Fire in the sky

In tiny towns, change comes slowly, usually driven by rumor, gossip, and acrimony. Such it is in our tiny town that boasts a whopping population of 400 people, more or less and depending on who is counting. Our little community, a scant ten miles west of Caribou, New England’s coldest town according to a Boston Globe story, sits on the easternmost edge of Maine’s Great North woods. In fact, between our house and the Canadian border about 120 miles west, only one paved road, Route 11, runs north to Eagle Lake and eventually to Fort Kent where Route 1 begins. The rest are dirt, mostly traveled by logging trucks, and at this time of year, hunters. 

The road through the woods in fall.

Most of the people who live in our little community are from original families, set in their ways, sure that progress is an evil, quick to pick a fight, and long to hold a grudge.  It makes for interesting politics and social interaction.  We’ve also had more than our share of political intrigue, including police officers at the door of town meeting to keep fisticuffs at minimum, misappropriated funds, broken laws, and a reliance on the age-old phrase, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”  What was good enough fifty or a hundred years ago remains good enough today even when it isn’t.

Like many tiny towns in the great expanse of forest and fields north of Bangor, which most people consider far enough north, our little burg faces the challenge of a dwindling and aging population and resources.  We have not yet reached the stage of considering deorganization, as has Bancroft, population of sixty, which made the fateful decision last summer, and after 126 years as a community, joined the vast reaches of northern Maine’s Unorganized Territories. Nor are we faced with that decision and process as has been the case for nearby Oxbow Plantation, whose 53 residents voted this week to give up its township and rely instead on the county and state for essential services.  But the reality of outward migration from the once thriving woods and potato lands of northern Maine is in fact very real, and often deorganization is considered a possibility. 

We may be saved from such a fate because in recent years, Amish families have found Aroostook County, bought land, set up communities, and built lives.  Easton, Fort Fairfield, Smyrna, Sherman, and others all have attracted Amish communities because of tillable land and relatively low sales prices.  Our tiny town had until recently been ignored. But within the last two or three months, there is new activity. Several hundred acres of land have been sold to the Amish, with varying reports on how many families have chosen our community.  Rumors and gossip run rampant, but we, with a new house having been built only about a mile away – neighbors by County definition – we are watching and waiting to see, welcoming the possibility that the abandoned or only partially used acres of potato fields will be put to productive use.  

We can’t help but wonder, however, how Amish families will sit in a community that so clearly loves a good fight about what goes on in their town. As for us, we have no complaints, and in fact, feel fairly confident that the presence of buggies and horses instead of logging trucks and behemoth potato harvesters and grain combines might just be better.  These are good things to ponder as the days shorten and the cold strengthens.

Snow in Aroostook

We have hit the time of year when there is no real demarcation of when day becomes night. One moment the western sky is aflame with setting sun and the next, it is dark.  Night falls heavily here in winter, not lingering like it does in summer, sometimes as late as ten o’clock before it is really dark.  The cold has also moved in and it has been snowing lightly all day, sudden squalls sweeping sideways across the landscape and sugaring everything white.  Temperatures have also dropped from an unseasonably warm range of high forties down into the twenties or slightly below.  We pull the shades early, blocking the cold and dark, and settle in for television or reading.  The dogs are content to snore in their chairs, covered with fleeces, paws twitching in dreams, until I make my way to bed and then all three join me.

Dogs in bed

Thanksgiving was wonderful, but almost was the holiday that wasn’t.  Becka, our youngest “daughter” and her husband and the two grands were set to come, but her grandmother, now in her 90s, took a turn for the worse and Becka chose to stay there, just in case.  We gave her the freedom to do that, reorganizing plans, suggesting that over Christmas break might be better.  The kids will be out of school; we can take them skiing, sledding, all the fun winter things of Aroostook. 

We did find ourselves a bit bewildered about what we would do with an eighteen-pound turkey and a mountain of food, and then decided to invite friends Sigrid and Kurt and their two boys, who I was sure would make a big dent not only in dinner but especially the three pies. It was a good choice and a lovely afternoon. Sigrid is Kasey’s best friend, and I am grateful Kasey shared her with me.  I like Sigrid’s comfortable ease and her integrity, and Kurt, well, Kurt is a Mainer and a timber-frame builder, and he and Bruce get along just fine.  It is a wonderful time in life when your children and your children’s friends become your friends.

