My Seasonal Musings

Today was the first day of school, and it started out rainy.  No need for an alarm clock.  The school busses started their runs early, and the neighbor’s kids up the street chattered away by the roadside.  Soon the snow plows will awake us even sooner.  It’s been a long time since the first day of school meant anything to me.  I can’t remember whether it really caused excitement.  All it evokes now in my senior years is a change of season.  I can definitely feel the change of season in more ways than one. 

The summer season is over.  Belfast is quieter ... you can make a turn at the one downtown traffic signal without waiting through another light.  The families with kids are gone now and only the die-hard summer folks remain.  There's a brief respite between summer folks and "the peepers" although leaf turning season is coming early.  The chestnut tree across the street has begun to change ... ours is hanging on to its green for dear life!  I see leaves falling, and the acorns are dropping from the oaks like shrapnel on the roof.  I'm afraid my hummers are heading south - haven't seen one for a few days.  I’ll miss those amazing creatures. 

Autumn is my favorite time of year.  The time of year that seems to refresh my soul as Nature prepares to sleep for a while.  Leaves turning their magical colors and then falling to nourish the earth.  The air is fresher, there is more pep in my stride, and people just seem friendlier to me.  Why?  I don’t know; it really doesn’t matter as long as I see smiles and hear laughter.  The festive season lies ahead.  Families and friends plan get-togethers.  We relive old memories and make new ones to add to our mental scrapbooks.  Autumn – a time to nest around the comfort of a fire; a time to reflect in the early darkness and to plan adventures for the coming seasons.  Autumn is the time for Nature to replenish and for Man to examine his soul to see how he can become a better person.

And then comes the winter.  There is beauty in the first snowfall when the world turns white.  By nature I cocoon or hibernate, own special wayso it's alright in its .  When weather permits, I take to the roads sometimes on solitary jaunts just to get out of the house and breathe the crisp air.  I often take the long way home from town just to experience a respite among Nature and commune with my Spirit.  Shore Road, our road, is a ribbon of curves and ups and downs clinging to the bluff overlooking the bay.  Occasional glimpses to the sea through the trees and the indentations of rocky coves at low tide along the way never fail to make my breathing a little slower and my mind go to auto pilot.  .  Dark comes early on these shores in winter.  By mid-afternoon the night begins to gather the hues of the day for sleep.  The blue of the sea beyond the trees becomes but an inky mass beneath a star sprinkled sky.  If there be a moon, that great orb of glowing hope, the sentinel trees are but shadowy figures until at last the cycle repeats with rosy fingered wisps of clouds kissed by the rising sun.

At last, the wet of spring gives full passage to the glory that is Maine in the summer.  Flowers begin to burst forth and the sky is full of screeching gulls sailing with the air currents and dropping from the sky to pierce the azure waters below on their fishing expeditions.  The earth fairly hums with activity as people begin to stir from their winter’s hibernation and set to work on projects that have to be completed before the snow flies once again.  The time is brief and chores must be accomplished and a lot of playtime crammed into a brief span.  Freshly mowed yards and fields perfume the air.  Children in the neighborhood laugh and shriek as they make their way to the cove for a chilly swim.

Lying in my bed, in the dark, as the sorrowful foghorns began to sound from the bay, I could feel the misty fog creeping unseen through the open window.  The dampness of the air began to settle on the sheets.  I hate damp sheets.  The alpha cat crooked in the hollow of my legs didn’t stir.  Ah, to sleep like a cat – never a worry until it’s time to eat.  My mind, now fully engaged by the mournful blasts, began to scroll back over the past few months.  Had it only been two years that Tom, my partner, and I had changed course?  Lengths of time blurred, unless one began to mark time by the change of seasons.  Yesterday could have been months ago and six months ago seemed like yesterday.

