Working Waterfront

The public dock at Owls Head is real working waterfront - no ice cream, gift shops or craft beer to be seen. Lobster traps pile high, bait buckets stink, a rat noses around the scattered ropes. A few tourists venture down the hill to the dock, but they tend to stay in the car. The place looks rough, unwelcoming. Most people like their reality a little more quaint, Boothbay perhaps. You can't bring anything home from Owls Head except challenges to your own way of life. Easier to buy a plastic lobster hat.

It's a difficult way of life, and not getting any easier. There are consolations, I hope and imagine, and I'm trying very hard to understand them and learn their lessons: the rhythm of a simpler life, the bracing beauty of sea and sky, the independence (mostly), a family-centered life. I read The Working Waterfront http://www.workingwaterfront.com/ and get a poke or two not only in my imagination but in my complacency. The sedentary among us need it.

Yet past the barrels and the styrofoam cups at the end of the dock lie the boats at anchor, the islands at rest, the gulls at play. I could be in any one of several of the past centuries. This is very comforting, in spite of or maybe even because of the 21st century at my back. I'm part of something bigger and only God knows what it is or where it's going.

18,500

...was the total number of lobsters served at the Lobster Festival in Rockland last week. VillageSoup is the source of this information, not personal presence, as we haven't attended the Festival in years. It was fun when the kids were young - the garish midway, the fried dough, the rides, the local arts and crafts booths - but when we found after some years that an hour there exhausted the possibilities, we knew it was time to quit. It's also slightly embarrassing to claim such mania for Maine and then, upon receipt of the usual comment about lobster, to have to admit no particular love for eating the bug.

Apparently, it's not a good year for lobstering, which makes me feel doubly bad about our indifference. The cost of fuel and bait is obviously a problem; worse, demand seems to be off. Lobster is considered a luxury item, the theory goes, and isn't ordered in bad times. So prices are lower than last year. It's going to be a dark winter for many Mainers. Let's hope for their sakes that the tourists keep coming.

Dinner Party

It was slightly worrisome, having to host a dinner starting just a couple of hours after returning from a month away. It wasn't the food; except for grilling the meat, Cindy had prepared most of the meal beforehand. It wasn't performance anxiety; this was summer casual, with friends. It was words. Would my mouth work properly? Could I still understand English? For most of 4 weeks, I had averaged 27 words out loud a day, most of them "Let's go," to the dog.

There were lots of other kinds of words last month: printed (novels, crosswords); air waves (Law and Order, GOOOOOOOOAL!); manufactured (Scrabulous, my own essays); telephony (the nightly call from home). But aside from neighborly greetings and canine exhortations, nothing.

Bravely, I did tongue exercises and practiced talking to drivers on I-95. To be presentable, I wiped the moose drool from my shoes. The guests came, and I think it went OK, that is, nobody laughed and they seemed to respond appropriately when I said something. The young people did talk awfully fast and I seemed to be extra tired at the end of the evening and almost of all yesterday was spent recovering, nose-in-book, but generally I think the ME to MA transition was linguistically successful. By the time the week here is up, I may be able to string as many as seven or eight words together at once, just in time to go back to talking to the dog.

The month of July

I've spent a whole month here, returning today to Massachusetts, and if anything my love of the place has deepened. It's partly the rhythm of a simpler life (not to mention a nearly complete lack of conventional responsibilities!), but also I leave knowing I'll be back soon, and often. Vacations from work are exciting because there's a tinge of desperation in every hike or cathedral or grand hotel; you try your hardest to enjoy every minute. Retirement from work stretches time out. The affairs of the world don't intrude so much, or you can deal with them with more equanimity. Ten days back home may change my mind, but I don't think so. The dog will think differently.

I've had the full array of July flowers, the famous July fogs, three weeks of raspberries, the heat of high summer, and wonder of wonders, there's August still to come. I don't have to obsess about maximizing deck time, waiting for osprey to help purge tension; the hunters will be there when I return, and the tension is mostly gone. I don't have to bemoan the fog that eats up half a week; nobody's keeping track of those weeks anymore. I can still get mad at jets taking off too close and dogs that yip all day in the rental cottage next door, but that's because they're unnatural, reminders of the way life shouldn't necessarily be.