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:

Heifer-After

LOSING APRIL IN FEBRUARY:
AN ELEGIAC (de)COMPOSITION IN HONOUR OF OUR LATE HEIFER

The Old Woman whistled and the wild wind blew
And the beetle-ridden spruce tree cracked in two
And that was the start of the whole to-do:
The week we composted a cow.
















Aye, down went the spruce on the old house roof.
While the man in the moon looked on, aloof...
Then the heifer slipped on a half-lit hoof,
The week we composted a cow.

Up with the dawn and our dear heifer down--
No time to mourn for those eyes of brown--
For the neighbors instantly started to frown,
The week we composted a cow.

The experts we called said to gather some brush.
Order a truckload of horse-poop! Rush!
(The neighbors peered with a horrified hush)
The week we composted a cow.















No time to weep, farmer. No time to yell.
We downloaded a fact sheet, (from Cornell),
Then we laid down quicklime and covered her well,
The week we composted a cow.

Well, word got around. The Selectmen beckoned.
The neighbors made motions and looked for a second.
And so we went down, and wrangled, and reckoned
The week we composted a cow.

Impressed by our fact sheets and photos and charts,
The Selectmen pondered it all in their hearts,
Then... commended our decompositional arts!
The week we composted a cow.

Now April the heifer's tucked safe in her pile.
We permit ourselves, now, a tear and a smile.
But the neighbors won't ask us to tea for a while...
Now that we've composted a cow.


--copyright Mainecelt February 11, 2010

Mama was a Rolling Crone...

Dear Mom,

Today's your 64th birthday. No, you're not losing your hair--I love the pride with which you wear your silver crown--and not much else about the song really matches, but one thing's for sure: I do still need you, now that you're 64.

I need you because we're both still raising each other, both still discovering the height and depth and breadth of our womanhood. Even though I've flown far from the small island nest of my childhood, we still are strongly linked. We are linked by our shared love and reverence for the land. We are linked by our shared linguistic silliness. We are linked by our shared hunger for beauty and our far-reaching theological curiosity.

Sometimes it's unsettling, this powerful connection. I'm not always ready to acknowledge how close we are. When I left on that plane for my first year of college in Alaska, I felt like a mustang just released from a rodeo gate, wild to bust loose from the (admittedly self-sought) burdens of The Dutiful Daughter. I longed to discover who I was apart from all others' expectations. Away in the frozen north, I spent long evenings staring up out at the snowy fields, softly illuminated by an ice-ringed moon. I wrote, sang, and--safe in my ivory tower--wept with abandon. (The freedom to sob my heart out was, oddly, my dearest new luxury after years in a five-sibling household with very thin walls.)

After the novelty wore off or the tears wore out, (I can't remember which), I lunged toward a new goal: to major in "international everything." It was a path you'd set me on, with your own voracious reading habits and deep affection for the diversity of human cultures. In letters and phone calls home, I'd relate my latest leanings and learnings. Your responses alternately impressed and irritated me; I was trying so hard to reinvent myself, trying to "compare and contrast," but you always agreed, approved, or at least understood. So much for rebellious differentiation!

As the years have unfolded, neither of us have ever managed to satiate our hunger for learning. We are both the daughters of teachers, after all. How delighted I was to watch from the sidelines (a.k.a. graduate school) as you celebrated your (mostly) empty nest by enrolling in poetry and forest stewardship classes! How much fun we still have, comparing notes from garden shows and farming workshops!

So, here I am, entirely myself, entirely my mother's daughter. You are still on the island, immersed in the business of gardening, surrounded with the fragrant fruits of your labours. You do not rest on your laurels. Your creations dazzle the senses and bedeck countless homes and businesses. They offer a benediction of beauty at rituals and events. Every year, you rework your plans, introduce something new, and push the edges of possibility. Here on this farm, I pay homage (momage?) as I echo your movements, sorting seeds and playing in the dirt.

Thank you, Mother. Thank you for your boldness, your wit, your spirit, and your stubborn dedication to being Truly Yourself. I still look to your wisdom and your witness. I still need you, now that you're sixty-four, and I am profoundly thankful for the healthy choices you've made to ensure you'll be around for many years to come. Although I suspect no child can have too many mothers,(biological, spiritual, and otherwise), you are still my Best Mama. Happy Birthday!