I am a dreamer, always have been.  Even as a child I longed for an idyllic life away from the soil of my native state.  I dreamed of castles, of knights, and chivalrous deeds.  I dreamed of far away places, romanticized the sea and the mountains.  In my dreams, I pictured myself in quaint New England towns with village greens and white steeple churches.  The Hollywood image where a stream tumbles over a mill’s dam, a crystal moon dazzles across the pristine snow, and horse-drawn sleighs glide in rutted paths through the forest.  Travels over the years only fueled the fires and desires and dreams of my youth for a better life.  No … not a better life … mine was just fine for the ordinary person it seemed.  Perhaps a different life … yes, a different life now that the worries of having to make a living no longer existed.  I had achieved success in my career and was thought of well.  That’s enough for some people, but for me something was missing.

We had been together for 27 years when Tom and I made the decision to leave the home we built, the people we knew and the state in which we were born.  There was nothing to keep the status quo now we were retired.  We were restless for a new chapter, perhaps the final chapter.  It was time to leave behind the corporate world, the huge city with its crime, its freeways, its fast pace to nowhere.  It was time to shed the Neiman-Marcus suits, the Armani ties and the power cars for a simpler life in a pastoral setting.  The question that could only be answered by action was ‘could we adjust, be happy with a bucolic life, away from the bustle of the city’?

We had traveled much of the world.  Most evenings as retirement closed in we talked about where we wanted to be, what we wanted to experience and where was our happiness for the mature years.  In our martini discussions, we traveled through our minds’ atlas.  New Mexico, Arizona, maybe North Carolina … we even thought briefly about staying in Texas.  No, not Texas; her politics were not our politics.  Her place in the Bible Belt was not our place.  

Finally succumbing to the urging of family, we made our first trip to Maine in 2006 staying in an old house that had been the setting for the filming of the movie “In The Bedroom.”  We fell in love with Maine on that first visit.  The rocky coast often shrouded in fog.  Lobster boats puttered out to the buoys marking the bounty that lay underneath the cobalt blue waters.  The gulls screamed overhead, darting to the sea for morsels while sailboats glided on the distant horizon.  All of it was different from what we had known.  It was a vacation then, but could it be a life?

Maine became our focus over the next few years.  We forwent the more exotic vacations to center our energies on getting ready for the retirement years.  After several more visits in all seasons, we reached the decision.  Maine it was.  Each trip became a house hunting, locale hunting expedition.  The internet burned with real estate searches.  Three years after the initial visit to Maine, we stumbled across the house that spoke to us.  It was situated just up the road from our week long rental.  On a bluff with a tree framed view to Penobscot Bay, stood a 110-year old Victorian farmhouse, simple but welcoming.  Quietly but determinedly it spoke to us.  Come inside; let me show you my treasures.  As we slowly drove along the road peering at the place, the owner stepped out on the porch and with a wave beckoned us in.  It wouldn’t hurt to look would it?  Once inside we found a rabbit’s warren of rooms each painted a different color – the lilac room, the periwinkle room, the rose room, the lime green room and the ultimate burnt orange bathroom.  Looking past all that conflagration of color and dated fixtures, we felt the bones of the house.  They were good.  If a house has a spirit and we believed that houses do, this spirit was good.  The house rambled, added to and modified over a century, but not so much in recent years it seemed.  It was so unlike the little box in which I grew up.  The house splayed across its lot on the hillside almost touching the back property line so that the front yard had an expanse.  Once again outside, we grinned at each other.  Had we just found our home?

Indeed we had, and all the wheels and cogs of the real estate machinery turned quickly.  Just a few days later the contract was in place, financing arranged and the closing set for October.  We planned one more trip to Maine, but this time with a definite purpose.  The house was purchased.  The seller brought her stepmother to the closing.  She wanted to meet the people who were buying her house, although she hadn’t lived in it for 10 years.  We put on our best southern manners, and I believe we passed muster.  A sizable check to her stepdaughter didn’t hurt either.  The place was immediately closed for the oncoming winter.  I still worked so my notice of retirement was given with three months notice.  Little did we know that we were not in total control of our destiny; our plan would not occur within the expected, the desired time frame.  The retirement celebrations happened alright, but the shedding of old real estate took its sweet time.  Eleven months after the Maine deal was sealed the key to the home we had built finally was placed into the hands of new owners.  The last few weeks of selling that house had been touch and go.  I seemed at times that all of our dreams may end in ruin, but at last, it was time to bid farewell to the past and say hello to the future.

