The Soil and the Dirt

It is Spring. After the equinox. Beyond April, even. There are million pieces of empiric evidence to back me up, here. It is the grand emergence of all things- eyes wide to take in the verdure, pupils narrowing against a strong new sun.

When old the year has run its course, and the next is newly, truly born of the remnant muck- it is always a shock to me. Newsflash: the world can be soft, warm, and full of colors from pigment, rather than light. Old friends show up, friends who seem like they stepped out of a book, or a fairy play: Snow Drop, Forsythia, Quince, and Daffodil. Apple Blossom.

I step out the door and don't believe my nose, I don't believe my skin.

Maybe this is hard for me to believe because this year, spring actually matters in material ways. Traps to be got in the water, plants to be got into the ground. Plans to bring to fruition. And the saying, "work is love made manifest" suddenly applies to my life.

But to everything here, there's the inversion. There's the soil and the dirt. Every season new seeds of delicious suspicion are cast, watered by slavering tongues, and allowed to bloom, damaging weeds in a delicate garden. Rumor, doubt, disdain. Yes, who in a small town doesn't also have a long acquaintance with them? Diverting to cultivate, perhaps, until they ruin the soil.

Dark thoughts for a sunny day, no?

Would there were a ready tool to pluck those weeds. But since there isn't, I will focus on these fleeting friends, who are kind enough to drop by.

The Sundries of a Winter's Weekend

February is a month that fascinates me, because more than any other month in Maine it is a month for dreams. After all, what else is there to do? The days just begin to get discernibly longer, and it is perhaps one of our sunniest months. No fog to contend with- just winter storms, which leave the world smothered in snow, intensifying and optimizing the light we do get, direct from the sun or cast back by the moon. While the temperature doesn't climb much beyond 25 degrees, all the sunshine gets a person thinking about summer, about growing things, productivity, recharged batteries. One can only hope to plan.

I have on my hands a peculiar sort of weekend. Dave left on Thursday to get physical therapy for his arm in Portland, and then continued to New Hampshire to spend the weekend with his family, helping to run the Model T snowmobile rally. I had to work both Thursday and Friday, and finances being what they are, it made no sense for the weekend to necessitate two car trips. So I came home to the island, a bit at odds and ends. I've always been a solitude-loving soul, so to come home to a house empty but for the cats, and seem at any sort of loss is a bizarre twist. When I left the island earlier in the week I was dreading the days, but by Friday I was pleasantly run down enough by work and rehearsals (I am playing Maria in the Sound of Music) that 48 hours of unstructured time appeared to be the greatest blessing in the world, even if Dave wouldn't be there.

I gleefully fell into Ruth Moore's Spoonhandle on the boat ride home, and stayed adrift in it until the boat bumped into the landing, pausing only at the beginning of the trip to discuss with my Former Neighbor Charlie the many merits of Ruth Moore. Prior to Spoonhandle, I had been reading her letters, which was also pleasant winter fare- so pleasant that I ordered a copy to be shipped to Ms. Beauregard in far off Californ-i-a. I do miss Neighbor Charlie- we never talked much except on the mailboat, but we share an abiding love of felines, and he would always whistle for my wave. It was a cordial system. I know my new neighbors much better, yet have seen them less than ever I saw Neighbor Charlie.

Here on the island, each winter has a different social cast than the winter that preceded it. The first winter I spent on the island was awash in public pot lucks and private dinner parties. The second winter eschewed the pot lucks (we were so tired of them! setting up all the tables and chairs, staring at each other under the dull lights of the town hall), and instead focused home-hosted game nights, knitting club, book club, and the volleyball nights that thrived under those dull town hall lights. This winter seems to have drawn many of us further into ourselves- the gaiety of last winter not being of a sustainable nature. This winter, it has just been difficult to dig out, mentally. Of course the complexion of a winter does in large part depend on who is doing the viewing- everyone on the island has an individual sense of how the time is passing. But there are trends, and this year, the trend seems to be inward. There have been a lot of changes, and I daresay many of us are introverts.

I certainly am, which is why I have not taken the opportunity this weekend to seek out company, and have only enjoyed the interaction of errands- the post office, the store. The latter afforded me the chance to talk to Former Neighbor Ben, and Ed our alcohol-errant yet erudite mechanic. We discussed Dave's broken radius, which gave Ben and Ed the chance to tell me their falling-off-of-ladders stories. This happened to solve a mystery I had been chewing on for some time. Ben works as a cashier at our store. Now, the store is laid back and friendly, and one does not expect anything on Isle au Haut to move in a manner that even approaches efficient- but goddamn, Ben is the sloooooooooooooowest grocery bagger of all time. Glaciers have been known to make faster progress. I have watched him at it for a while now, and noticed the tremor in his hand as he lifts and lowers the items. I even asked Dave (my partner in island detection) if Ben was ill, but Dave, even with his years on the island, had no answer.