Fifteenth Night at the Ceilidh Palace

...and a glorious time was had by all.

Not to be confused with Caesars Palace (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him), the Ceilidh Palace is the long-awaited addition to the home of our dear friends, F. and J. (For those still unfamiliar with the term, a ceilidh [pronounced "KAY-lee"] is a sort of musical pot-luck, where the entertainment tends toward the home-grown, free-range and organic.)

These two extraordinary musicians had long dreamed of building a splendid space for bardic gatherings. They poured the foundation years ago, but challenges all-too-common to the life of working artists made their plans go aft a-gley. This past year, though, they finally tackled the task's completion. We compared construction notes along the way. We merrily joked with them about our "competitive housebuilding," but many's the time we shared mutual congratulations over clever requisitions and creative use of cast-offs. We encouraged each other, commiserated over the "joys" of trimwork and drywall, and blessed each other's households with gifts of food, music, and friendship.

This weekend, they inaugurated the new space during their annual Twelfth Night Ceilidh & Conflagration. (Technically, counting from Christmas, it was Fifteenth Night, but the evening was too perfect to be bothered by technicalities.) In the past, this event has consisted of a fragrant, steamy elbow-to-elbow potluck in one room and a jam-packed music session in another, with scarcely room to butter one's bread or draw a fiddle bow. Folks took turns going out to gather around the snow-banked bonfire. They braved the frigid January night not just for the spectacle of the high-leaping flames, but also for the brief freedom to swing their arms and move easily about.

This year, the bonfire got off to a very good start with two crackly-branched Christmas trees. As in past years, many guests brought something to contribute to the fire, from tiny wish-enscribed slips to multiple file-folders of burdensome paperwork. (The year I graduated from seminary, I contributed a small papier-mache effigy I dubbed "the algebra monster." I gleefully threw it into the fire, thereby declaring my symbolic freedom from long years of abject algebraic failure in a host of mathematics classrooms. I felt cleansed by the act and willingly endured the bemused and befuddled looks of those standing near me.)

Inside the house, a new hearth was blessed and another fire kindled, this time in the chilly but welcoming space of their new greatroom: the ground floor of the soaring post-and-beam Ceilidh Palace. With a canvas hung to divide the space and trap the heat, a set of old church pews set around the edges, and a fire blazing merrily in the grate, the new room was beckoning. Our hosts called everyone in for the blessing. F. played a haunting tune on his flute. The blessing was pronounced, and all drank a toast to hosts, hearth, and house. Then J. cried out, "Let the wild rumpus begin!"

First came the Scottish smallpipes, then fiddles emerged from cases along with harp, whistle, bodhran and guitar. It was tentative at first. Someone led off with "Mairi's Wedding." Then it was "Atholl Highlanders" and "Calliope House." "Lark in the Morning" took wing. Fiddles and whistles wove around each other in "Jenny Dang the Weaver." After a few more tunes, a banjo appeared in the mix. Soon an accordion squeezed in. After years of dreaming, of hoping, of saving and striving, the room came to life and thrummed with rollicking, lilting, toe-tapping, spirit-lifting music. It was a realized vision, a creative conspiracy--literally, a breathing-together--and our hearts beat together to the rhythm of this shared creation.

The evening rolled on. The musicians became more venturesome. In a household full of musical inventions and oddities, someone emerged with one of the oddest: a double-chantered Tunisian bagpipe whose maker had made no effort to disguise the material: goatskin. Attempts to play it engendered uproarious laughter as the awful little goat-bag inflated to an alarming proportion, then emitted one tentative, goose-like *honk.* Although we could all plainly hear the air escaping from the loosely-tied bag, we all cried out for more, each squeak and squawk further incapacitating us with laughter.

Finally the poor creature was rescued and laid to rest, the gasping musicians wiped away tears of hilarity, and the session revved up again. More uncommon instruments were welcomed into the session and the tunes danced from one culture into another: Irish, Scottish, Quebecois, Breton... on into the dark winter night. Outside the sparks did their own wild dance, swirling and leaping high into the clear cold air. The Ceilidh Palace, work of common folk, bedecked with its faint tracery of plaster dust, was a treasure-trove heaped high. That night, we were all rich as kings and queens.


