5/23/97 .. Late Spring.

Returning to small town life after roaming the continent is like eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Mildly dissociative. The colors and shapes are familiar but strangely intense and distorted. You have sudden waves of nausea. Uncontrolled urges to laugh.

The Owl blew into town on a sunny day, then the long cold Spring of 97 clamped back down. We’d gone out looking for The Vernal, planning to follow it back home, but we lost it somewhere around Mason and Dixon. Only the daffs were nodding in the dooryard at our return.. or was that shivering? The maples had reddened their budcases, ready to burst, but the oaks and ashes, always the most cautious of trees, were still waiting for some guaranteed global warming. We put all our layers back on.

Our intention was to be on our turf in time for Lawn Ornament Putting-Out Days and Spring planting. Local ordinance requires that all yard art be installed before the end of May or you pay a late fee to the Codes Enforcement Officer. As for planting, the natives will tell you that you should get seeds in the ground when the alder leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear. OUR deadline was the annual town plant sale.

The Bowdoinham Library Plant Sale is a civic institution worth driving across America for. In its 24th year, the event draws mobs of avid gardeners from thither and yon to our old town hall at the top of School Street. The hall is a late 19th century meetinghouse with a south-facing wall of windows, ceilings high enough to play basketball under, a small stage, and a tall steeple, crowned with an onion-dome. A solo contractor has been restoring the steeple all year, and a gleaming new copper onion now graces the heights of Bowdoinham. (The steeple-jack must have gotten a little dizzy: the weathervane’s cardinal points are 150 degrees out of true.)

The sale is organized by the local matrons (like Peggy) to raise funds for the town library, and features the widest array of regional flora imaginable. In its early years the ladies would collect feral perennials from abandoned house sites, and share diggings from their own plantings. Now a large garden plot is maintained year-round producing rare plants for future sales. Folks still bring cuttings and thinnings of their best ornamentals. Peggy dug up a bunch of our Solomon’s Seal to fill out the bins. And there are oodles of seedlings. We get our tomato seedlings here, having a rare knack for killing sprouts in the sawdust factory. Just cruising the sale is an education in regional botany.

And a chance to see the locals. Peggy’s sister and her husband flew up from New York to scoop some plantings, and got an eyeful of Bowdoinham. While Peggy was helping with last minute setup Saturday morning, Maddy, Martin, and I went into the Town Landing Place, our local bistro, for a hearty breakfast and a neighborly smooze. All conversations are public at Jeanine’s. Before long we were discussing the benefits of selling New England craftwork in Tokyo, with Steve Bunn our local Windsor Chairmaker; how the sap run had been this year, with Mitch (average, if intermittent).. and the quality of light on the river, as seen through the back window, with all and sundry. Where else can you talk about mixing watercolors with a horse logger?

It was just as bad up at the hall. The cognoscenti line up well in advance of the opening, to get parking and their pick of the crop. Mike Patterson puts on the plaid plays tunes on his bagpipe for the assembly, knowing a captive audience when he sees one. And we all mingle round and admire the winter damage on familiar faces. The sky had cleared off for a blustery day, and we were all wearing hopeful smiles.

We played “Could we live here?” all across America, and there were some very alluring spots along the way. Places where the sun is more frequent, the wages more salubrious. But this crowd of friendly faces, wishing up Spring at the town hall, reminded us how wide and deep our roots have spread in this town. The connections with these people are what make this place a hometown. All those little strands and tendrils, rhizomes in a native earth.

My father and Carolyn came down from Litchfield, howdyied friends and fam, and left cash in the community coffers. The library is in the old school next door, above the present town offices, and survives by benefit of communal generosity, and mutual service. In addition to the plant sale, there’s an attached thrift store (clothing and books), open Tuesdays, where I’ve been known to get gussied for a prom or outfitted for some ritual appearance. The thrift managers keep an eye out for lurid rags to tempt me on my shopping sprees. I can usually get a full costume for under $10.

Peggy’s favorite library story is about moving day. When the renovations were completed in the old school, all the elementary school kids were paraded through town to the old library. They formed a bucket-brigade up Main Street, around the corner, and up School to the new repository, and handed all the books along with a will. Seth said, “...and some of them were real heavy.”

Then there are the local conflicts, old and new. It’s easy to get boiled up about small town doings when you are steeped in them daily. Coming back to the squabbles and colliding interests after this Owl-ride gives some perspective, but the steam quickly rises again.

Progress has landed on all four feet at the banks of the Cathance this Spring. The Waterfront Committee, in all its enthusiasm for good works, has made a deal with the State and the SeaBees to rebuild the town landing. When we arrived here a dozen years ago the town landing was a convivially seedy spot, known fondly as Freak Beach. The resort of local eel fishermen, bikers, and assorted hairballs, it was too good to last. In recent years the forces of improvement have raised civic dollars to buy the property (it was a traditional use access), get state funding for ramp and dock improvements, build tables and benches, etc etc. From the five boats moored in the river when we joined the crew, there are now forty-plus, and the dock facilities are showing the results of heavy use.

Enter the noble warriors of overkill. In the next month all the trees along the river are to be clearcut. The old cribwork and banking dredged out, and replaced by riprap sloping back at 45 degrees. A new doublewide deep ramp installed with handicap access ramps and floats. The whole nine yards. Us old stick-in-the-muds who don’t admire turning the landing into another WAL*MART parking lot, and inviting still more overuse, have been plowed under. So this idyllic backwater suffers from the same pressures we saw across the land.