Come to find out, Ben had long ago broken that wrist falling off a swing. Ever since, he's had that tremor. And now I know. And knowing is fun.

So while my socializing has been limited this weekend, it has been fruitful. I had not been in the store for a while, and it was good to see Ben and Ed who I rarely see now that I commute to work and live in what is winkingly called "the projects." I got my milk and eggs, and Old English furniture polish; a guilty quart of Gifford's chocolate ice cream; I fed Jeep 4 gallons of gas at $3.90 a gallon, which nudged her up to a quarter of a tank. I might have put more in, but she's got a slight leak, and I prefer to keep it slight. She also has a leak in one of her tires, which is the bane of my existence. Also, her muffler needs clamping back on. As I backed her into the store's drive, I got my first good close-up view of Ed's current vehicle, and it was the first time I'd seen the rear end of it since he'd christened the new town landing with its rear windshield. I am not sure which condition contributed the most to that collision of automobile and piling- the unsanded ice on the hill or the booze in the blood. Either way, no major harm was done except to the poor vehicle. It did give people a show, and we did get to shake our heads in satisfying appreciation for predictable behavior.

The other big event of the weekend was getting the mail. It was not particularly social, though Dottie did come out of her house, leaning comfortingly on the new rail that runs from her house to her entrance to the post office. By the time she was half-way there, I already had my mail underarm, and she just checked to see that I had all I needed, and we wished each other a good day. In the old days of General Delivery (dating all the way back to last November), I would have been entirely dependent on her to hand over the goods. Now I peer into the little window for affirmation of my (or more often Dave's) postal worthiness, then fiddle with the little lock on box 58, which springs open at my touch now that I have conquered its combination which includes an "8 1/2."

I went through the mail with Dave via Skype, and it proved to be a fairly interesting batch- worker's comp check, bills, and the resheduled date for the theoretically final hearing for his divorce. Incidentally the divorce gods set the hearing on the exact time and date of his next physical therapy appointment, which will now have to be rescheduled.

Partnering up with someone at the tail end of their long-dissolving marriage has been educative. There is a such a heap of accrued assets, debts, personal patterns, and material things. A division that must always be difficult on the mainland is doubly difficult on such a small stone dollop of an island. Imagine having your office in the front yard of your ex. To work on his fishing gear, Dave must go to his shop, situated in front of the house he built and has since vacated, so that he can keep his boat and said gear. The physical space is small on the island, the social space equally tight. But we'll muddle through.

Onward and upward, as the saying goes. Which brings me back to my weekend in reading. After devouring the remainder of Spoonhandle, a feast lasting into the wee sma's of Saturday morning (I then slept in until 8am!), I went from the post office to Library in search of more Moore. I picked up Candlemas Bay, and also happened upon Onward and Upward in the Garden, by Katherine S. White- wife to the famed E.B., and an editor of note in her own right.

I was so drawn in by Spoonhandle (which had me spitting nails by the fifth page), that I could not yet bear leaving the Stilwells and Freemans, Sangors and Osgoods of Spoon Island for other similar but not-yet-introduced Mainers of Candlemas Bay. White's book offered an introduction by the ever genial voice of E.B., and is a collection of essays written about- of all things- gardening catalogs. The cover is a pleasing fading pink with leafy green borders, and in the center is an illustration of that Maine native, the rugosa rose. A very handsome volume, all told.

It is February, and the light is streaming in the huge, cheap windows of this house. My azalea is in bloom (is there a more generous winter houseplant?), and geraniums thriving after some intense pruning. Since moving in, Dave and I have been dreaming about having some sort of garden this summer, even if limited. Given that context, it took me very little time before I cracked the cover of a book which is a compendium of such dreams.

Gardening is more or less an alien world to me. By the time I got old enough to help rather than hinder in the vegetable plot, our family no longer had the time to devote to it. My mom did always keep a flower garden, but beyond the very occasional weeding session, and infrequent Q&As, I learned little of planting and nurturing- I was too busy with friends and books. I did at least grasp the difference between annual and perennial, and had a vague idea about bulbs needing to be planted in the fall- I certainly discovered the deer's proclivity for eating tulips.

