It’s hard to keep a blog about Maine life without starting each entry by covering the weather. I always wondered why my father-in-law started his emails with the subject line “Long Pond Weather” – now I know. The weather swings so dramatically here, and affects our daily routines much more than it ever did in the Bay. In March we had an ice storm that turned all of the birches into arches of sparkling roadside lace. The sun shone through a million tiny fingers of ice, with the white ground reflecting the light back into their grasp. Sometime in April, the snow started melting and running in rivers alongside the street. I was starting to think there was nothing beautiful about early spring until I noticed trickling streams carving paths all around us. Also, the puddles froze, melted, and refroze so many times that they formed multiple layers of ice, like a series of glass floors the kids loved to step through and shatter. Suddenly one day, the ice on the lake broke up and washed away, so fast that we were walking on it one week and looking out over rippling dark water two weeks later.
The snow vanished first in the driveway; in April we were still sledding on the side of the hill. Finally in May the last patch of pile-up between our trailer and the barn melted. Red-wing blackbirds emerged, we celebrated “Maple Sunday” by touring sugarhouses with the kids, then the grass and leaves sprouted and the ferns uncurled. Everything was latent, everything was waiting for just a few days of warmth to spring. In a Ray Bradbury story (“Frost and Fire”), a planet has such harsh conditions that its inhabitants have adapted to lives short and accelerated. This feels the same. With the scent of lilacs drifting in on summer-storm air, the buzz of insects, and our kids kicking off their sheets, it’s hard to imagine that less than two months ago we were packing snowballs, brewing Nut Brown Ale, and treating windburn – now it’s soccer, Apricot Ale, and sunburn.
The only thing worse than the long cold spell of a Maine winter is the quantity of insects that emerge when it’s over. The black flies seem to realize they only have a few weeks’ head-start on the dragonfly nymphs, so they swarm in desperation. This leads to some rather frisky spring behaviors, such as capering around in the driveway to get away from the flies while you wait for your kid to arrive on the bus, or surprising people with a smack upside the head when they have a mosquito, or snorting vigorously because you’re sure that bug that just went up your nose is still in there. For the three or so weeks of “black fly season,” when they’re at their worst, the only sport that really makes sense is biking. Knowing you have to go fast enough to keep the flies behind you turns out to be great motivation for pushing uphill.
Thanks to Zach’s parents, who were kind enough to let us stay here for so long while we searched for our “dream house,” we finally found it. Actually Zach did, one night while I was playing at the bi-monthly music jam in Lincoln. Despite the hours and hours I spend looking, he always finds the right thing just when we really need it. I came home a little discouraged that night because I hadn’t played my two songs as well (in front of the 150-member audience and 20 other musicians) as I could have if I wasn’t so damn nervous. Zach was excited, but he just said, “come see this” and showed me the listing for a log cabin on 24 acres that had popped up the day before. Less than 48 hours later – on a workday, and with the kids yanked out of school – we were down in South Berwick touring the place with offer papers in hand. So after having lived on a boat for five years, paying property tax on the mud below us (which actually belonged to the marina), we will be surrounded by fields, forest, and pasture. The house itself is not unlike the boat; rather small overall with wooden walls, propane energy (for now), skylights, and lots of built-ins. I think we’ll feel right at home.