Which raises the Pollyanna issue. The Owlers have been accused of wearing rose-colored glasses on their travels. The mediated wisdom tells us that The US is a violent, hostile, unhappy place.. racist, paved-over, and toxic. Well.. we couldn’t find it. The America we saw seemed safe, friendly, upbeat .. integrated, green, and healthy.. as far as we could see. Yes, there was Southern Illinois, and Bakersfield, and the Northern Everglades. Memphis and East St. Louis. But they were small blots on a huge canvas. We didn’t seek out the depths of the inner cities, although we bumbled through a number of those places, and we didn’t take the superfund tour, either. What we did between historic sites was amble at random on the sideroads and back streets. Did we miss the REAL America? That unhappy place? Both of us were once trained observers, have we aged into gaga Pollyannas? When we describe the country we saw, some readers of the New York Times take personal affront at our excursions into makebelieve.

So here we are back in idyllic small-town Maine. And they’re clearcutting the heart of town. Is this one of those horror stories we missed in passing? Is every town full of anguished tales of evil developers and drag-link operators run amok? Maybe. But there are library plant sales, too. Nobody promised you the rose garden would be thornless. If this excursion has taught us anything about the American Cup, it’s that you choose how full you see it. The media moan would have us see it half empty. We say, drink up.

At the first break in the chill drip I shouldered my art kit to go do a sketch of the waterfront, before they took it away. I couldn’t decide on the best angle, that perennial quest, and chose to do one centered on the grand old willow shading the boat ramp. The line of maples, ash, and willows presently hosting the seasonal influx of boat-tailed grackles, would have to wait for tomorrow. Before I was washing on the pale yellow-greens of willowleaf, a sheriff’s paddy wagon jounced onto Freak Beach, and unloaded two deputies and a convict with a chainsaw. Tomorrow would be too late.

A dull chainsaw. It was hard to decide whether to laugh or cry. The deps kept their hostage whining and binding through all the lesser uprights for about six hours. When the exercise was over, the shoreline was a battlefield of waisthigh stumps, with a handful of big trees still leaning over the Cathance, beyond the reach of a dull sawyer. The grackles and morning doves were huddled on the bridge girders in shock. But you still had to laugh at the toils of justice. The Release Program is now painting the town hall steeple. Are they using short ladders? The forces of improvement and persuasion work in mysterious ways.

Once back in the Pine Tree State the first political bumpersticker that shook a feather at Owl said WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM. The first political dispute that drove up our driveway was Philip, on his new Harley. Apparently Philip’s nextdoor neighbor had contracted with the city of South Portland to spread their sewer sludge on his pasture, and Philip flipped. There was to be a public meeting on the issue of SLUDGE, and Philip was asking me to come and sling some at the usual suspects. Pretty hard to resist.

Peggy says Philip looks like a pirate, and he certainly cuts a wide swath. A decorated Marine from the Nam era, he contracted a variety of nasty cancers from Agent Orange, and has been a vocal advocate for veterans’ rights. He relishes a good political fight. His wife, Dianne, is a high school science teacher with studded ear-cartilage, advanced degrees in chemistry, and a quick hand at cutting through obfuscating technobabble. On the issue of municipal sludge they make a tough team to doubletalk.

Was I really going to stick my nose into the civic stew before I’d caught my breath? Well, Philip has been a good ally, and I figured to take my sketchbook and distract my mouth shut. Just be a fly on the wall. I had to grin. Back in the salad days of our marriage Peggy’s step-mother, Zimi, still saw me as a promising journalist, and kept proposing that she buy a provincial newspaper and make me editor. I treated these forays as amusing banter, not really understanding that she was wealthy enough to do it. When Zimi would float this scheme Leo always bellowed, “Do you really want to get excited about LOCAL SEWAGE?” Almost as much as I wanted to work for my mother-in-law. But here I was volunteering to wade in the local waters.

Turns out three farmers in town are already spreading municipal sludge on their acreage, and they were hunched together in combative attitudes in the committee room when the forces of fresh air filtered in. I won’t churn all the muck for you, just sample a tidbit here and there. There is voluminous conflicting evidence about both the content of sludges and its migration into the environment. Choose your own interpretation. The state prefers to let all and sundry be spread under certain limitations (with contradictory guidelines). They say the towns have no say in the matter. Those towns which have promulgated ordinances banning spreading or accessing prohibitive fees have yet to be taken to court, however, and their methods of self-defense have worked to date. I asked the CEO, who was describing the various strategies used elsewhere, if he was recommending we write draconian regs and let the chips fall where they may. He demurred. The Portland paper quoted me as proposing an outright ban. I love the freedom of the press.

The Solid Waste Committee which was hosting this free-for-all was noncommittal, but everyone else slung the muck with glee. It was fun to know all the players without a scorecard, and have just enough distance that the fumes didn’t go to my head. The upshot? South Portland canceled their contract with the neighbor, and Philip et al will continue the struggle against dioxins and heavy metals, the Department of Environmental Equivocation, and the forces of ooze.

You’ve realized by now that I couldn’t resist fulfilling Leo’s prophecy. If you have a fancy to dabble in journalism, sooner or later you sink up to your neck in local shit. I thought you’d like to get a whiff of the Muirs at home.