Author: Joy Clough

Roping in readers

Joy Clough2 Comments

Woah…hard to believe it’s been two whole years since I gave birth! Not to a baby—at least not the kind that squeals and squirms and grows up to need braces, a room in the house you avoid at all costs, and a college fund. Two years ago today, I began this blog.

In looking back over how my little creation went from wet behind the ears to toddling around getting into trouble, I figured I’d acknowledge its 4,000-plus viewers-to-date by sharing some of my favorite ways it’s been visited this year.

Unlikely links to An Unbroken Bond: Proof of my premise that much of what’s good and true in my life is somehow, someway rooted in Rangeley, I’m honored to report that the largest percentage of searchers landing on my blog were looking for my friend, Edie Lutnick’s book, An Unbroken Bond. So how does a blog rambling about life in the woods by a big, quiet lake end up promoting an award-winning biography about an event that rocked the world from our nation’s core? Just how does an author like myself—who marks the seasons turning with passages like “Out Like a Lamb-eating Yeti”—help another author reveal what it was really like surviving the aftermath of 9/11, what it really means to never forget 10 years later? Very serendipitously. That’s the short answer. For the long answer, see my tenth anniversary tribute. Then please click on the book graphic (to the right of this post) to read Edie’s story, share it, and join the bond that winds its way from the mountains of Maine back to the heart of Manhattan and beyond.

Taking my serious cap back off, I will now pay tribute to my random blog viewers. By random, I mean these folks are not my regular acquaintances, or those who log on because I wrote the URL on a cocktail napkin they stuffed in their purse, or even those who get curious because they heard about the “Rangeley blog lady” from a friend of a friend. I’m paying tribute here to those Googlers who most likely were looking for something entirely different when they happened upon my back woods website.

So here’s to the best of this year’s Rooted In Rangeley search terms and the wayward surfers who found their way to my corner of the lake:

Rooted where? My search engine database is still logging plenty of “rootedinrangeley” attempts and a wide variety of spelling variations on my name and my location. Turns out, I am “routed” here and, some would say “rotted,” but usually just “joy’s blog in Rangeley.” Once I was even found at “My Fork in the Road, Maine.” (On occasion, I do confess to Googling my own self, just because I can. My blog publisher claims it doesn’t add to my reader tally, but it’s still fun to play cyber boomerang with myself now and then.)

Trip advisor (not!): Some people seem to have stumbled across me in their eagerness to discover all there is in to do in here in God’s country, and then some. They might come up in person, but only if they can figure out when the “worst mosquito months in Rangeley” are, what time it actually gets dark here, when will the lake freeze over, will the “Purple Onion” still be serving and, especially, will the transfer station (aka dump) stay open despite everything.

Quirky seasonal celebrations: I’m not the least bit surprised that this search term found me. Even when Santa has to rely on his hazard lights to land at the Wilhelm Reich Museum for his annual breakfast with the local kiddies, and the Easter bunny can barely hop down our muddy trails, Rangeley is a popular holiday destination. One potential visitor, however, seemed bent on “making myself into Santa” and becoming “Santa’s special helper” up here. He’d have to read and distill all my blogs to get the right answer: Move here year-round. Don’t shave or cut your hair from hunting season till ice out. Join the guide’s and sportsman’s club so you can fill out your flannel at their legendary potluck suppers. And keep your cheeks red and yourself jolly with regular summit-to-pub runs up on Saddleback. Oh and, to whoever read Quirky Turkey and A Moving Feast and wanted to know the “best kind of wine to serve with a seafood stuffed turducken,” the right answer is homemade apple—made from whatever Tom could put through the press before the deer nibbled ’em off the trees.

Woodsy Wikipedia: The 2012 award in this category goes to whoever was trying to locate the “tallest tree in Rangeley.” Can’t imagine what sort of research she’s doing, but I think she should ask CMP, M & H Logging, the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, and the local float plane pilots. They’ll tell her the exact coordinates, how close it is to a power line, how much cord wood it would yield if it doesn’t survive the next wind storm, if an eagle calls it home, and how much it would cost to buzz over it.

