Simply 60

PhD in flies

Fly fishing, like diving, takes me to wonderful places. Places minus pretense, long on undisturbed nature. As close as I'm likely to get to a Zen moment I experience while pursuing these two particular sports. Since I am a Type A+ personality finding extended calm is a little like winning the lottery or panning for gold — and finding the stuff.

I cared little whether I caught something or not. It was instant reverie just being on this amazing river where we did not see another human being for eight hours. But we did see a juvenile bald eagle, an osprey, a piliated woodpecker, a family of red-headed Mergansers and a pair of kingfishers. Also, numerous river salmon and brook trout — perhaps a little too close for their immediate comfort but we, in fact, bore them no threat.

Often, when the fishing requires wading, making decisions about flies (about which I know nada), taking the little lovelies off the hook (after suitable apologies), negotiating underwater rocks, moss and silt, it is more stressful than tranquil. But drift fishing, which is how we spent our day today, is pretty close to Nirvana. The key is a quatrain of skills: 1) knowing the river, knowing where the fish are, knowing what flies to use where, being able to handle a boat with finesse — in other words, a guide. And we had a terrific one, Dan Legere, of Maine Guide Fly Shop in Greenville. A man of infinite patience, culinary skills in the outback and superb fishing know-how.

We put in at Big Eddy on the West branch of the Penobscot River, a 1.5 hour journey north of Greenville, mostly on gravel roads. Big Eddy is not named for a fat guy but for a huge river eddy just below a stretch of Class 3 rapids. Eddies are good for fishing. But as Dan remarked off the bat, "These fish have seen it all. They have a PhD in flies." Well, maybe they do. We didn't catch anything here, in spite of concerted effort. 

Because we are sporting types (read: hopelessly competitive) Pete and I had a double wager going — most fish caught and largest. For the first time since Steve Spanyer and I caught more than 60 bluegills in an hour, circa 1965, I caught so many fish I lost count. In the end, I caught the largest — a salmon that was almost 18 inches long. But Pete trumped me by catching a massive brook trout. Technically it was smaller than mine but for its species it was gargantuan (16 inches). So, who won? Debatable. But isn't that the essence of a good fish story, anyway?

I should mention that: a) I apologized to every fish I caught (though not out loud, for the men might have mocked me); and 2) it was of course all catch and release. And, as experienced at Big Eddy, the fish know there stuff.

But so did Dan. If there's a PhD in flies, he holds it, not the fish.

Truffle: The absolute best BBQ'ed pork loin I've ever eaten — enjoyed on the bank of the Penobscot River

Quote of the day: "The fish and I were both stunned and disbelieving to find ourselves connected by a line." (William Humphrey, The Armchair Angler)

Mt. Kineo

Truth is, if there's ever a time I will volunteer to play golf, it is at Mt. Kineo. In part because it's the only golf course I've ever heard of that requires a boat ride to the clubhouse; and in part, because they once allowed me to take my dog along on the course, in a golf cart. But these reasons pale before the drama of playing at the base of this shear rock-face. From a certain angle, it looks like the profile of a gigantic chimpanzee. From the third hole, it is mere vertical rock shooting into the sky from the midnight blue of Moosehead Lake. 

Indeed, this rough and barely ready course may be the only golf course in the world where it is every bit as important to look up and wonder, as it is to look down and concentrate. The beauty of its location is simply staggering. Craning one's neck straight up does, after all, often have the effect of making one step backward, that is, stagger. 

The golf course itself has much to be desired. The fairways are as pock-marked as a bad case of acne will leave an innocent face. Ruts, ditches, patches of swamp, even craters bedevil even the best golfer. The ground is so hard tees will break before finding purchase in the tee box. This is in large measure because the grass is merely clinging to a sun-exposed side of granite. Just as trees cling to the top of Mt. Kineo, defying logic, gravity and the powers of erosion. Indeed, Mt. Kineo is a kind of backhanded testament to how life prevails in spite of the wrath of Mother Nature — like the tenacious flora that has popped up at the foot of Mt. St. Helens 20 years after it spewed killing lava all over everything nearby.

Mt. Kineo looks like an island, but isn't. Once sported a grand hotel but doesn't anymore. Has a golf course that only a non-serious duffer could love, even if folks have been knocking little white balls into the woods and into the lake since 1893. Is routinely traversed by dog walkers, hikers and kids playing in golf carts — all of whom stop play without realizing it. And features some of the most astonishing bad bounces ever to grace a golf course. It's publicity says its a 3000+ yard, par 36 course. Rubbish. No one. Ever. Has ever made a 36 at Mt. Kineo. Except perhaps as a total score for the first three holes.

