At Home in Lincoln

We’ve settled into Lincoln happily – so much that it will be hard to leave, when the time comes. Every morning now we walk Jonah down the driveway to wait for the school bus. The grass is still green, and looks like powdered mint in the morning frost. The trees are blazing red, orange, and yellow, scuttling their leaves across Sweet Road on the way to drop off Zora. Both kids have great teachers and are happy in school. I drive home to work as the sun starts filling the valley.

The weather changed suddenly. In early September we had to run the fans, and just two weeks later we were turning on the heater. The first week of Jonah’s new life as a kindergardener, he came home and jumped in the lake. Now the lake is too cold for swimming, but it’s still warm enough to fish from the canoe. The only kind of fish out there that seems to want Jonah’s worms are large toothy pickerill – the last one was 16”. They’re probably full of mercury, but what they hey, we fry them up in flour with curry powder and just try not to take Jonah fishing too often.

Earlier this summer, Jack and Pat sailed up to Canada in Alisande and we met them at Eastport, the easternmost town in the U.S. It was a beautiful old town, preserved through neglect and now full of artists. The mackerel were running in the harbor and kids just a little older than Jonah were pulling out lines with five or more fish hooked on at a time. Jonah befriended a boy who was more than happy to share his catch, so I cleaned the fish and we cooked and ate them on board. In town, I found a store that sold handmade things. I bought a box of “Needhams” candy and two dolls (one for Zora and one for her cousin Easnadh) that had been rescued from goodwill and outfitted with custom-knitted dresses. The cost of the dolls could never have covered the work that went into the knitting, so I imagine the artist as a saintly rescuer of abandoned lovies, someone who still gets misty-eyed when she hears “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

Time is valued differently here. Goods all cost the same – or more – as they did in the Bay Area, but anything that requires human time is much less. The best haircutter in town (who is actually quite good) charges $16 and is amazed if you pay her $20. Zora’s Montessori, also the most expensive in town and the sort of nurturing and politically correct place that would cost at least $1500 per month in the Bay, only charges $450. For now we are quite lucky to have been able to hang on to employment from outside the state, but I am sure that if we had to find jobs in Maine we would struggle. Many people work multiple jobs. It’s not uncommon to see a sign that reads something like: “Small Engine Repair and Fresh Baked Pies.”

People who find out we’re from California like to tease me that I’ll never make it through the winter. I’ve learned that the best retort is to tease them back that I know how they do it – it’s that Allen Coffee Brandy. Every drugstore and grocery store in Maine seems to have about a fifth of the liquor aisle dedicated to variously sized bottles of Allen Coffee Brandy (also known as “Fat Ass in a Glass”). I figure since we’re already living in a trailer, I might as well start working on a double-wide. But I haven’t bought any Allen’s yet. I can’t sleep at night if I drink caffeine after noon, so until I’m cold enough to start drinking at 10am, it’s no use to me. Instead, we are working on fermenting three gallons of apple cider that we squeezed with a borrowed cider press. The apples came from a local orchard that agreed to discount the “drops” we harvested from the ground. The kids enjoyed using the press and collecting fresh cider from its spout, but after grinding and pressing 8 bushels I felt like I never wanted to see another apple. Zach and Jonah had the slightly less arduous task of slicing apples for the dehydrator, with which they made yummy apple chips. And Zach’s mother made wonderful applesauce, enough to last until the next apple harvest.

We ate out of the garden all summer. It was neat to be here when everything came out of the ground and had to be processed. Zach’s mother made pickled “dilly” beans, pickled beets, relish, spiced grape jam from the concord grapes near the driveway, and we had several apple cakes and crisps from the crabby little apples in the front. On a trip to Machias we obtained a 10-pound box of blueberries for the freezer. Now we are just waiting for our cider to ferment and our 5 new Australorp pullets to start laying eggs. They are lovely black chickens, green and blue iridescent in the sun. I love to sit on the lawn with my coffee in the morning listening to them cluck.

Zach built the chicken house and run while he was waiting to hear about his job with Fat Spaniel. It was a good outlet for the anxiety, something concrete and productive to focus on. He had been working with Fat Spaniel for seven years, was one of the first employees, and we were heavily invested there – but as often happens with start-ups, it was bought by another company and our stocks never came to anything. It would have been devastating news to receive in the Bay, but here, in this timeless place, it’s just a failed harvest. The bad news was followed up by a great offer from another company down in Massachusetts. Zach is now the new Director of Measurement and Monitoring for American Capital Energy, a high-end company that carries out about 20% of the country’s major solar installations. They are willing to let him work in the office just 2 days a week for now (and 3 from home), which will let us keep the kids in school and gives us time to look for a place of our own in southern Maine.

I have just finished drafting two evaluation reports for the organization I contracted with in April. It was a great experience and they were happy enough with my work to ask me to evaluate the same two projects next year, this time on a prospective basis. I may also have a chance to help them re-design the database they use to gather data about their various initiatives. Exciting, fun, and challenging work with great people, and it will continue to give me the flexibility to work from some so I can be here when Jonah bursts into the house and wants to tell us about his day.

Jonah turned five this month. I planned a “Rock Party” for him and gave him an invitation to offer to a friend he’d met on the bus. She refused the invitation, so I thought the party idea was dead in the water and started planning a trip to Western Maine to tour a mine (something Jonah had been asking to do all year). The next week Jonah took out the invitation and offered it to someone in his class – everyone crowded around, saying they wanted to come too. At that point we were committed to invite the whole class. Zach and his family were apprehensive (the last party they threw, in Taos, ended up in tears) but it went off beautifully, particularly the mine shaft in the basement that led to a bucket of dirt filled with treasures. We had a good mix of cousins and classmates (not too many), and a tasty lemon cake with candy “rocks.” Jonah had a blast and parents wrote me afterwards to let me know what a nice time they’d had. Whew – one down. We were still committed to the mine tour I had reserved, so we did that last weekend. Jack and Pat came along and helped entertain Zora while Zach, Jonah and I went into the mines. Everyone got to dig in the tailings, where we found feldspar, mica, quartz, and even some rough-grade aquamarine and garnet. We had a beautiful drive home along route 2, which is sort of a Northern Route 66, running West to the Pacific coast and East right past Sweet Road where we currently abide.

After much transition we have found a new path forward. It’s nice to finally have some time to write. I am looking out the bedroom of our trailer at a broad green lawn, trees with gold and russet leaves, and a garden that is turning back into the earth. Standing in the corner of our room are four birch branches, the huppah poles from our wedding. They came off this property in ‘02, travelled all the way to Boonville, sat in the dark 5 years at our storage unit in Berkeley and now are just a few meters from where they grew.