Other than that, over the years I just grew fond of certain plants. Roses I loved from birth, as a namesake should; snowball bushes were a welcome home; quince was a riotous prickerbush with beautiful blooms in the underbrush; snowdrops, crocuses, hyacinths, daffs and tulips, lilacs and lupine the greatest harbingers of a softer season. There too were forget-me-nots and sweet william, lavender and globe thistle. Hostas I never quite understood the appeal of, but they stood near the unpretentiously pretty lily of the valley (how could a plant so prim be so poisonous?). There were the bleeding hearts necessary to the Democrat's domain, and fushias hanging in planters from the sumac, columbine, bachelors button, even some edelweiss.

On my own, I have been an indifferent keeper of plants. It's part and parcel of being itinerant in one's twenties. Every couple of years I would uproot and move to a new space with different windows, different square footage. The only living thing bound to survive the move was my dear cat, Janey. The last couple of years I'd been blessed with a large porch, so attempted wider container plantings, but found little success. Summers found me dodging the domestic sphere when it under the chaotic reign of the home's actual owner. Anything I started from seed paid the price of my frequent absence.

So now it is February, and I am in a home that, while still just a rental, is at least going to be run season to season under the more predictable auspices of myself and Dave. How much in the way of gardening materials we will actually be able to finance is highly questionable. Isle au Haut has little in the way of soil, and a remarkably dense population of deer who do not read seed catalogs, and therefore do not know what plants they are supposed to resist eating. As a result of these conditions, every garden on the island requires intense soil improvement (or importation) and must be fenced in to a substantial height. Divorce renders all parties but the lawyers poor, and I am poor by dint of personality type (on a scale of average household income, INFPs rank last... of course they also rank last by percent married, so their households often only have that one lowly income). February also brings an unpaid vacation's chunk out of my income, while also wakening me to the tax bill that will come due in April. Good thing dreaming does not require rich soil!

On the bright side, there is home improvement that requires little in the way of capital, and makes a substantial difference in domestic satisfaction. Once I get my head out of pipe dreamt garden plots, I am moving on to the practical and cheap means of creating one's own cheerfulness: cleaning. Yesterday it was the bathroom, today- god and energy willing- the office, bedroom, and kitchen. Family members will laugh at the thought of me cleaning for fun, but really, there's much less room for mid-winter misery when the corners are uncluttered and the baseboard is dust-free. As to managing to have a garden this summer, I will just put my faith in reusing planters from seasons past, and Dave's ability to scrounge and jerry-rig. The end will probably not be extravagant, but then, I am only looking for a start.

Awake With the Wolf Moon

I remember exactly when I stopped fearing the night. I was at a slumber party to celebrate a friend's thirteenth birthday. Restless, feeling our oats, we went for a late night walk- only to find there was no need of flashlights. Though cast in silver, the world was still familiar under the full moon. Walking confidently abroad in the small hours, some sort of adult understanding switched on in me, and I changed- my child's fear of the dark dissipated. Never again would I want a nightlight.

Indeed, since that fundamental change, I have needed the dark to sleep well at night: so while I appreciate the luminosity of the full reflecting moon, it is ever and anon the bane of my slumberous existence. Like Macbeth, it murders sleep.

Which is why after some fitful dozing, followed by much tossing and turning (mind and body), I gave up the ghost. I explained my predicament to Dave when he surfaced slightly at my movement, then tucked him in to make up for the lack of my heat.

There is, of late, much to keep my mind occupied when I would rather it rest. What ultimately wrested me out of bed was a preoccupation with town politics. In two month's time, we will assemble, some forty or so residents, to vote on town officers and budget items for the year, among other things. The last two years saw little in the way of controversy, or change. This year will be a very different story.

We have known for some time that our second and third selectmen, young men both, would not be standing for office again. What we have recently learned is that the first selectman, a widow in her sixties, will not be standing for re-election. For years now, she has held the office. And no one would dare run against her, because lacking the income from the position, she would be unable to stay on the island. She's done her job as she sees fit, but cannot check email to save her life and is not willing to embrace even expedient technology. It's problematic for running a town in the 21st century, but who is going to vote against a long-time resident widow whose economic mainstay is that job? I cast my vote for her last year. This is how welfare works on the island.

Recently, she has decided that it is time to move on- on to the mainland. She won't be accepting nomination this year.

So now there are one, two, three selectman seats open- and who shall fill them? The pool of potential candidates is a quickly shrinking puddle. It was going to be a chore to fill two of the three places, and those were the seats with the (supposedly) smaller workloads. Add in increasingly tense dynamics socially, and the task looms Herculean.

I have a million other things to worry about right now, but this was the preoccupation my mind picked up as the moonlight poured in the bedroom windows. Sun light or dark of night, I guess I can't know what's around the bend.

