A Return From Hiatus

Monhegan Island - Harbor and Village

I have not posted anything here since mid April.  It had been a long, cold and wet winter and spring arrived later than usual.  The cherry blossoms came and went, yet the feel of spring was never in the air.  We had a few days of more seasonable weather, but then it turned cool again, as if spring was never quite sure of itself. There was even some light snow around DC in early April.  

The Washington Nationals, our local Boys of Summer, returned with a new season of baseball only to quickly drop into the divisional cellar.  There was early hope their bats would warm with the arrival of some seasonal spring weather, but they never emerged from those nether rankings, always seeming to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  They certainly looked nothing like the 2019 World Series champions.   Bad went to worse, and they ended the season with a miserable record of 55-107 and 46 games out of first place and 16 games behind the next worst team . . . the worst record in all of Major League Baseball.   There was certainly no reason to head off to Nationals Park to witness such an atrocity.  

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, we had not undertaken our regular escape to the lake cottage in New Gloucester, Maine which had been our summer holiday destination since 1988, and where we have spent June-October since my retirement in March 2010.  Given the restrictions on travel and mandatory quarantines when entering the state, and with bans on travel to many of our local haunts, we chose not to travel during the summer of 2020.   We did plan to return in 2021, and again this past summer, but due to circumstances beyond our control, our access to our little piece of heaven on Sabbathday Lake was taken from us.  We remain heartbroken given our 32-year association with the lake cottage, but we are attempting to move on. 

This year brought with it opportunities to travel more than we have since the beginning of the pandemic.  In early June we traveled to Columbus, Ohio where I had the first opportunity in two years to visit with my 97 year old mother and my only sister (who turned 65 while we were there) and her family, including my four year old great-nephew. We had a COVID scare on our way home, but it turned out to be nothing and to date we have not been impacted by the pandemic as we remain fully vaccinated and boosted.

We headed to Maine in early August, spending a couple of nights in Newport, Rhode Island with dear lifetime friends and their two delightful children which we look upon as our ersatz grandkids.  It was the first visit to the area for both of us and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.  Then it was on to Maine and a return to Monhegan Island which we have been visiting annually since 1999.  We have now decided that it will be our default summer Maine address from here on out.

There is something magical about this small one square mile island situated a dozen miles off Mid-Coast Maine.  Captain John Smith was the first European to land on the island in 1614 although there is some evidence Viking explorers were there long before that.  We have enjoyed being a part of this island community each summer and reveling in its rich history and it place in the evolution of American art over the past century.  It is a place where we can take each day as it comes and we have found it an ideal place to relax, to write and paint while enjoying the fresh sea breezes off the Gulf of Maine and some stunning sunsets.

Returning to the mainland several days later we traveled to the far northern reaches of New Hampshire which we had also not visited for three years.  It was nice to see some old friends and to explore the Great North Wood, just a little piece of heaven on earth.  I have been regularly traveling there for years having stumbled upon this area quite by accident.  I don’t know what I expected to find, but what I discovered was a country of beautiful landscapes and friendly people.  It is a nearly pristine wilderness with far more trees, streams and lakes than people, and I have come to think of it as my “panic hole,” as Jim Harrison might have called it - a place where I can go to escape the stress and anxieties associated with my everyday existence.  It is a place of solitude, of peace and quiet.  The locals call it “God’s Country” and after spending a great deal of time there I have come to agree with them.  Twelve years ago, on one such winter trip to the area, I trekked into the snowy back country above the Connecticut Lakes to consider retirement after a 32 year career with the Department of Justice, in Washington, DC.  What would the rest of my life hold for me?  The mind cleansed itself with each inhalation of the crisp, cold mountain air.  When asked why he liked the Middle Eastern deserts, T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) supposedly replied: “Because it’s clean.”  The same can be said for the Great North Woods of New Hampshire in any season.  Trek into the woods and you will not find anything so pristine . . . so quiet . . . so clean. 

Our next stop was Knowlton [Lac-Brome], in Québec’s Eastern Townships.  It is the home of Brome Lake Books, made famous as the exemplar for the small bookstore in Three Pines, the fictional Townships village in the crime novels by Louise Penney.  It has become a mecca for Ms. Penny’s many devotees and fans, and she currently resides nearby.  Then it 

was on to Frelighsburg situated on the banks of the meandering Rivière Aux Brochets in the rolling orchard and vineyard country less than three miles above the US border and Vermont.  The village has long been one of my favorite spots in the Eastern Townships which I visit as often as I can.  Even though it is not among the locales frequently cited as a

possible model for the fictional Three Pines, I have always pictured Frelighsburg in my mind’s eye when envisioning the layout of and the action taking place there in the novels.  And there are three pines standing in front of the village hall.  We enjoyed a relaxing lunch on a river-side terrace.  

We returned to Maine for a few days to visit friends and to take care of some local business while returning to some of our favorite haunts from so many past summers.  Our return was met with some trepidation given the feeling that we had been cast out of Eden for no reason under our control.  Still, it was good to be back although I could not bring myself to visit the lake that had been a place of so many pleasant dreams.  Just as in years past, it was difficult to leave but we did so in the knowledge that we will be returning to coastal Maine and Monhegan Island again next summer.