(All text, images, and video copyright Mainecelt 2010)

Another Leveraged Bale Out

The cows weren't expecting this. There they stood, in the pre-dawn winter darkness, looking aimless and sleepy in the middle of the snowy field. Our boots crunched in the ice-crusted snowdrifts as we approached the top of the hill. We would have to be decisive. We would have to be swift.

But it's hard to be swift when you're moving a 4-foot-diameter 500-pound bale. No matter how deep the cleats are on your boots, it's hard to gain purchase in ice and snow. By the time I'd brushed the snow off the plastic-wrapped bale and rocked it loose from the ground, those cows--in spite of the darkness--were acting suspicious.

So, we pushed. The Piper and I leaned our shoulders into the bale, muckling on as well as we could with our gloved hands. We paused to re-plant our feet and rocked the bale some more. Finally, we leveraged that behemoth up...and...over...so that it rolled two full revolutions down the hill. Unfortunately, it was headed exactly NOT towards the pasture gate.

Pause for another correction. The Piper and I stand at opposite "corners" of the bale and push, slowly spinning it a quarter-turn until it's aimed in the right direction. Now the cows are lined up at the gate, snorting and tossing their forelocks. Iona, queen of the cattlefold, firmly plants herself at the fore.

Cows are not good at physics. I suspect their phenomenal digestion is the primary location of their intelligence. No, perhaps that's unfair-- there's nothing in their primal cognition to help them respond when a pair of two-leggeds starts rolling a giant marshmallow down the hill towards the pasture gate before dawn. We had the right voices, at least, so we weren't intruders... and when we sliced the haywrap just before the final push through the gate, those cows caught the clean vinegarish scent that announced incoming food. Hunger and curiosity dictated their subsequent arrangement.

And so it was that, when we gave the final push, that bale rolled down the hill, through the gate, farther down the hill with gathering speed, and...smacked broadside into that poor silly heifer. She gave a surprised wee jump forward, then turned around and stared reproachfully (balefully?) at the still-wrapped bale. I hustled down into the field and pulled off the haywrap. As the tasty contents were revealed, the heifer hung back and stared a minute more--just long enough for me to pull the wrapper off and out of the way--then moved in, determined to bite her breakfast right back.

So this is how the New Year begins: with rolling bales, chores before dawn, well-fed cows, strong women, leverage and surprises. We're ready, even if the cows aren't. Bring it on!!!

2009: A Term for the Verse

Today marks the Winter Solstice-- the year's shortest day and longest night. As the minutes slipped away prior to the Official Astronomical Event, I wormed my way under our new house for one last intimate encounter with the earth. (The practical reason for this ritual was that a faulty extension cord needed replacing; the shower drain--so carefully surrounded with heat-tape, insulation, and a tyvek-wrapped, earth-banked styroboard frost wall--would do us no good through the winter's whistling winds if the heat-tape could not be trustworthily plugged in!)

Now I am back inside the house, grubby but warm, relaxing into the knowledge that the last great ritual has been successfully performed and we shall henceforth be able to Hold The Wolf of Winter At Bay. (We won't make any bold predictions about any other wolves just yet, but suffice to say that we're really boning up on our wolf-wrangling skills and getting better every day!)

The Proper Activity of Northern Winter Folk is repair and creation: the careful tending of tools and gear, the mending of strained relationships, and the creation of things both useful and beautiful. My heart is ready, now--and if you will permit me a bit of creative indulgence--my rusty bardic muse is in need of some warm-up stretches. Like any stretch, the following will involve the potential of painful reaches and the appearance of ridiculousness, but these seasonal tasks simply MUST be done...


2009: A TERM FOR THE VERSE

January started out
cold and full of gripes:
Our year began with frozen folk,
cold house and frozen pipes.

February came along
with icy, sparkling jaws--
We went outside and froze some more--
for a worthy local cause.

March brought hard digging
and--finally--joy! Let
us now praise installers
of pipes, shower and toilet!