Two Crossings

Not a soul in the state wanted to get out of bed today, and I was no exception. Our Martin Luther King holiday was whumped with snow: heavy, wet, sticking snow, the kind that will break your back if you aren't careful. The snow that could build a million snowpeople and sculptures.

I did not want to get up.

But up I got.

After hitting snooze a couple of times, and perhaps maybe after Dave had rolled out of bed to start the coffee.

I am, once out of bed, a morning person. Which is good, because by the time I was out of the flannel and into the chill air, it was about a quarter to five. Some days, I have to be at work at 7:15- and whether staying with my parents on the mainland, or (occasionally) having Dave bring me uptown in his boat, this necessitates being out the door by 6 a.m. So it was in the last moments of the pitch black night, we arrived at the town landing. Dave's skiff was full of snow, full of water. The outboard was about as excited to get moving as I had been. The easiest task, untying the painter from the float, was mine. Despite Dave's assumptions, the rope had not frozen, so I didn't have to fight the structure of ice.

This easy task was my only task for this first step. Dave bailed out the boat: Dave got the engine running. Makes sense since he's the boat guy and I'm the greenhorn. Unfortunately, Dave recently fell while doing carpentry, and fractured the hell out of his left radius (look it up: he's got the second or third type). So Dave was doing this all one-handed.

Funny thing about your hands and arms- you don't notice 'em until you can't use them. And you don't just use them for obvious things, like oh say... work and chores- you also use them for balance. Which is always helpful when on a boat, right?

He didn't fall in.

I know, that's where it seems like I was going. But he didn't. Every time it seemed like he would topple out, he would shift his weight quick enough to recover because, sling or no sling, he knows what he is doing. In my mind he did fall, of course. I was raised to be a worrier, and after my uncle almost kicked it during dinner last fall, my mind floods with contingency plans whenever I sense any risk, or potential for major injury. So I ran through how I would need to respond- not a terrifying mental exercise when it's low tide, you're at the float and there's not a lot of water under you and only a little more distance to the shore. It gets exponentially horrific as you move away from the float. Having the visuals from the movie Titanic in one's shadow archive really does not help.

But the chances of capsizing in the middle of an iceberg-less thoroughfare on a flat calm morning (as it was this morning) are pretty much zilch. I know when I am being needlessly paranoid. And I was being needlessly paranoid.

Once we were on his lobster boat and well underway, I relaxed. The freezing point isn't actually unpleasant when the wind is not there to throw it in your face. It was still enough that we didn't close up the winterback, and I spent much of my time toward the stern of the boat with my travel mug, just watching the water splay out behind us as the dark slipped slowly to light. Nothing but the wake and the softly waking world. Ocean, islands, and clouds: a display of infinite greys.

The recent snow was piled on trees and shores, acting as snow often does in the world of Hallmark greeting cards- as it can even in the real world. It offered a benediction. The world- for this stretch of time, over this stretch of water- was in a state of grace. The spruce on the islands whispered stories about the wind direction of the night past. They stood in variegated groupings: the trees were blown bare of the snow to the Northward and on higher ground; the trees tucked in hollows, or sheltered to the South were heavily enrobed in white. The effect was a greater visual depth, the woods did not flatten to the eye as so often they do with a little distance.

It was, you might gather, a nice kind of commute. I moved forward, kissed Dave on the cheek and thanked him. He glared, replied "Never again-" dimpled "-until the next time."

And here, there'd be a tidy end to this snapshot of a snowy morning. But life doesn't end tidy, does it? And the working day seldom comes to a full stop at 7 a.m.

I went to my job, and Dave went home, and we passed the day. Life is also bad driving conditions, lost wages, having your vehicle plowed in. By the time I got to the mailboat for my commute home, I was in what I only ever described as "tired" mood. Nothing to do but slog through til you can go to sleep, and wake to scrape the bottom of Pandora's damned box for a little hope.

I'd arrived at the boat landing early and rather than wait in my cooling car, I borrowed a shovel and set to work unearthing Dave's truck. I'd not had a chance to communicate with him much over the course of the day, and what I had heard was not good news. What I hadn't heard was whether or not he was still going to go off to Portland tomorrow morning in the teeth of another winter storm. He needs to see the doctor again, to find out if his arm needs surgery, or if we'd have another week of "wait and see." So I shoveled. And it'll just snow again tonight. But six inches fresh will be better than fourteen accumulated.

Incidentally, shoveling snow does not make a weary person less tired! When I got down to the boat I was hot, out of breath, and my chest hurt in the way peculiar to sucking in a lot of very cold fresh air. Hot was the worst of it, so I stayed out on the stern. And wouldn't you know other people did, too? So I made nice, and I talked about musical theater, and chit chatted. Somehow I got to making snowballs- this happens as a matter of course when it snows in the upper few degrees of the snow making spectrum.

