Nothing fried

Nothing pleases me and my cholesterol level more than fried clams, so when we decided to go out to eat the other night, it took a great lack of self-interest to agree to go to Miller's. I recited the menu more than once to the party attending, and they were perfectly fine with the lobster dinners and the crab rolls served with chips. "There's nothing fried, you realize," I mentioned casually at the end of the recitation. "It sounds good," said my helpmeet, echoed by her mother and my daughter in a chorus of healthfulness. Upon arriving, they proceeded to order lobster rolls and a lobster dinner, loaded with mayo and butter, complete with the above-mentioned Lay's, and when one package of chips inexplicably was missing from the order, they made sure its replacement was received before the end of the meal. I had steamers, and spurned the dipping butter.
It's only been two days out of state, and already I can't help but write about one of the perfect experiences of a Maine August. As if to sit at a picnic table on a wharf, looking at the boats bobbing in the cove, the sun going down from a cloudless sky wasn't great enough, the owner came by and pointed out the osprey nest on the island across the water, and mentioned the bald eagle pair living down the shore. The steamers were even sweeter than the lobster.

Who needs Revere, or Old Orchard?

If you have to spend the last day of August not in Maine, then the simplest of images will get you through.

Unreality

On a day when I go back to Massachusetts for a while, I think of our little bit of heaven. It's cloudy and cool and will rain later, a kind of prep for re-entry into the "real" world. We're always trying to understand what's real and what's not. We saw this painter on Beech Hill; she was standing on the porch of a house restored from a lost age, on a property preserved from modern development, in a setting of unworldly beauty, trying to capture something. What did she see as real? A column of the house's porch, a lone tree, the Camden Hills and the ocean to the north....in paint, on canvas. The photo seems to capture the several layers of this dilemma, through a glass darkly, you might say. She was trying to understand it for herself, and for others to lift out of themselves for a moment, to experience another world, then go back down the hill or out of state and try to think how this changes your life.

We made kind of a joke picture that same day, although it's really more of a tribute to Wyeth than a satire on his fame. The very best art takes you to another world but doesn't take you out of yours. "Christina's World" looks at the harsh beauty of Maine straight on and shows what's real, even though the Olsen House doesn't really look like the property Wyeth painted and he used his wife as the model - doesn't matter. The important thing is the capture of an image no matter how fleeting or permanent.

Beech Nut house

When we first came to the midcoast and would take the girls to Chickawaukee Lake for a swim, we saw what looked like an abandoned house on the top of a bare hill a few miles to the north. It was immediately dubbed the "California house" as if that state doesn't have a tree to its name. Over the years we made one or two half-hearted attempts to find a road or a trail to the house and at last, just a couple of years ago, stumbled on the Beech Hill Preserve on one of our many drives through the lovely Camden Hills. California had been discovered.

Thanks to the Coastal Mountains Land Trust, nearly 300 acres of blueberry barrens (organically farmed), open fields, and woods are preserved, topped by a house and a view that defy description. Suffice it to say that the house has been beautifully restored since we first saw it, and the blueberries are delicious, and the vista incomparable.

http://www.coastalmountains.org/conserved_lands/preserves/beech_hill.html

The Camden Hills don't quite have the cachet and the spectacle of, say, Marin County. Last I looked we don't have any sea lions, 10-foot surf, or redwoods. The drama is reduced a notch or two, Camden is a pale imitation of Tiverton and Mill Valley (thank God), and the word lifestyle was not invented here. California is a great place to visit; midcoast Maine is a great place to live.

First day of school

This bell at Vesper Hill reminds me that most of Maine's kids went back to the classroom today, on one of the most spectacular days of the summer, unfortunately for them. No matter how much someone might actually like school, even the blindest of bookworms would miss the warm sun and bright skies and tranquil waters of a day like today.

I wonder if one ever shakes the approach of September as a time of change. No question that the end of summer, short as it is in New England, would be enough to rue, without the prospect of more walls than trees, more work than vacation, more cold than warm staring us in the face. September and October can be the most beautiful months of all, we tell ourselves, but the statement is not necessarily heart-felt. And in typical New England fashion, I'm not sure if it's regret or dread that drives us - regret that another summer is in the books, dread of another winter on lay-away.

For me it was usually the former, since summer represented a hint of that thing that's hardest to attain - living in the moment. There's nothing wrong with worries and responsibilities; unfortunately, they like to control us and the classroom and office are the most obvious symbols of the predicament. The kid that has to go in the space of a day from the responsibilities of center field in the gloaming evening, to the worries of algebra and peer pressure under fluorescent lights, may not be the better for it. The bell does not ring for his education but for his indoctrination. September is not so beautiful if your life is cramped.