Hunting season is over, and the parade of unsuccessful heater hunters that have driven slowly up and down our road, daily, for the past month, are gone.  If we needed proof, this morning two does with this year’s fawns browsed the dry grass poking through the dusting of snow at 10 in the morning.  Of course, Monty spotted them and all three dogs raced up and down one side of the fence, barking like fools, anxious to chase the intruders.  The deer looked up, flicked their ears and went back to browsing. If that were not proof enough, when we brought the dogs inside, they had barely settled in their chairs when a doe loped lazily across the front yard, and Monty raised the alarm.  Moments later, a yearling fawn followed, unfazed by the hounds of hell warning us of danger with their cacophony of barking. Apparently, the pair had been grazing the windfalls beneath the hundred-year-old apple on the north side of the house, and then moved on to the few apples still hanging on the tree at the edge of the road. When sated, they melted leisurely into the woods and were gone.

Vanilla Cardamom Lip Balm, top; and Sweet Floral Lotion below.

I have spent the bulk of the long weekend finishing product for the NMCC craft fair next Wednesday.  As Bruce grumbles whenever he comes in the back door, the house smells of “stinky stuff.”  Lavender and rosemary, jasmine and sandalwood. I have mineral baths, and herbal bath bags, vanilla cardamom lip balm, and sweet orange body wash, floral hand and body lotion, and moth repellent sachets.  This venture also marks the beginning of a long held dream: to grow herbs, which I already do, and to make safe, healthy products with those herbs and special oils.  While I haven’t reached the point of growing all the ingredients I need, there are some: mint, comfrey, raspberry leaves, lady’s bedstraw that find their way into the products I am making.  I find real peace in the careful measuring and mixing that it takes to make good product.  It is much like cooking, which I truly love to do, and from that love, Northwoods Herbs and Botanicals has been born.  More on that in future.  

For now, we move closer to winter.  There is the addressing of Christmas cards and making wreaths with Bruce and our new neighbors.  There are trays of cookies to be made and breads to be baked for Christmas gifts for our neighbors and friends, and to scent the house.  With hunting season over, it is again safe to roam the woods and next weekend, we will take the dogs and tramp the woods to try to find an acceptable tree.  When I took the dogs out this evening after supper, feather-pillow snowflakes were falling steadily, whispering as it piled up on the ground. I love that quiet, far from the madding world, and the quiet adventure of a ramble for a tree. That ties my heart to this place and makes it home like nowhere else has been, no matter rumors and gossip and acrimony. 

Walls for the wind

We are entering the third day of low, gray skies, a certain marker of impending winter.  The air is clean and crisp, and temperatures dipped low enough last night so that when I went out with the dogs, frozen blades of grass crunched beneath my feet.  I am up and about early today, pot roast in the crock pot, kitchen cleaned and shining, and bracing myself for the drive to town for the few staples we need.  It has been a week of fitful weather, each day affirming the turn and tip of the earth toward the long dark days we know are coming. 

 

Yesterday it snowed.  I awoke to Monty’s persistent nudge for outdoors, pulling myself reluctantly from the warm cocoon of comforters and quilts.  The furnace hummed a soft counterpoint to the burble of the coffeemaker as I pulled on my coat, over a heavy bathrobe, bundling up for the morning routine.  Since the skunk episode in September, and with coyotes howling nearly every night, I am loath to let the dogs, especially Hannah, who is fragile at 16, out into the black of the yard alone. In the muted dark of five a.m., the ground was sugared white and the world still enough so the falling flakes whispered in the sharp air as they swirled around me and the dogs, bidding farewell to a week of warmish temperatures. We hurried back inside to warmth and biscuits, coffee and curling up beneath blankets on the couch and chairs.  It is our routine of the last week as the days marched steadily toward winter. 