Haphazard how-to advice: Since I offer cooking tips one week, then blab about my fashion blunders and my novel approach to home decorating the next, it only makes sense that I could attract folks wondering about “how to decorate my old snowshoes” along with those looking for “Tomlette recipes” (evidence there is another Tom out there making signature omelets or, at least, someone who wants to learn from him). I don’t know if, given the chance, I’d invite them off my virtual doorstep and in for coffee, except maybe those sisters still searching for “bathing suits that support real outdoor women.”

Top prize for 2012 search terms in this category is a toss up. I can’t for the life of me decide if the winning query should be “how to get squirrels in my wall to stop making flapping noises” or what to do when a “dead mouse in the wall smells like PMS.” Even though those researchers were misdirected to my take on The Other PMS (Persistent Male Snoring) and Creatures Stirring, I think they need to look way beyond the Web for the help they really need.

Boom chicka wah….what?: Whoever Googled “hot chicks in Rangeley” probably wasn’t looking for a blog featuring me in my fishing hat riding around in the canoe with a couple beagles, but I guess it depends on his definition of hot. And I’m pretty sure the mystery surfer who typed in “tales of Indian wives getting rooted by somebody besides their husbands” was not curious about my descriptions of life (alone with Tom) in the pucker brush. While I do hope to one day be accepted as a “native” around here, I will continue to keep myself “rooted” in a different context!

Seriously, thanks to my readers—those from away who wish they were here and those from here who aren’t scared off…yet. And thanks to my real kids who haven’t stopped speaking to me…yet. If not for all of you, I wouldn’t be Rooted In Rangeley, but trapped in the meandering tumbleweed of my own twisted mind.

Beyond the Facebook wall

Joy Clough1 Comment

Sleep walking through my morning Facebook check, I noticed one of us had left the radio on somewhere. And, even though most days I find music distracting when I’m at my desk, I started singing along: “What if God were one of us…..”

Just my usual before work, writing-for-pay Facebook peek, I told myself. I’d be “in and out” in a few points and clicks and on to the productive part of my day. Then, mid-screen, something caught my eye and held it longer than any of the TGIF-type postings I was scrolling past in speed-read mode. A friend, so new her profile picture was still set on the generic girl icon,wrote: “Traveling first class now! LOL :-) ” Still humming along about God sitting next to me on a bus, I had my usual reaction to ”wish you were here” updates like that:  jealousy-tinged curiosity. “Who was this? And why did she need to tell me she was somewhere more exciting?” I’d have to find out, of course, before going about my business. That’s when her username hit me and stopped me cold. “Mum” it said, short and sweet, in  hot-link blue.

I slumped back in my computer chair, then sat at attention. “Mum is on Facebook?!” I whispered to myself. “I don’t even remember seeing her friend request! And who could she possibly be traveling first class with? Not my dad. They always went coach or standby.” I leaned in closer to click her link for answers and, hopefully, a recent picture or two. Then I woke up.

“Woah,” I thought, staring up at the knotty pine above my bed and listening to the lake come alive. “I haven’t had a Mum dream in a long time.” At first, when I desperately wanted them, any dreams of her would be fleeting and bittersweet, leaving me feeling alone all over again. She’d be far away, out of focus, and I’d be running to catch up with her, tell her I loved her and say goodbye. I’d wake up still a lost teenage girl, mad at a God who’d taken my mother, my best friend, when I was just venturing out in the world. Eventually, as I learned to lose my anger and heal my grief, I slowly opened up to the possibility she was never really very far away. By the time I was 40, we were back to having mother-daughter chats and happier middle of the night visits. When she did check in with me, it was a fun, laid back “whassup?” sort of encounter.

“Hey there, just popped over to say bon voyage!” she chirped. She’d stopped by the condo I was about to rent in the Caribbean and was sitting on the lanai, perpetually tanned and relaxed.

“Mum, you’re here?” I asked. “How did you get to Bonaire before me? I’m not even there yet!”

“Well,” she said, squint-smiling out at the turquoise water. “When you can go anywhere you want anytime you want, you’ll be right here, too.”

