Sagadahoc Story #60: 10/5/98

Ol Mother Nature has been teasing us with frost this week. The trees have been startled into color upcountry, and we've been shivered with north winds. Now the moon is full and the sky's clear, but the garden hasn't been frosted yet. The sense of anticipation is palpable. Everything waits.

Last Tuesday Peggy and I took a last sail in Sharpie. Late afternoon on a mild day, but the wind on the bay still had a nip. There's more color in the swamps and marshes, but the general display this year is muted. More bronze than dazzle. The vibrant iridescence of other years only peeps in a sumac here, a maple there. Lindsey the landscaper says her plantings have suffered from drought the past two months, which probably accounts for the subdued colors. Despite the drys, the vegetation has been especially vigorous, though. Rank.

We went north of Little Brick on a starboard tack, then south of it on port, running free up the Cathance channel, surfing for home. Still a sweet craft, but taking water steadily, and punky to the touch. I'm musing over boat designs by night.

Thursday I had a wild hare to haul her. Thrashed around in the puckerbrush to find the trailer. Pumped up the flat and horsed it onto the high ground. Fitted a ball to Ebba's bumper and jumped the hitch on. Grabbed oars and dog and muttered downhill. Must have been something in the air. I no sooner got aboard Sharpie than the wind started puffing. By the time I had her up against the float and the pin out of her tabernacle willywaws were frothing the water. Getting her mast down was a comedy of errors.

I backed Ebba down the ramp. She steers like an old truck, and I wondered about holding her with the emergency brake while I got the boat on the trailer. Nope. Had to shut her down and let the tranny help. I managed to slam my hand between the bowsprit and Ebba's tailgate, but then I knew it would be all right. Nothing like a little blood in the ritual to make the magic work.

With the tide and wind swirling at the ramp, I had fun keeping Sharpie lined up, and finally had to abjectly ablute myself to tie a waistline under the immersed trailer. She roared up the ramp, squealing as the soft tire rubbed against her side. But out. It took half a dozen tries to back her up the drive with our stubborn new mule, and when I unhitched and went back for the skiff, the wind was tossing the trees, and hangers were falling on the road. The dust in the lot was blowing like Kansas, and I spun round twice before I got the skiff ashore. I didn't have the umph to muckle her onto Ebba on the slope, so I tied her to the tailgate and dragged her onto the level. I had just wrestled her aboard when Mr. Mann drove up. Pretty good timing. The windstorm brought down trees and knocked power out here and there, but Sharpie was in the dooryard, and I was feeling smug.

Fall does that to you: gets you hustling to get it in, banked, buttoned up. Every afternoon this week we've been stripping the garden. Bushels of tomatoes have been cooked, bagged, and frozen. Two dozen quarts of greens have been steamed and put up. Carrots and beets dug. Green peppers galore. I finally got around to planting next year's garlic. The freezer is filling up. Strawberries, blueberries, peas, tomatoes, greens -- and CHICKEN. David and Alison were hot for the big bird, and we made a barter deal. I had fun driving around all one day with Mr. Chicken pecking in the back of Ebba. Great show wagon. George at the garage asked about a big eagle, and I can see one perched on the pumps. This local artist gig is a gas.

It feels like a community effort. Pop the RFD lady stops to "inspect" my efforts when she passes me painting, and tells me of good vantages to view. Jo says the colors are peaking at the Muddy Bridge. The boys at Jeanine's advise me on pricing, and brainstorm likely sculptures. Arlene has invited "The Drawing Circle" (those of us who do figure studies at Carlo's) to have a show in December at her studio on Maine Street in Brunswick. Martin and Henry say they'll pick from the show and hang works in their restaurant for a month. Angie talks about turning the upstairs of Jeanine's into a gallery space. Think ART.

Folks appear to be. I've gotten a flurry of commission calls this week. October seems to be the month. Christmas looms, and thoughts turn inward, where the art stuff lives. I'm already finding some mornings too chill for al fresco painting, and will be sorry to lose the hours of sunsoaking with watercolors. But every time I go into Seven Eagles I'm thrilled to have a tight space full of light to while the winter in. And it's getting so you don't want to be out in the tulies without your dayglow on.

Duck hunting opened with artillery at dawn on the First, and rattled on all day. We'd jumped one big raft of ducks out past Little Brick on Tuesday, but by the morning of the Second only the odd skein was to be seen, scuttling from one ambush to another. Merrymeeting Bay was once the preeminent birder's paradise in the Northeast, but it's slim pickins now. Still, the boys go out in their cammys with all the trimmings. Guy and Jimmy spent the week camped out on Delano's houseboat, with their gunning floats handy. Contractors start having trouble rounding up their labor about now.

Bow hunting for deer is on, as well, and Max has been out stalking his back acreage at dusk. Chico has loaded up his long lenses, and is out pursuing the picture-perfect buck. Bowdoinham is full of tin boats and mottled canvas. The rough camaraderie of hunters, the horseplay alongside the pickup or at the dock, is balanced with a solitary intent. Watching a solo hunter walking a gametrail, or pushing off in his duckboat, you sense an otherworldliness. A turning on of the senses. A tuning out of the hubbub. There's a faraway look in the eyes that goes with 30/30s and 12 gauge. On the one, I hate being driven out of the woods, having to keep the dog on the road, feeling unwelcome sailing on the bay. On the other, seeing the boys sniffing after a primordial scent sets my dogs dancing, too.

Hunting season gets me thinking about the wild side. Lizard brain and baying the moon. If all art goes back to that shaman dancer at Lascaux, it may still be lurking in the woods out back. In the American woods, especially: the wilds of Turtle Island. The European mythos was thoroughly anthropomorphized before Columbus. All those Greek and Roman gods and goddesses in their scanty clothes stirred a certain primitive response, but only rarely did the powers take on animal shape. Zeus bulling Europa, or swaning Leda. Our native mythos is full of shapeshifting, however. Coyote and Raven. I see the image of Pocahontas from Smith's journal, leading the naked young women in a dance, wearing antlers and uulating -- straight out of the cave at Lascaux.

(Incidentally: a recent report suggests that the rescue story from Capt. John may have been a misinterpretation of a native adoption ritual. A symbolic "death" followed by a rebirth into the tribe. I might add that the story first appears in another colonist's journal, as happening to him, and only shows up in the third edition of Smith's journal, after Pocahontas had become a favorite of the Queen. Smith was a master of PR. Named these parts New England, after all.)

In my own shaman dancing I can't shake the grip of animal-cross images. Bimorphisms. Some of my most effective portraits have been half beast, and the animal metaphor is never far below the skin. Is right brain just a bump on lizard brain? Don't know, but full moon in the Fall squeezes my creative juices. Makes me want to howl.

Coming home from my sister's the other night we saw a coyote standing beside the highway, watching the cars fly by, with glowing eyes. Suddenly out of the darkness, an alert stillness, then gone.

Is it the mystery from before the cave that the good old boys are chasing? Or me? Maybe I should get one of those handheld GPS locators. Haskell has one connected to his PalmPilot, with all the DeLorme topo maps installed. Wherever he is, a cursor pulses on his map. I'm not sure that knowing where you are in the woods answers the question.

I just went outside and noticed that the big leaves on the squashes DID get nipped last night. THAT question got answered: First Frost? October 4.