Thursday, February 25, 2010

Just Ducky

I was a water baby. Almost forty years ago, I swam out into the world under the sign of The Fish. I spent most of my growing-up years on an island under grey Northwest skies, surrounded by salt-water rhythms and moon-drawn tides. I commuted to high school by ferry boat.

After a desert pilgrimage of sorts to attend graduate school in Colorado, I headed back out to the sea as quickly as possible-- this time in another direction, but with no less thirst in the journey and no less relief to arrive at a different ocean's shore.

I love oceans. I also love the North. I have spent time in Southern climes, testing my vocation and my ability to itinerate, but the North always feels most like home. It is my belief that we each carry an inner landscape--mostly a reflection of the place or places in which we grew--and I've found myself most at peace when my outer landscape contains the same elements (salt water, evergreens, mountains) as my inner one.

It made sense, then, to choose Alaska after Venezuela. It made sense, I thought, to choose Colorado for my next sojourn from my growing-up island--it had mountains and evergreens at least--but in that dry, high state I found myself thirsty and homesick nearly all the time. And then I made my way to Maine, seemingly the best of all options: ample salt water along its beautifully complicated coast, forests of spruce, hemlock, fir and pine, and mountains more ancient--if less dramatic--than the upstart Cascadian and Olympic peaks of my childhood home. Oh, and then there was the snow: famously cold, snowy winters, a longstanding source and inspiration for songs, poems, and legends galore. Add to this the lure of a certain bagpiper, and I was hooked.

So, now it's late February in Maine. Along with my birthday today, I celebrate almost a decade of full-time residence in the north-easternmost U.S. state. I have braved wild winds for New Year's Day walks along the shore. I have shoveled my share of deep, drifting snow. I have strapped on skis and snowshoes to traverse the winter woods in search of frozen water in all its beautiful permutations. But winter is changing.

This is our driveway today. In spite of my best efforts yesterday afternoon, the farm truck could not *quite* be coaxed all the way onto higher ground. I suspect my best hope is to make no attempts to move it until the weather shifts, the ground (hopefully?) dries out and the currently liquified muck freezes hard again.

Global Climate Change, I've read, is all about extremes. Wet seasons will be wetter, dry seasons will be drier, and storms will be stormier. Our current storm started yesterday morning and flood warnings are posted for our entire county all the way through tomorrow night. We often get similar conditions in April, but February?!? Oh dear.

But there are some things a flood does well. It may not beautify the landscape with white fluffy drifts, but it does help a farm dog find all her snow-buried tennis balls. It also highlights, for a farmer, those areas of the farm that would most benefit from some serious Spring Cleaning. For us, the work area beyond the woodpile demands the most immediate attention. That's where the spare lumber got stacked from last year's farmhouse renovation. That's where the leftover gravel sits, a remnant of plumbing and fencing projects. And that's where the farm dog dropped a most illustrative object that rose to the occasion for this February flood:

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Adorable!
Happy Birthday!!!

Mary Beth said...

So cute! :) Happy Day!

Southern Belle said...

Happiest of Birthdays to ya! I so enjoy reading your blog and the chuckle they bring to an otherwise dreary day!

Mama Pea said...

1) Oh, how I hate mud. (Just sayin'.)

2) Your little yellow ducky is the perfect harbinger of spring.

3) HAPPY, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY!

ME Ranger said...

Happy birthday! Sorry about your truck - we've parked the Park trucks on the tar, afraid we were going to lose them in the dooryard.

Marti said...

Hey old friend! Woke up thinking about you and wondering if with the way the world has changed it might be possible to find you, or at least discover what you've been up to. Poking around Facebook for a while did the trick.

I live in Colorado - landed here half a dozen years before your sojourn here and stayed, though for many years I complained about being a thousand miles from the beach and a monstrous 5,280 feet above sea level. In time the sunshine and cloudscapes grew on me. I still get back to WA at least once a year. Meg's still there - lives in Ballard - and both sets of parents. On my last visit we went out to the island ... first time I'd been there since sometime in the early 90s. Drove past your old house after a walk on the beach and remembered exploring the gully across the street with you, nearly 30 years ago.

Marti Smith