The logistics of uprooting our lives and transplanting to a new locale was daunting to say the least.  Two people, two cars, three cats and a houseful of possessions needed to be 2200 miles distant.  If only time travel were possible!  Nevertheless, we engaged the movers, loaded the cars, and with great consternation and the aid of drugs, herded the cats.  The drugs were for all, us as well as the felines.  

After four nights on the road, we crossed the township line of our new town.  Audible sighs of relief and accomplishment escaped from my lips.  We had done it!  We arrived at the precise time Mother Nature paraded her best colors.  What a feast for the senses … the myriad shading of the leaves quivering on the trees, the gentle music of the wind, and the smoky aroma of neighboring fireplaces warming the chilly, biting air.

Our new oasis, known as Saturday Cove, is a cluster of houses nestled in the hills above the namesake cove.  The community is part of the town of Northport.  There is no town to speak of.  Just a family market with gas pumps up on Route 1 serving as the center of the town.  We travel to Belfast, the nearest metropolis of 6,000 people, 10 minutes away for shopping and all other services.

Within the week, all the detritus of our former life appeared on the doorstep of the new house.  As the large van was unloaded, the walls of the house started crawling inward as box upon box was stacked to the ceiling and furniture was placed on top of furniture.  The house had seemed large but with work to start soon, we regretfully realized all our belongings needed to be centralized and most importantly out of the way.  And so it was that storage units were engaged and yet another set of movers was hired to haul most of our belongings away for the duration, however long that was to be.  In hindsight, that day was comical as the U-Haul engaged along with its driver skidded down the icy road at the corner descending to the cove, blocking the only road for some on a dangerous hillside.  A pair of tow trucks was enlisted to get the truck back on sure footing.

By mid November the deconstruction of our house began.  Had we only known that it would be 9 months later when all was completed!  Every morning like clockwork, the carpenter appeared.  Sawing, hammering, dust flying as the demolition continued.  Plaster lath was torn from the ceilings and walls and a cloud of dust filtered into every crevice of the old lady.  The enormity of the journey on which we had embarked came to light one day with the resounding thud of a sledge hammer.  The front staircase was demolished over the course of two days.  It had been a strictly utilitarian feature ... a means to get from one floor to another albeit a dangerous climb.  The steep risers and shallow treads disappeared as each swing hit its mark.  In the sledge hammer’s wake was a cavernous hole yawning from the second floor down to the basement.  When we finally saw the new staircase begin to take shape, it was a cause for celebration.  The phoenix was rising from the ashes. 

It was a long, cold winter.  Being from the South we had no idea that the winter we were to experience would be extraordinary.  The harsh reality came rather quickly.  The first snow fell on Halloween and by December, just a few days before Christmas, any snow that fell stuck, and there it would remain.  The weeks followed with a blizzard or two and more snow piling up on the ground.  Dark came early in those wintry days.  By 4 o’clock, the day was done, and we huddled in the little room off the kitchen with only a TV for company as the snow fell and the winds howled.  Yet amid all the destruction, there was a magic.  It was as though Mother Nature had dressed for the season in an ermine ball gown.  When the sun shone, the brilliance of the reflection on the snow crystals looked like a million sequins, blindingly so.  While the inside of the house resembled a bombed out structure of some past war, dust and debris littering every room, outside was serene and beautiful and peaceful.

I knew the honeymoon with the snow was over the morning I awoke and cursed the sight of snow falling against the skylight.  It had been just a few nights since, with a few martinis under my belt, I put on my boots and gloves, grabbed a flashlight and a snow shovel and trudged through thigh deep drifts to uncover the air intake of the furnace.  Once I accomplished that feat and slid down the embankment at the street on my butt, the furnace kicked back on and a very cold night in the house was averted.  I learned to rake the roof, too.  A build up of snow on the roof could be disastrous.  We were being christened.  No, we were baptized by immersion, in a life with snow.

