1/27/98... Middlegrounds.

A glorious winter for the muddled metabolytes. Snow, ice, more snow, more ice. The incredible shrinking man downs his morning porridge, takes up another notch in his belt, and steps out into the weather. Seems to be the only way to burn sugar in this old mechanism. And blow the funk off.

Between ice storms we had a window of skating opportunity. The 2-day melt water froze over clear as glass. One day the river was all puddle, the next there was an inch of new ice with a layer of water between it and the old ice.. 6-7 inches all told. Young Christopher and I skated up and down the reach by the fertilizer mill, while Fowler (Chris' dad) minded the lines in their smelt camp. NADA. Not a bite. Too much current there, I think.

I've spent a lot of time with Chris and Fowler this half year. I've been the sole court appointed supervisor for visitations between them. They're the victims of a nasty divorce dispute that saw the Ex making accusations of sexual abuse, and now their lives are full of lawyers, counselors, priests, and the court. And me.

Fowler is a neighbor, a reclusive guy who'd rather hunt and fish and work on his boats than confront the system. He's a reformed boozer, son of a local artist of a previous generation. Grew up all over: rural England, urban New Orleans, Bowdoinham. Someone I knew to gnaw a bone with, but not as an intimate friend. When he asked me last summer if I'd be willing to be one of the approved supervisors, I had to think about it.

About five minutes. What if it had been me? Fowler lives to be with his eight-year-old son. How could you not try and help? Besides, it sounded like an occasional gig, be a chance to see the landscape through different eyes. Only going to last 6 weeks.

As it turned, everyone else had something better to do than help Fowler, and the process dragged on 6 months. I got to make two new friends. Chris can be an aggressive and badmouthed little rotter, but he's also a kid who'll follow you around like a puppy. You can feel the family dissolution wrenching his guts and souring his attitude, but you can also share his delight in neat stuff. Like a four-wheeler, a biting smelt, or a new set of skates. I was hard pressed to stay out in front of him on the ice. A jock in the making, I predict.

Last week the judge permitted unsupervised visitations, and I'll get to be a friend without being intrusive. I'm glad for all of us. This neighborhood is filling up with kids again, and I hope Chris gets to be one of the local bunch. Seth's cohort is gone, and the elderly residents have moved on, replaced by young families. It's a middling kind of place.

The ice froze clear through in a couple of days, and was absolutely perfect skating. One of the young artists at our drawing group overheard Mr. Mann and I talking skates, and said it was her ambition to try ice skating this winter (and smelt fishing). Her shoe size is a match for Peggy's, so the next day we introduced Maryanne to the Cathance.

We assumed it would be a wibblewobble outing, and we hadn't allowed for youthful exuberance. By the time we got to the mouth of the river, two old hairballs were struggling to keep pace. It was spectacular. The making ice snapping and groaning, the untouched mirror at our feet. Al Gore's entourage thudded by overhead in their Guard choppers, examining our disaster, while we reveled in the icy air and reflected light.

When we got back to Riverbend, Andy asked if we'd seen Brent. He'd been there for bait, and the fish were biting. So we drove around to Brent's camp at the Abby Bridge. Just in time to meet Brent and Bruce finishing their noontime fish. They were headed back to the job, and gave us the gallon of smelt they'd caught. Invited Maryanne to come fishing next day. We retired to Chez Muir, and fried a mess of wriggling smelt for lunch. UMMM. Maryanne couldn't believe it was that easy in Bowdoinham.. to have your desires on tap.

Then it snowed, and the skiing season reopened. Even though Bagel has a hard time levering himself up in the morning, I'd been taking both dogs for the daily air. The old thing seems to get loosened up after half a mile or so, and keep pace, moreorless. Of course he has his olfactory priorities, so I have to keep an eye on him, or he gets left behind with his nose in some redolent antique. When I'm lugging a camera all my stops and starts, fumblings with poles and gloves and settings, gives him a chance to catch up.

The boys up to the second middleground were out in force setting new camps on the new ice. I angled around in a biting wind, trying to get telling snaps of their fourwheelers, then followed their trail off the river, through the woods to the powerlines.

Grouse as you may about snowmobiles and fourwheelers, they make a dandy ski road in loose snow. It was a fast kick and glide across the neck to the lower Cathance. Generally I get into a steady rhythm, going full throttle, and this two-hour circuit about poops me. But my camera stops break the marathon attitude, and it's more like a stroll in the woods.

Under the big lines I come upon a frozen dove lying on the snow, head cocked to one side. An emblem of a dark time. But just beyond I hear bird calls in the cedars, and see a flock of something swooping into a winterberry bush. These utility clearcuts are punctuated with winterberries, bright red galaxies in the rolling whiteness. I see ruddy breasts, and a flash of white under the tails of the brown birds. What can they be? They seem very like robins. As I ski toward them, the birds take off and return to the cedars, one by one. A single straggler waits for my identification. A great fat robin it is. My spirits leap. From a frozen dove to a flock of fat robins in an hundred yards.

Back on the river, it's a dead muzzler for home, as it generally is on sunny days. We live on the end of Brooklyn neck. Whichever way I head out from home, upriver or down, It's due north coming back. The story of all grand aspirations.