A few short weeks later we found ourselves returning to Ohio for another family visit.  After a week there we continued to southwestern Michigan where my parents both grew up and where many of my kinfolk continue to live.  Growing up, my family’s frequent visits to my grandparent’s small farmstead provided an opportunity to become familiar with an environment and lifestyle much different from the one I knew in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and the other cities and towns from my youth.  Edward Abbey, pondering his adopted home in the Arizona desert, once remarked that "every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary."  Like Abbey's desert solitaire, I still carry in my heart and mind those childhood images of the rural landscape of southwestern Michigan. Though I have continued to live in an urban environment, I still think fondly of the Michigan farmstead of my youth. "This Midwest. A

Me and my buddy Knight circa 1955

dissonance of parts and people, we are a consonance of towns," writes William Gass in Heart of the Heart of the Country.  "Our outlook never really urban, never rural either, we enlarge and linger at the same time, as Alice both changed and remained in her story."   Today my escapes to the countryside are an attempt to grasp these fleeting images.  Perhaps someday I will find them and hold them tightly until those bright city lights, that abiding hum, fades away. And I will linger there forever.  

Returning to the old farmstead I was saddened to see how much it had fallen into disrepair over the years.  The barn has collapsed, and trees are emerging from its skeletal remains.  Gone, too, is the small one room schoolhouse where I began my formal education when I went to live with my grandparents while my folks were traveling on business.  This recent visit was also a chance to visit the family graves and to remember 

all of those who had gone before.  We also had lunch with several of my cousins who have remained in the area; some of them I had not seen for many years.  My mom’s two surviving siblings also joined us.  I find the older I get the more important it has become to stay in touch with what family I still have.  This is not always easy to do, but I take a certain degree of comfort in doing what I can to keep the channels open.  

The Michigan visit was also an opportunity to spend some time along the Lake Michigan shoreline.  The Great Lakes very much figured into my younger days, and it was nice to see one of them again.  My wife searched for sea glass at several spots, and I enjoyed the view across lake’s broad expanse to 

Lake Michigan at South Haven

the horizon while dreaming of local seafood.  One evening we had dinner at Clementine’s, in South Haven, where I was treated to a “mess of perch” and recollections of the many Friday evening fish fries I attended when I was young and still had my feet firmly planted in America’s upper Midwest.  

Of course, no visit to the area would be complete without a visit to St. Julian’s winery and distillery in Paw Paw which recently celebrated its centennial, and which has had a close connection with my family, several of whom have worked there over the years.  Paw Paw, between Kalamazoo and Lake Michigan, is the center of a well-established, but less well-known wine producing area.  There are two family-owned wineries in town where grapes and fruit grown in vineyards and orchards throughout the surrounding countryside are transformed into wines and sherries which are then distributed throughout the Midwest.  When President Gerald Ford, from nearby Grand Rapids, moved into the White House in the summer of 1974, he brought with him some local Michigan wines.  I tasted several and eventually returned home with a case of selected wines.   

There was a moment of nostalgia on the return home.  Passing through Toledo, Ohio we took a short detour to Garrison Road in the DeVeaux neighborhood on the city’s northwest side.  My family lived there for a time in 1958-1959 when my dad was working on a project for the Otis Elevator Company.  Although in the years since I have passed through Toledo on occasion on my way to someplace else, I had never been back to the old neighborhood.  It was surprising now unchanged it was, looking very much like I remembered it.  

Our block of Garrison Road is still a quiet, tree-lined residential street.  The backyard of our old house now has an in-ground swimming pool where I used to practice skating on a makeshift ice rink.  The creek at the end of the street where we used to ice skate has been routed underground and the original Elmhurst Elementary a couple blocks away has been replaced by a newer and larger building.  Although we did not live there very long, I still have very strong memories.   It was along our block of Garrison Road where I first learned to ride my bike without training wheels, and it was there the neighborhood kids were introduced to the new Hula Hoop craze.  

We returned to Maine for a week in October to take care of some unfinished business and to visits some spots we had missed in August.  Once again, we stopped over in Newport Rhode Island on our way north.  The autumn weather was absolutely gorgeous to match the fabulous fall foliage.  We spent most of our time along the coast watching the waves 

Monhegan Island in the distance

break along the shoreline and enjoying the local seafood.  We spent a day at the Farnesworth Art Museum to enjoy the current Wyeth exhibits.  I always enjoy revisiting many favorites paintings while being introduced to others I had never seen before.  One gallery included Andrew Wyeth’s studies and completed early egg tempera paintings dating from the 1930s, while another gallery focused on a selection of his various island paintings across the years, including “Good-Bye,” his very last painting completed in 2008.  We visited friends, enjoyed the local seafood, and I had perhaps one of the best ribeye steaks ever placed before me.  The trip was far too brief, but we always enjoy any time we get to spend in Maine, and we look forward to our return next summer.  It can’t come soon enough.

When we were not traveling, I was focusing as much attention as I could revising the text of my first novel.   I have been pleased with the outcome although it has been taking me longer than I had intended.  So, staying up-to-date with my planned blog entries has paid the price.  There are just so many hours in a day.  

I hope I am back on track.  Finger crossed.