Which is why it is impossible not to love Mt. Kineo. Not only does it bring out my flair for masochism, it inspires me to awe on levels both vertical and horizontal, sacred and profane. And boy, can I be profane! 

Truffle: An hour of uninterrupted shopping at the Indian Trading Post.

Quote of the day: "Have you ever noticed what golf spells backwards?" (Al Boliska)

Greenville, Maine

There isn't a decent meal to be had in Greenville, Maine, which, ordinarily, would matter to two such foodies as we are. But the fact is, we come here every year for exactly that — what Greenville doesn't have: fancy restaurants, trophy homes, overpriced boutiques, traffic, attitude an immoral attitude toward the tourist cash cow. 

We also come to Greenville for what it does have — a single blinking yellow light, folks who have canoes and kayaks strapped to their car roofs, the Dairy Bar (an ice cream take-out storefront), the elusive moose, Mt. Kineo golf (the only way to get to the course is by boat), fly fishing and Moosehead Lake, 40 miles of island-dotted inland water. Driving into Greenville and cresting the hill by the Trading Post (a must-shop destination if you like flannel underwear and thermal socks) presents one of the world's best views — the lake stretching before you to infinity (or so it seems), islands of evergreens and evergreens tumbling down hillsides to lake's edge. Breathtaking. For its beauty to be sure. But also for its throw-back charm. We are in the 50's here. The 50's Nantucket. The 50's coastal Maine.

Ironically we both knew Greenville but didn't realize we did until 2003. That summer we set off for three weeks touring the Gaspee peninsula by car. Two days into our trip, in rural Quebec, we pulled into a public golf course for a spontaneous round. Something made us come back to the car mid-round, I can't remember, what to find — the car broken into, everything stolen. From my computer (I wept — no back-up of course and every writing project gone) to Pete's wallet. The trip was a wash. We limped back to Concord, licking our wounds as we made one thousand phone calls canceling credit cards, etc. Sitting on the porch that night or the next, we looked at each other and said in a funky kind of unison: "Let's not let them steal our vacation, too." Pete said I know a wonderful place in Maine, called Greenville." I said, "I know Greenville! The Road Kill Cafe is there." And so together we revisited this special spot at the southern tip of the longest lake in Maine. Greenville rescued us that year, and we have come back almost every year since. It has never failed to charm us, sooth us, let a fish find Pete's hook and a moose come into my view.

About the meals here. And the Road Kill Cafe. My sister and brother and I traveled here some years ago to participate in a memorial service for Shailer Philbrick, an old friend of the family's. His service was to be on Mt. Borestone, just south of here. We almost missed the ceremony because we discovered the original Road Kill Cafe in Greenville and were having such a riotous time, we lost track of time. Since burned to the ground in a questionable fire, the Road Kill Cafe lives on, in a fractured sort of way, at the Black Frog (black, as in blackened, as in the frog totem scorched in the fire and transplanted to the new site). Here's one of the menu items that survived from the Road Kill Cafe. Perhaps it will give you an indication of why we were blinded to time by bad taste and consequent laughter:

Mooseballs: Unquestionably the tenderest cut of the moose. Sauteed in our own special sauce. 24 hours advanced notice and 25% deposit required...$1495.00.

Truffle: An actual picnic — lobster rolls, tomato and avocado salad, chips and watermelon — overlooking the the waters of Cape Elizabeth, Maine in Ft. Williams state park on a perfect summer's day.

Quote of the day: "Kissing a man with a beard is a lot like going to a picnic. You don't mind going through a little bush to get there!" (Minnie Pearl)

All's right with the world

It's an illusion of course. That all's right with the world. But there is something about a late summer day (especially in light of our frightful siege of drought and insufferable heat) when it begins cool, stays dry and progresses to shorts and t-shirt warmth that lends itself to roseate interpretation. 

A few leitmotivs only accentuate that happy glow.

We've had a screech owl out back for the last couple of nights. I don't know if they migrate or what but we tend to only hear them in the early autumn and the early spring. August doesn't count as fall but the cool nights we're having suggest its nearness around the calendar corner. Perhaps the owl knows something we don't? What I do know is that the seasonal bookends of his visits to our backyard give a different kind of credence to the all's right with the world feeling. A rhythm retained, as predictable as snow in winter and just as uncertain.

Another kind of rhythm was evidenced on the river today. Kayak after kayak floated by and paddled back upstream a little later as weekend warriors tried to get in one last outing. In truth this is very much the last weekend of summer for such activities. Next weekend, Labor Day, heads will be back in books and the only summer vacation talk will be in school essays about what's been or in the boudoir dreaming of next year. Oh, there will still be kayakers and canoers, so long as the weather is fair, for some weeks to come. But they will be the serious types mostly, and not the families packing some quality time into a rental canoe.