April--on windowsills,
seedtrays sat out,
dark soil dreaming
and sending up sprouts.

May--month of sweet melting
and warming and growing!
New piglets were bought.
In the fields we went sowing.

June--to market and home again,
all in a whirl
to host a church picnic
and the dear Wild Girls!

July started wet and grew wet enough
to douse any forest fire.
Pigs being pigs, in the mud they did dig,
and slipped out under the wire.

August brought an island journey--
oh, sweet farm-women's reprieve!
Our first home-grown bull met his meaty end:
a choice we did not grieve.

September: batten down the farm
and rush to catch a plane
For a family wedding we piped and preached--
so good to see kinfolk again!

October came to
a bittersweet end.
With bards and musicians,
we mourned a dear friend.

November brought the cold and dark--
a fearful time for the farm.
But oh! We gave thanks for our sweet new house,
where the woodstove kept us warm!

December sang softly of flickering hope,
now fanned to a stalwart flame.
We plan for years, fields, and friends to come.
Solstice Blessings! May you do the same!

--copyright MaineCelt 12/2009


(This post's images were taken during a visit to Trustworth Studios.)

Whaur Will Ye Bide?

The song was based on the words of Maggie Cameron and other Travellers in the midst of a wrenching struggle for their dying way of life. Their stories were gathered by Ewan MacColl and others in the 1960s, recorded on cumbersome equipment in potato and berry fields and along British byways their people had traversed for centuries. These so-called Tinkers and Gypsies had moved between time-honoured camps and resting places as they plyed their traditional trades... but the old ways were changing and new laws turned their traditions into punishable crimes.

From their own words, Ewan wove a Winter Song that later came to be known as "The Terror Time."

Heather will fade, and the bracken will die
Streams will run cold and clear
And the small birds, they'll be goin'
And it's then that you'll be knowin'
That the Terror Time is near.

And whaur will ye gang, aye, and whaur will ye bide
Noo that the wairk's aa dane,
And the fairmer disnae need ye
And the council wilnae heed ye
And the Terror Time is here.

--from the BBC Radio Ballad, The Travelling People (1964)

We have lived all too close to the aching reach of this song. These last few years, in the same span of joyful animal-tending, seed-planting and upbuilding, we have lived daily with the knowledge that this land was not entirely in our grasp. We have lived knowing it could all be taken away.

The woods give no shelter, for the trees, they are bare.
Snow's fallin aa aroond
And the bairnies, they are cryin'
For the straw on which they're layin'
Aye, it's frozen tae the groond...

And you need the wairmth o yir ain human kind--
You move near the toon and then
The sicht o ye's offendin'
For the police they'll be sendin'
And ye're on the road again.

Because we are history-minded, because we are singers of old songs, we knew there was nothing unique in this, just a gnawing, echoing sameness that linked us to Dustbowl farmers, hurricane victims, and thousands of other faceless losers-of-land-and-homes. We tried to steel ourselves. We tried--and failed--not to love this particular piece of land too much. We tried to keep our minds open to possibilities and our hands always working, our eyes and ears always searching for that job, that program, that business or organization that might make it possible to bind ourselves to this land forever. Mostly, the words we heard were "no" and "sorry..." or just...nothing. Into this emptiness came the song's haunting refrain:

And whaur will ye gang, aye, and whaur will ye bide
Noo that the wairk's aa dane,
and the fairmer disnae need ye
And the council wilnae heed ye
An the Terror Time is here.

But now, in the Dark Half of the year, there is a rumour of light. There is a whisper of music. There are signs of hope. We are not out of the woods just yet, but neither are we alone. We are blessed to find ourselves surrounded by friends, by well-rooted and winged things, by good friends and Wise Tiny Creatures. We are beginning to walk, ever-so-tentatively, on something that feels like Solid Ground.

It feels funny, this placing of the feet with unaccustomed confidence. We do not know how to move this way. It feels awkward and strange. We are people who have walked in darkness...perhaps we might yet learn to rest, to trust, to see each other's faces by the light of a bright star. Perhaps we might yet find a way to dance down the path, to stumble astonished across our own threshold, and call it Home.