The unoccupied rooms, those destined for rebirth, remained darkened in the winter’s night.  Plastic sheeting where doors once stood separated the small living space we had carved from the whole of the house.  The multiple layers of wood flooring now stained and scarred were like sponge as we walked across them.  The house had no insulation, and the single paned windows were no match against the onslaught of a Nor’easter.  The carcass was stripped of its meat, devoured, just leaving the barren bones of the house. 

But the cove held us in its magic.  A secluded inlet of Penobscot Bay, it is steeped in history.  Her citizens waged a fight with the invading British in the War of 1812, and rumor has it that the cove was home to rum running during Prohibition.  I visited the cove in all sorts of weather, but only when no one else was around.  Solitary … I am a solitary man in many aspects, introspective and at times wanting to be alone ... totally alone.  I could do that at the cove.  Here the wind in the trees spoke to me.  Nature’s voice, not the voice of man.  The smell of the sea claimed my nose, and I breathed deeply the aroma of salt and seaweed and fresh air.  I pondered the stones beneath my feet.  Where had they traveled?  They perhaps were centuries old, and now we were in communion.  If only I could hear what they had to say.  I watched as the tide came in, its white foam gliding across those stones in greeting like a kiss on the cheek. 

As the carpenter made headway, it was time to call in the other trades to participate in the invasion.  Here came the electrician, the drywaller, the plumber, followed by the painter.  Each man fought for his space and jokingly complained with a bit of truth about the others’ mess and work habits.  Even the basement was not exempt as the heating folks installed a Star Wars operation beneath the house.  It seemed we had adopted a bunch of children for the duration but without the tax break. 

More than a few surprises lurked.  Live wires were found hiding behind drywall.  Copper plumbing pipes disintegrated to the touch.  A forest of floor jacks sprouted in the basement to keep the old lady upright.  A large fir beam was hoisted into place overhead between the living room and the library to keep the second floor where it should be.  Every day the trash pile on the front lawn grew as old flooring was ripped out.  A toilet and a couple of wash basins added to the pile must have alarmed the neighbors.

Spring came or so the calendar read.  Outside there was nary a sign of the season as another snowstorm raged.  Unbeknownst to us it would be the last of the season.  We had seen it before.  Summer could happen, would happen, but when.  Our spirits rose as the destruction became rebirth.  The old bones of the house so long bare and exposed at last those ancient timbers were being outfitted with a new skin.  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the days became longer and a little warmer.  The first spying of green shoots emerging from the frosted ground was cause for celebration. 

With the arrival of spring, most of the work moved outdoors.  New windows had arrived after a measurement hiccup and were installed at last.  Rotted clapboards were replaced and the exterior of Tidings got a spiffing.  We had christened the house Tidings to symbolize welcome as well as a new beginning.  The old paint of some undistinguished color gave way to a striking charcoal with cream trim and all the doors sported a cranberry red.  Shouts of approval came from passing neighbors.  Some of those same neighbors with our blessing scavenged the wood pile in the front yard for fire wood.  There is no waste when some live on the land.

Summer at last came as we began to add cosmetic touches and unpack the previously stored life and fill our home with familiar surroundings.  We thought we had jettisoned sufficient belongings before the grand move, but we soon learned that we had moved much too much stuff.  Goodwill and neighbors and friends became targets of our largesse.  Tom commandeered EBay and had great success in transferring our junk and unwanted items to another household.  If by miracle we occupied the entire house, not just the four small rooms that had been our domicile for many months. With the summer the decks became living rooms as we watched the magnificence of Nature unfold.  Flowers bloomed, hummingbirds appeared and all that comes with summer in Maine.  It’s a magical time when life is breathed into an entire community, and the roads and byways teem with life.  This was what we had been searching for, what we wanted, what we hoped we would find … and we did.

So the cycle goes as we repeated the seasons albeit with the next winter being much milder.  And now we are on the threshold of yet another cycle of seasons.  With each passing season we become more comfortable in our surroundings, ecstatic in our choice, and just down right happy with Life.  Now, two years after arriving at Saturday Cove, we often sit and one of us will comment, “Can you believe that we actually did this?  Can you believe that we have made this our home?”  Yes, sometimes it seems to be a dream.  I guess, in fact, it is.  It just goes to show, if you can dream, you can make it happen