A week ago in the heavy darkness just before dawn, the waning crescent moon, rising in the east, halted for a moment and held in filigree branches of birches and poplars at the edge of the field.  It was pale amber, the slimmest thumbnail paring, and faintly visible, too, likely the result of earth and sun angles, the rest of the plump moon face, even paler, and yet so clear.  The last of the stars blinked and winked a goodbye as the sun pushed higher and then at last won out, light washing up the dome of darkness and bringing the day.  There has also been persistent wind, blowing out of the northwest, down across the St. Lawrence Valley and the Allagash, bringing the cold down from the Arctic and across our small piece of the world.  That we have no windbreaks or trees nearby makes it worse, and in a gale, the wind whoops and howls around the eaves and rattles the windows as it has for the past week. Outdoor chores are abandoned because it is simply too cold to fight the wind for long.

I am not dreading the winter; I love that season when the world is wrapped in white and the skies are the bluest they are.  In fact, there really is no season – including black fly season – which I dislike.  I’ve realized that more and more because with Bruce already retired and at home and left to his own pleasures and devices, people have begun to ask me if I am moving toward retirement.  But, the decision of where we live and how much it means to us, hit me one day when I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a while at the post office.  We chatted, as people tend to do, simple small talk, sharing bits of news about family and mutual friends, our plans for the future – both immediate and long-term.  Eventually, having run out of things to say, we both mumbled something about needing to get back to work, and parted.  However, as I walked away, she called to me, “Are you going to retire here or go downstate?”  Without thinking, I answered, “Here.  That’s why we moved here.”

Here is where we want to be, and in the last few days, we are grateful for the isolation.  The events of the last few weeks have left me saddened and unsettled. I fret over how we have come to prize killing, making it a heroic act, rather than the tragedy that every death is, whether in the name of justice or not.  That is not to say that those who serve and protect should not be honored, but I cannot help but wonder if our focus on warfare as a means to settle conflict contributes to the number of angry young men who shoot up schools and drivers on highways with such reckless abandon for life. To contemplate it too long leaves me heartsick. And so I turn my attention to those things that sustain us.

This morning on the drive to town, there were no other cars on the road. I drove leisurely, enjoying the bare, browning landscape that only a few months ago had been green and lush. At the top of the big hill leading down tothe Aroostook valley, squads of geese were winging their way south along the eastern horizon.  Scalloped gray clouds clotted the sky and the world was silent.  In the last bare field before town, a large flock of wild turkeys worked the furrowed rows, gobbling up weeds and spilled oats left from the harvester.  At the local bakery, there was a welcoming smile, a warm old-fashioned doughnut, and good dark roast coffee, and the world somehow felt balanced. 

When I returned home, we went about a few final outdoor chores. I planted a few tulips and daffodils to brighten the spring landscape, thinking how the plump bulbs store such life and color, and then we moved the dog fence, expanding the area the dogs have to run in.  Clothed in heavy jackets and work gloves, we pulled stock fence from one post to another, fastened it to the posts and moved on to the next.  The neighborhood coyotes and the nearby shrieking of lynx for the past few nights, coupled with the penchant that German shorthairs have for running, make a fence imperative.  We built up a sweat, even though the temperature never topped forty degrees.  The dogs were happy with the new space and Kris and Monty ran bigger and bigger circles around each other, coming together to growl and tussle, then dashing away. 

When we came in, a rush of warmth and the smell of pot roast in the crock pot greeted us. Apple pie bakes in the oven, and the dogs snore softly, paws twitching with dreams, in their chairs.  Dusk falls earlier, and soon we will pull the blinds, draw the insulated curtains closed, and settle in for evening. 
 This will be our tenth winter here in the north and in spite of the cold and the short days, I look forward to it every bit as much as the first, and maybe a bit more.  This year, the freezers are full with the food we grew or bought from neighbors, and the pantry is laden with jars of jams and jellies, pickles and preserves. 

Kasey and family are coming to share supper, so the house will fill with the laughter and chatter of boys, and when they depart, it will be time to gather the dogs and head to bed. 

I wish such peace and security to all in the world, and am sorrowed that wishing will not make it true, but I find solace in this Irish blessing and send it to all:

Wishing you always...
Walls for the wind,
A roof for the rain
And tea beside the fire.
Laughter to cheer you,
Those you love near you,
And all that your heart may desire.