Hurricane Ian happened. Having once before driven to Maine during a hurricane, we swore that would not happen again. So we will leave Friday and get ahead of it. The ten day weather forecast for Maine calls for very little rain with high temperatures between 58-63 with low temperatures between 36-45. To make the trip even more exciting, we have an appointment next Tuesday to view a lake house that has promise. 

For the next two weeks we are staying in a different cabin on a different lake. It will be our first time on Lermond Pond. The name of the cabin is Our Song.

Lucy got a bath yesterday and knows full well what is coming. She could not be happier. We go to Maine in the summer to escape the heat and humidity and for long lazy days at the lake. In the Fall we go back for the leaves, the chilly nights and…long lazy days at the lake. For Lucy its all the same—she gets to go swimming and fishing with Mom and Dad and that’s all she cares about.

We tend to savor the fall trip because of the finality of it. During the summer, as great as that is, we all know that the fall trip is coming. The fall trip means that our time in Maine is coming to a close for 9 long months. So, we savor every minute.

It will be fun to explore a new lake. All of them are unique. I’m told that the fishing is excellent on Lermond. One great thing about this particular lake is that its only 17 minutes from Camden! Here’s a map of the place, with a red dot where the cabin sits…

As always, will keep all of you posted with pictures and tall tales of our adventures.