3/4/98.. Ice out.

Then it was gone. Another string of mild rainy days, and the river let go. Ice out in February? Who is this Nino guy, anyhow?

In the woods there's still corn snow in the hollows and shady spots, but all the debris of the ice storms is now laid bare. Cast limbs, fallen trees, and a coating of twigs and needles everywhere. Some spectacular hangers overhead. Whole trees which fell and lodged in forks high up on others, and whose icy momentum tipped their butts skyward. There they hang, suspended in mid-crash. Compound fractures dangle aloft, while cast branches are budding out where they lie, in futile hope. Frost is going out of the subsoil, leaving a brittle rind on top for us to break and stagger through. Patches of bare ice on the northern slopes to tumble us down. Rotten ice in the swamps to kneedeep us.

Diane won the ice out pool, and Brent suggested that we make her a crown all tangled with lines and sinkers. The Ice Queen of 98. I'm just as glad the ice didn't dawdle, tempting me to one last river ski. Peggy says she hates March, but I think it's that punky ice.

I did go down to the banks out of curiosity, the day before the channel opened up completely. The surface was all triangulations and rectilinearities. Flood tide, and all the fragments were bobbing loose. It was tempting to try a little step-and-copy out to the big floes, but even the dogs were shaking their heads. It's over for another year. Young eagles are hunting upriver, mobbed by gangs of crows.

Sunday morning I managed to record a last smelt camp goat-roping by the Abby Bridge. Jimmy had left a shack on the flats ice, tied to a tree down the embankment, but even that ice had gone out with a rush overnight. He and Bruce and Brent were winching it up with Brent's truck (Jo was running the machinery), while I scuttled round with Olympus trying to get a good angle. Bill from Little Fish stopped in the road to commiserate, and told us that a camp owner on the Eastern had fallen through yesterday, and the wardens were still searching for his body. A 76-year-old man, with a lifetime of experience on the river. He'd tried to cross loose ice to rescue his camp. Suicide was the consensus. Definitely time to stay ashore.

And break new ground. I summoned up my courage and approached Brent about the work we want to do on this old pile. My scheme has been to buy a canvas yurt and put it on a platform in the ritual circle out back. Move my shop into it for the summer, so we can do the long overdue renovations in the front of the house. The boys at Borealis Yurts said they were willing to do barter for part of the cost, and the idea of having a portable show and work pitch appealed to me.

Brent turned my thinking upside down. He's good at that. It's why I was hesitant to approach him. So long as I'm plotting a construction, I have control of the design. Bring Brent aboard and there are two designers in the virtual space, and I'm not used to that. On the other cheek, Brent has a wealth of practical experience, and the gift of seeing the cheapest way to get a job done. Worse yet, when we differ he's usually right. Not to mention he's a wicked pace setter.

We eyeballed the interior renovations and Brent mildly suggested that the extensive rip and tear we were envisioning might be more expensive and disruptive than it was worth. Except for one room upstairs, we have settled for cosmetic surgery in this 100 year old building. So the floors sag and there isn't a straight line in the place. Trying to remedy that would be unscenting the rose, and Brent convinced me to simply carry on with the cosmetics, saving us a bundle. He also pointed out that we could build me a new shop for about what a yurt would cost, and I'd be out of the front parlor.

We're going for it. He's hot to trot. Wanted a break from the endless projects he's doing for a retired couple with more money than sense. Had me slogging in the mud out back, chopping at my frosty junkpile, clearing a new shop space, immediately.

The first year we were in here, after we'd mucked the place out, and done the first wave of renovation, I pushed back the junkpile, and built Sharpie hardby the back door. Come Spring, I leapfrogged the pile back, and opened up more garden ground. That's the way it's gone with my pile of rough lumber and crude treasures. What downeasters call "culch." Bigger garden, expanded compost heap, then a tool and woodshed, all had me flipping culch to southard. I now have a well-consolidated culchpile frozen into heavy clay out behind the shed. Or I did.

Took me three days of grubbing with a crow and maul, but I finally managed to muck out all that rotten wood, heap it on the big burnpile of branches from the storm, and start wheeling in gravel. Today I spread the better part of 6 yards of gravel on site, and tomorrow Brent arrives with his cement mixer and blocks. Feels good to have a sweatmaker now that the winter sport is over.

A real shop! Am I ready? Fully insulated, solar tempered, gas heated, dust vented, with a big deck out front for summer monumentalisms. I'm psyched. Even if we're only talking 14X24, that's twice the size of the parlor. A toymaker's paradise.

Better yet, by continuing the lines of the shed this edifice won't even be visible from the house, or block the view of the woods, shade the garden. So why did it take so long to get around to it? We've preached "know your site well before building," but 14 years is a bit excessive for a design run-up. So why am I still nervous?

We northerners need to thrash around in the Spring. Light deer-fires or burn the berryland, hunt seals. Turn everything over. These past days everyone has been out poking in the winter's debris. And it's not pretty. Mud season is a vision of strewn artifacts, forgotten promises, and fragrant reminders. I've put the last of the mulch hay on the compost, but it's still doglicious. If you're planning a vacation to Maine, please wait til May.. or June. The place looks like Dogpatch until the leaves are out, and smells worse.

But I've buried that gooey clay corner in gravel and am ready to build. A new shop for a new vision, and a way to squeeze out the last of winter's gripes. Pinch me, I'm dreaming.