One day I will write a paean to the mailboat captains, but today I will simply state that they are the sort who will indulge in a snowball fight. This afternoon's patrons were somewhat genteel, so we kept it mild and mannerly. We had plenty of time for the high jinx, since we waited 20 minutes past departure for an island resident who proved to be late beyond reason- incidentally this was also the man who is contracted to plow the island roads... When we were finally underway everyone went inside the cabin.

I stayed out. The snow was a little dry for perfect packing, but I began clumping it together on the bench that runs the length of the Mink's stern. Two long hillocks parallel next to each other, perpendicular to the seat. On the back third of those, against the rail that serves as a bench back, I mounded and patted, mounded and patted, until there was a torso. One of the captains came to get my ticket.

"You making a snowman?'

"Yuh, looks like it's gonna to be a parapelegic one."

I shaped its chest, then added arms to each side, sloping in toward the lap, joining in a mound like hands clasped. Breathing against the snow to make it pack harder, I made a small ball, scrounged on the deck for wetter material, made it bigger. Along the rails the snow was wettest- an icy slush, and I used that to set a nose onto the face, pressed my finger in for eyes, used my thumbs to define cheekbones. I smoothed the head onto the shoulders. It was about this time that one of the students commuting on the mailboat nailed my back with a snowball. Taking the interruption as an opportunity to step back and assess my artistic process to this point, I realized I was sculpting a Buddha. His legs, originally cropped at the knees, I modified into a sort of lotus position. Satisfied, I slung my arm around him and watched the scenery pass by for a while, before returning to the cabin, where I was instantly interrogated about whether or not I had a ticket for the frozen passenger. I told them to talk to him.

We were a few minutes from the dock, and I chatted with the kids- one wanted me to be on the panel for his senior exhibition, the other wanted me to look over an essay if we have a snow day tomorrow. By the time I hit the ramp, I was still tired in my body, but my spirits were in better shape.

What events (or "what fresh hell," as Dorothy Parker would put it) tomorrow will bring, I don't pretend to know. Possibly a quiet day on the island, perhaps a trip to Portland, maybe my long awaited first rehearsal for The Sound of Music.

But there will probably be snow. And maybe a boat ride. Best content myself with that.

Shedder

For the past two years I was lucky enough to be living in a big ol' house overlooking a nice piece of water. On a clear day you could squint at Stonington. It was comfy, and luxurious, and temporary. I learned a bunch, including how to drive a Model A, how to roll start a Jeep Willy, how to make a mean lemon curd, and the rudimentary means of navigating my island- socially, geographically, personally. The two years of steady pay, housing, and opportunity to gain a foothold on the island was an unplanned advance in my life.

I was looking for a decent job in the Portland area, where the young and the chic of Maine abide- where I would stay with my alpha-careered boyfriend. Then a job that I had applied for and envisioned carrying out on Peaks Island (fifteen minutes from Portland), was available only on Isle au Haut- a mere seven miles over water from Deer Isle, where I'd grown up. Isle au Haut is also three hours of shitty roads distant from Portland, followed by a forty minute boatride.

The job market was tight. And I am particular about the work I do. More particular than my partner could understand, which is why I moved forty minutes beyond the end of nowhere rather than work intake at the hospital where he doctored, which was a convenient five minutes walk from his apartment. I spent a year straddling the divide between the two places, then shuffled off the commitment coil. He could understand the island as a smart real estate investment, but he couldn't appreciate my immersion in the community. "For this to work you will have to make some sacrifices." He was right. Once I sacrificed the relationship on the alter of my identity as a downeaster, I felt much better. The second year, I was able to grow accustomed to this place- a year cataloged on A View of the Thoroughfare.

My view is no longer of the Isle au Haut Thoroughfare and Merchant's Row beyond that. I've grown out of my original island digs, which were tied to a two-year contract with AmeriCorps. In December, I moved to a new house, with a new partner. In the course of the move, I was even able to get my hands on what was previously the holy grail of island amenities: a post office box. It is no longer my job is that keeps me on Isle au Haut; quite the opposite- my current job is on Deer Isle. It's now my life that holds me fast here (at least as fast as one can ever cling to a place where economic survival is marginal).

Up to this point, I always saw time in chunks of a few years: two years for boarding school; four years of college; a few years in the work force; a couple of years in grad school; two full terms as an island fellow. Each enrollment or employment meant a new home, new schedule, a new host of duties. Once again, I am in state of metamorphasis. I've sloughed off the shell of the Island Fellowship. Now I just get to be an islander.