Indeed, speaking of rhythm, there were a couple of back-to-schoolers here today, passing through on their way to Smith College — a returning senior and her sister, an entering first-yearer (they are gender neutral at Smith and so the word 'freshman' is prohibited). Back to school is a rhythm that still defines my life to this day. Never mind about Harvard in a couple of weeks and my own back-to-school deja vu. The New Year has never been January First for me; it's the First Day of School, even if I haven't actually had one of those in 30 years. Pavlovian as it clearly is, I feel an overwhelming urge to rush out and by new shoes, new erasers and, new books. (All right, all right — about the books: guilty as presumed, as any excuse will do).

Still another refrain made itself known to me today — out came the suitcase again, to be packed for Maine tomorrow. 

Indeed it crossed my mind (albeit briefly) to title this blog Rhythm Method. Then I thought better of it. Might be misconstrued and attract lascivious readers out from under their rocks. Besides, while it is certain rhythms that inform this essay, ones that made themselves conspicuous to me today, I might not have noticed them at all had it not been so fabulous a day that my antennae could not help but twitch and tune in. 

So, blissfully free of facts to the contrary, the illusion of rightness began in the day itself. Which is no doubt why today felt like a Sunday — cast adrift from the cares of the world, it was a day free of hard truths. A day given over to contentment. A day, when in spite of global evidence to the contrary, all did seem particularly, exquisitely right with the world.

Truffle: Croquet on the lawn. Set up for last night's cookout, we didn't get around to playing until this afternoon.

Quote of the day: "Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world." (Ada Louise Huxtable)

Take-down

So there I was this morning minding my own business walking the dog at Emerson playground. It was a good morning for chums. Although Sally, her best bud, was not there, the next best friends were — Gus, Sam and Cally. Making for a first-class romp. And a class-act danger.

What is it about dogs that they can run lickety-split through brambles and forest, through thicket and briar, and neither poke out an eye nor run themselves into a tree? But, with a vast field to traverse and a human standing somewhere out there, they can find that one breathing reed, the lone vertical object, in a vast horizontal plane, and plow right into it. This is not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last, that Cajun and friends clipped from behind with no penalty. She and Sam were, apparently, running at top speed — right into me. My legs pancaked and down I went. 

Since I fall all the time, I am comfortable with the process, though being taken by surprise does add an element I'd prefer to avoid. Still and all, I was upended indelicately onto my posterior with an unpleasant thump (the sound of my bones rattling in my loose sack of skin). Meanwhile, the dogs bolted through me as if I were nothing more than a toreador's cape. O, ignominious moment!

O moment of delayed pain!

We had sixteen and a half people  — the half was a tot named Brodie who was the guest of honor; just turned one last month and come all the way from Boulder to meet his Eastern extended family for the first time — for dinner. A cookout, in the old-fashioned sense: paper plates, plastic utensils, beer in a cooler, burgers and dogs (okay, designer chicken dogs) on the grill, porch seating, candles, mosquitoes. What could be better? I could say the heirloom tomatoes and Golden Gopher melons straight from Ricky's garden. Or the tasty corn on the cob. Or the homemade slaw and baked beans. I could say all that but it would be redundant.

It was a grand affair, I'm told by all. Now for the Epsom salts.....

Truffle: Throwing a party where it is clear everyone is having a blast

Quote of the day: "She had heard someone say something about an Independent Labour Party, and was furious that she had not been asked." (Evelyn Waugh)

A good list is not just a composer

I thought I'd never say this but here it comes: I'm not sure I have it in me to pack another suitcase. OK, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'm over it. Phew. I feel discharged of a burden. Ready now to pack and go again. But wait, I have a couple of days before I have to ferret out yet another travel toothpaste.

In the meantime, it's been quite pleasant having an ordinary day. As if I lived in Concord. Going to the bank and the bookstore, packaging up a book for a friend and taking it to the post office. Shopping for birthday cards, going to the gym, walking with the dog group this morning at Emerson playground, going hunting for chantrelles this afternoon in Estabrook Woods. Normal stuff.

All in all, I accomplished little in the grand scheme of things but knocked off myriad items from my to-do list. And we all know how good that feels. In fact, I think lists should be taught in high school. I didn't discover the power of a good list until I had more decades behind me than in front. Too bad for me. Of course lists are a good way to counter the effects of short term memory loss and aging brain farts. But their true value is their ability to both give purpose to a day and provide tangible evidence of things done.