To hear it told in these dispatches, all we do here in Bowdoinham is go out and play in the puckerbrush. That's because I find it hard to articulate what goes on in the sawdust factory. When I'm cranking, I'm too engaged to pause and reflect in this phosphorescent mirror. When it isn't happening, I don't want to whine.

This is the whining time of year, though. My Christmas rush is over. I have time to contemplate the process. Make new beginnings. You'd think the lack of distractions and commitments would be a tonic, and I'd effervesce.. bubble up with schemes. But I don't. Maybe it's the SAD, or a fundamental contrariness. What I do is get caught in a feedback loop. Sounds like a low moaning.

At one end of the tether, I have delusions of grandeur. I hunger for some large work. A great vision that I can pour all my energies into. Another "Spirit Procession" I can dream about at night and jump to in the morning. I mean, I've mastered a handful of expressive media, I know how the power can rise through the work, I only really feel alive when I'm in full make, so let's get at it.

Only it doesn't work that way. You can't call down the power at will. Conjure up the grand vision on demand. Thinking you can is hubris. Whatever transcendent material comes through the work does so in its own time. It's the artist's job to keep his eyes open, and let it happen when it will. A sustaining vision isn't granted often.

I've got lots of old visions I could pursue, and I do nibble away at them.. piecemeal.. but old visions lose their charge. If you try to work from inspiration every day, it may be a long time between enthusiasms. Waiting on inspiration is like a cold headwind.

So that's the other end of the tether. Just go into the shop every day and grind a little wood, the voice says. It's just a job. Pick a design you want to realize, you've got a zillion in your head.. crank 'em. The simple dailyness will get you by, and when the spirit moves, you'll be right there with the wood in you hands. Ready for it. How I envy the steady rolling man.

I've done that, too, of course. When the cash is low, when I've taken on a lot of orders, when I was peddling regularly, when a show or fair is in the offing. But in recent years all the work I've done just to be doing has been hollow. Oh. it's been competent enough, but without charge for me. What Picasso called "fakes."

"Just do it," may work for shoes, but not in mine. So there're two dogs running on my leash. A need for dailyness, and a hunger for visions. What I really want is a middleground. A way to approach the material every morning without crying for a vision, but without the void of simple busyness. That old work imperative never did it for me.

Making something for someone, as a gift or commission, chases me out of my dogfight, and the good stuff can flow, if it chooses. But most commissions have no sense of continuity. They don't fulfill a larger vision. Even so, I keep a few undated ones in reserve, to jumpstart my engine in desperate times. And I prime the pump with small gift carvings. Ritual gestures.

The power will come back on in the shop, too. It eventually does. I even believe that the dark time is necessary to the process. But I hate it. I'll flail about, and be full of self-loathing, and all that whine.. then one morning I'll just go in and know what's next. Well.. I'm ready.

Skiing home with Mr. Mann on the day before the second ice storm, the old dog taught us a new trick. Bagel has a clever ruse of disappearing between the smelt camps and getting lost in the ripe refuse. He goes totally deaf when his nose is engaged. I've learned to watch him, and harry him along until we are back in the open. This time he was good as gold. Trotted along with us past the camps on the middleground, then right beside to the last of the string on the far shore. Even jumped the plowed bank.

At which point I stopped watching him. He must have dropped back out of our peripheral vision, then 180ed to the camps. As we went into the next turn I looked back, and he was gone. There was no point in shouting. I backtracked after him. When he saw me coming he dodged between camps and continued in the other direction. I finally cut him off at the last camp downriver.

When he first started this game, I'd made it most the way home before I realized he wasn't following, and when I caught up with him I was mad enough to whack him across the nose with a skipole. Now he expects me to punish him, and he trots just ahead of me, just out of reach, headed for home. I growl and bark at him, but I'm laughing inside. Got me again, the old fool.

Sometimes it takes an old dog to make you laugh at yourself, or a good pratfall. Yesterday I decided to check out the river again. The glazed crust covering everything makes it impossible skiing on any slope, but I wondered how it would be on the level. I tiptoed down the marsh road and slid out toward where Fowler's camp was. Only he's moved it up to the second middleground now, and is catching fish.

It was ludicrous. I'd hoped the dimpled surface would provide traction, but all I could do was jab my poles in and muscle my way along. Wicked fast.. but treacherous. As I kept stabbing at the crust, I realized that the snow on the river had consolidated back into rough ice. HAH. I turned for back.

When I got home, I realized that I had been to blame for the latest storm, and I want to apologize. We had a family of mice move in during the last storm, and I'd hung my skates back in the mudroom to keep them from being gnawed beside the stove. I knew better than to put skates away, but I forgot, and it iced. I hope you'll forgive me. I got them back down, and checked out the skating.

It's hot. The surface is part dappled new ice, where the snow has consolidated or mixed with the seeps, and part milky ice-and-snow. You can skate across all of it, but the deeper white parts grab at your skates, and make this crust-riding more sporting. It was 15 below on the river last night, so today's skate was especially brisk. That low-angled sun refracted through ice-sheathed trees and glaring across the white ice is magic enough for any day. Stop your whining.