Battening Down the Hatches

Normally, the last full day in Maine is divided into two parts, the part where you get as much last minute fun in as is humanly possible, and the part where you pack everything up and clean up the cabin. Tomorrow is that day. Only, we have been thrown a curveball by Mother Nature. Somewhere in the next couple of hours, we are due to be hit with a fall storm that will last all the way through until Saturday morning. The current forecast calls for up to 3 inches of rain and sustained 20 mph winds with gusts up to 45 mph. The possibility of power outages are also in the forecast. If you are thinking to yourself, “what a horrible way to end a vacation,” nothing could be further from the truth. Unless you have sat inside a warm and dry Maine cabin while watching a fierce rain storm pummel a lake, lashing it with sheets of water while white caps dance across the surface, you can’t possibly know how incredible cool it is to watch. Tomorrow will be amazing.

However, all is NOT well. Pam took her paddle board out this morning when the lake was still as glass. As she was passing a smaller cabin she noticed at least a dozen empty beer cans at the bottom of the lake at the end of their dock. Pam, of course, was mortified. This is Maine, for God’s sake. Why, in the name of all that is holy, would anyone throw empty beer cans into a beautiful lake when their trash can is literally ten steps away? It felt like a unspeakable violation of the laws of nature, some kind of unforgivable sin. It reminded me of the time we were at Loon Landing and one day when I went for a run I saw that some cretin had thrown at least 30 empty cans of BudLite into the woods on both side of Brierly Road. I ended up filling a tall kitchen bag with them, took a picture of my work and wrote a blog about what I considered an outrage. This seemed worse somehow, because they had been thrown in the water. If the water wasn’t 60 degrees, I would have done a dive, collected them all and deposited them on the moron’s front door. But…enough negativity.

Here are a few pics from the last couple of days…

My sister, the new retiree.

So very, very, Maine.

Camden’s town square awash in fallen leaves.

Living the high life…

My No-Internet Day

Yesterday was the first bad weather day we have had since we arrived eleven days ago. It was cold all day and by the late afternoon and evening it began to rain, after which our corner of Maine became enshrouded in thick fog. But this does not mean that we had a bad day, quite the opposite.

When I woke up I made the decision that I was not going to open the internet all day. There were several reasons for this, not the least of which was the tight stomach that has been dogging me ever since I arrived, a result of stock market-induced anxiety. All day long I have been checking the conditions on Wall Street, then checking my work phone for client messages, etc. all in the vain hope that by doing so I can somehow will it all away. I know that sounds ridiculous, but when you do this type of work for 40 years, these are the things you do to trick yourself into thinking you have some control over the situation. Well, yesterday morning I had had enough. Whatever was to happen in the investment world would have to happen without me. First up would be my morning run. 

I did bring my cell phone with me, since Pam has forbade me from running without it—“What happens if you fall and break your leg or get hit by a car?? Have a nice run, Honey!” Before heading out the door I checked the outside temperature and saw the numbers 38. Those are not good numbers, nevertheless I hit the road with enthusiasm. At the two mile mark, I made some new friends…

Although they weren’t exactly captivating conversationalists, I did receive their undivided attention. And when it was time for their photograph, they were 100% cooperative.

When I got back to the cabin and got cleaned up, I picked up a book I started reading a couple days ago and was enjoying…

In two days I hadn’t made very much progress because of the aforementioned stock market obsession, so I decided to take full advantage of my no internet day and finish this door stop of a book, which I did at 10:00 last night. It was nothing short of brilliant. Towles is one of those guys who when you read his stuff it makes you want to throw away your iPad and never write again. I mean, what’s the point? You’ll never be as good as him. Aside from the ego-shattering, spending most of an entire day engrossed in a rich and beautifully written tale is one of the greatest joys of life.

After spending all day doing essentially nothing, naturally we were all starved by the time dinner rolled around and since none of us had the desire to actually do anything close to physical work, we made the 40 minute drive into Belfast for a spectacular dinner at Delvino’s. Its an Italian place that is hugely popular with the locals. We have always had great luck there and last night was no exception. My meal started with some kind of sausage-vegetable soup that had my nose running by the time I was finished. Perfect. Then I ordered one of the pasta specials because I heard the words “Cajun” and “sausage” in the description. It was so incredible, so exquisite that after finishing the dish I shamefully tilted the plate up so I could gather the last dribbles of sauce in a spoon. If there had been any bread left I would have sopped up every drop. This meal is the reason that somebody invented Pepcid.

It occurred to me that my no internet day describes Lucy’s everyday. She never looks at the internet, and it is no surprise that she is the most mentally stable member of my household! All Lucy does is what she was created to do…be a loving and loyal dog. For Lucy this means looking after all of us while we are in Maine. She is never calm or carefree until she has accounted for all four of us. If one or more of us are not in the room, she begins her herding ritual which involves searching the cabin for the missing party and harassing that person until they are present and accounted for. Only then can she take her rightful place on the sofa overlooking the lake and get back to napping. Pam was one such offender yesterday, having gone to our bedroom to have a telephone conversation with her sister, when she took this picture…

“Ok, yous gots any idea hows long you gonna be, Mom? I is worried.”

This morning, I woke up to a completely fogged in lake. But today’s forecast calls for sunny skies and upper 50’s. 

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.