Just as this blog brings each day into focus, requiring me to think back, think over the time since awakening, taste each day for its sweets and savories, a good list, at the end of the day, evidences accomplishment. Things done are won, to turn Shakespeare on his ear. Without lists, a day can seem a purposeless meandering from meal to meal to bed. But look over the day's chores and see it whittled down to nothing with strike-throughs and xxx's out, and you see that your time was well spent, not squandered. However menial the items on the list, they constitute the meat of most of the days of our lives. Without a good list, we might think ourselves thin vegans of life, not true, lusty carnivores.

So, for tomorrow:

* buy brats

* wash off lawn furniture

* set up croquet set

* wash out cooler/get ice

* cut dahlias for four tables & kitchen

* marinate burgers

* walk the dog (twice)

* set tables for 16

* get canoes, paddles and flotation cushions in place

* misc.

Oh, did I mention we'rre throwing a family picnic tomorrow evening?

Truffle: The Lab swimming with a dolphin. Check it out on youtube: Labrador and Dolphin

Quote of the day: "The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused." (Shirley McLaine)

You can go home again, right?

I got an S.O.S. today from Bryce's grandmother, asking if we had his camera. Well, no. That's the answer. I am not my (great) nephew's keeper, I wanted to say. But didn't. Because, fact is, I was his keeper for eight days. And that got me to thinking about the differences in species when it comes to children. Some species — was it the boobies on the Galapagos? — solve the problem of nest congestion by allowing the stronger (usually the older) of a pair of chicks to kill the weaker. That way, the parents only have one mouth to feed. Efficient, if rather dark.

And then there are those species who toss their young out on their own after only a matter of days. Some songbirds breed repeatedly if the weather is opportune. Puppies are pushed out of the whelping pen at seven or eight weeks. Some species coddle their young for several years — chimps are on their own at four years old; dolphins at six. But only humans insist on nurturing their young for decades. 

It's a frightening proposition. And probably why I resisted motherhood straight down the line. I mean, it's possible to have your children return to live with you after college or after a divorce or after a job failure. For Pete's sake, they can keep coming home forever. Which is why one never — ever — transforms a child's room into an office or rents it to a boarder. Our human young like to believe they can always come home. To their own rooms. Which have not changed in ten, twenty, forty years. Same old tattered rock idol posters on the walls; same old dusty, dim stuffed animals crowded on the bookshelves. Heaven forfend that 'their room' has found another purpose.

I was glad to learn the camera was recovered (you have no idea how hard we worked during our four days in the Caribbean to find a disposable underwater camera! Only Day 4 produced one.). But I do wish he'd searched his luggage a bit more carefully before sending out an All Points Bulletin that it was missing. Geez. Even in absentia that kid managed to carve several years off my life. Of course I felt responsible for the (as it turned out) not-so-lost item. After all, I am the adult.

If only my parents were alive. I'd crawl back to them. And my room in the attic. Which my mother worked relentlessly but hopelessly to dry-rot me out of for pushing 30 years. But they are dead. And the house sold long ago. Though I am sure that the current owners have not changed my old room at all. Just in case I feel the need to go home again.

Truffle: A walk in the rain with my girl. And my guy.

Quote of the day: "The trick is to grow old without getting old." (Casey Stengel)

Outgoing, incoming

We said goodbye to Bryce today at the Manchester Airport. There goes a young seventeen-year-old, his mind stuffed with new experiences and old accepted attitudes, his life before him, if only he will learn to question, think for himself. What a powerfully wonderful kid, with all that bubbling potential ‚ like lava lying at the surface, awaiting the seismic shove into adulthood. I wish for him that explosion into life. 

For me it was Rome. My junior year. Thrust headlong into the world, 3000 miles for anything I knew, from all I took for granted. It is instructive for me to recall that for the first four months, I wouldn't eat the food. In Italy. Because it was foreign, because my father had condemned pizza as junk food (before there was such a term). I stood 5'9" and weighed 118 lbs by the end of the first term. Then, suddenly peer pressure and extreme hunger brought me to that excellent trough.

So there is hope for Bryce. If he can just work up the courage to be his own person.

Still and all, there is something sad in the settling of the dust here in these cavernous halls.

On the other hand, Cajun — our Spice Girl — is home. I drove to Sturbridge to fetch her this afternoon. Truth be told, my world is set right having her back. Though she had more than a wonderful time at camp. There was 7-month-old Sadie and 10-month-old Carly as playmates, and there was the week in the Adirondacks, hiking and swimming and kayaking. I have photos of her riding in her own zodiac being towed by a kayak. A sight, to be sure. And the rest of the time with the 'pack' — two horses, three other dogs and six cats.

Our house is a quiet house by comparison. Two old fogies doddering about, speaking kindly to her but no good at all for wrestling and biting her neck. She seems a little lost in all this house, all this silence. I will endeavor to make it up to her with good walks and a dose of her friends Sally and George. Who know how to play.

Truffle: The thunder of teenage feet pounding overhead as the bacon sizzles. 

Quote of the day: "Not fare well,/But fare forward, voyager." (T.S. Eliot, Dry Salvages)

The long journey home

Why is it that the San Juan airport cannot muster up a single decent morsel of food? There are few punishments harsher than, after sating oneself in Caribbean life, culture and underwater sport, a forced interlude at SJU. Ugh. It's bad enough to leave paradise; harder still this purgatory called Luis Munoz Marin International Airport.

We suffered in near silence. The $5 hotdog (or tube steak as a friend, who is less than enthusiastic about the best of these, calls them); the $4 cookie; the $11 chicken wrap!! OK, so this last was both an economic as well as culinary insult, so required some verbal abuse of the most sophisticated kind.

In the middle of a seven hour journey, one is destined to be hungry. One is also destined to need to pee. Fine for the boys. The men's room was open. But we ladies had no choice but to sit on a foot and hope like hell the plane was on time (of course, it wasn't).

And then there's Hudson News. You see these vendors in lots of airports. They're like W.H. Smith in England. Only in San Juan — guess what? — they don't sell books. Or, more specifically, they sell coloring books. And a few inspirational numbers. And about six novels in the Scott Turow school of pulp. You know this about me already. I am a literary snob. Which means to say, I like to read consecutive sentences of thoughtful, well-turned English prose. None to be found at SJU. Which was ultimately fine since the two stacks of unread books by my desk have now turned into twin pillars of guilt and remorse. I don't need another book. Well. Yes. I do. I always do. My name is Kate Stout and I am addicted to books...

Ah, well, eventually the layover lifted, the plane arrived, we parted company with San Juan and the last vestige of Caribbean blue. We are home again, our St. Thomas trip a blur. 

And now the seismic shift — from undersea divers to on-land builders. Our house design was approved while we were underwater.

Truffle: The lens of the eye framing a vertical rectangle of Caribbean cove with sailboat as focus, shot through a waggle of bougainvillea and over a wedge of beach.

Quote of the day: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." (T.S. Eliot)

Last day in paradise

Well. Not really paradise. St. Thomas is more like Miami Vice. However, for those of us who go weak in the knees at the prospect of time in the Caribbean; for those of us, who pine for these warm, turquoise, plankton-free waters in which you can see for (almost) ever, even the USVI qualifies, at least conceptually, as paradise. Little p.

Big P Paradise can rightfully be claimed by St. John. It helps that nearly the entire island is now a national park, and helps, too, that even earlier, Laurence Rockefeller saw the island for what it was, claimed the best cove (Caneel Bay) for a resort and in so doing, set in motion a proprietary legacy that laid the groundwork for the park system. Herein, an example of how too much money can sometimes work in the public good.

We trekked over the St. John today, having been there once before when Pete's daughter Emily lived on St. Thomas for a year. She and her boyfriend showed us the sights and then took us to the best snorkeling beach I think I've ever enjoyed — Waterlemon Cay. Astonishingly, there were more people on this hidden stretch of gravelly beach than there were in February when last we visited. The underwater life was at first crashingly disappointing. Before we had enjoyed a spectacle of star fish, turtles and rays in a tiny sandy-bottomed cove a fifteen minute walk from 'civilization.' 'Civilization' being a narrow paved road. 

At first it was murky nothingness. We were about to call it a (disappointing) day when a turtle popped his head up right in front of us. Then both Bryce and I spotted rays. All was saved! Turtles, rays, starfish. Just as before, if not in such bounty. I reckon it is the season, the water too warm, especially inshore, to be inviting for creatures that are often seen in deeper water.

Now, with a plethora of dirty, salty, sweaty, to say nothing of out-and-out wet clothes, we begin to shift our focus toward the flight home tomorrow, and the end of our grand adventure. I will say this though, St. Thomas — chosen for its accessibility and (relative) affordability, not its reputation as a dive heaven — delivered. Each dive was interesting and a good blend of wrecks and reefs. 

We got lucky. Bryce got luckier.

Truffle: A tropical shower so localized we watched it rain over the pool from about 25 feet away — where it was dry.

Quote of the day: "Traveling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind. Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you, never to return. But the place you have left forever is always there for you to see whenever you shut your eyes." (Jan Myrdal)