Not long after that dream (and a dream vacation in Bonaire), Mum and I had another impromptu discussion about the logistics of our new relationship. “I’m so glad you still come to see me once in awhile now that I live up in Rangeley,” I told her. “Looks like having me three and a half hours farther north doesn’t make much difference between us. But I still really want to know about Heaven. What’s it like? Where exactly is it?” She didn’t answer in words, but sent me spiraling away, up out of the dream and back into my bed. And just before she laid me down surrounded by knotty pine and balsam breezes, she whisked me out over the lake and through the white birches, stopping to hover at the glider rocker where I sat most mornings having coffee and giving thanks for my new life.

“So not only does she have coffee and sit in the sun with me,” I marveled after the latest visit just before Mother’s Day, “she’s joined my social network! She’s on Facebook!” I hugged myself and stared up at the knotty pine for a long time, not wanting to come fully down to earth yet. When I finally did get up and about, the wispy veil between me and my dreams didn’t recede, but kept everything cast in a hazy realm of possibility. “Wouldn’t that be a cool?” I murmured. “That would add a whole new dimension to my networking.” I’d have Facebook “acquaintances” (those folks I sort of remember from around town and way back in high school); friends; close friends and family (who Facebook thinks you want to stay in step with every waking minute) and now, my family beyond. That new outer sphere in my online circle would hold a big chunk of family−assuming they all gained computer wisdom in the next life.

“I like an off-color joke, you know, but the ones that Jack and Gerie Spencer are sending…well, dear, they show pictures of orgies!” my step-mom, Prudy, exclaimed. It was back during dial-up days and I was helping her clean out her in-box after another long stay at Maine Medical. When I explained as best I could about email viruses−that Jack and Gerry didn’t really intend to send her orgy pictures−she heaved a big sigh. Living in Kezar Falls, she was tickled to keep up with her far away friends on a desktop my step-brother, John, hobbled together out of parts. But she was going to have to be less gregarious with her daily prayer, recipe and “Hallmark moment” subscriptions, I told her. She just didn’t have the bandwidth or storage capacity on her email server. “I understand, dear,” she said. “John told me those nice pictures would draw very slowly…something about all that ink coming down the phone line.”

Her password was “baldgranny” and we were blessed that she remembered it in between chemo rounds so she could log on and tell us how terrific it was to stay connected out in the pucker brush. Prudy did cross the bridge toward computer literacy, but never made it to broadband or past “clunking” with her mouse on a low-res screen. She’d be all over Facebook, though. And I’m pretty sure we’d have to convince Mark Zuckerberg to add a “Wonderful” button next to the “Like” one ’cause Prudy would want to clunk that like crazy!

What a new age that would be, I thought, if all of us could reconnect. Then, not only would I be allowed to chat with my daughters and many of their friends (having earned my status as one of the non-creepy online moms). I’d have a really special Internet Service Provider hooking me up to my moms and others beyond the wall. “Yup, I’m up to 209 regular Facebook friends,” I’d brag. “Plus, last I looked, about 12 spirit Facebook friends!”

Dad, I’m sure, would be sharing his biggest fish pictures ever. By now, he’d have blown way past his  dog-eared Maine Atlas and even Google Earth in his quest for mapping all his “secret” spots. I’m also pretty sure my father-in-law, Lee, would be a lifetime-plus subscriber to ancestry.com, posting links to Clough databases far beyond his off-line ’80s research. Peering over his shoulder, a comfortable distance from actually having to touch a keyboard, my mother-in-law, Ruth, would be happy to see “all those pictures you can’t take with regular film anymore.” And Mum, well she’d have graduated from Internet for Dummies with honors. With speed and grace honed from years of sharing everything she ate, said and did with her folks in Chicago by way of an Underwood typewriter, she would be a “real whiz” by now. No corny joke, cutesy quote, or “you gotta see this” clip that made its way on her wall would go unshared with me, my sister, Jan, and half of Heaven and earth!

“Then I really wouldn’t get any work done,” I concluded, slowly returning to my usual, semi-rational state. Between waiting to see if Helen and Becky’s chat buttons flashed green, keeping up with Jan “poke, poke, poking” me every few seconds, and posting my own riveting Rooted In Rangeley updates, I’d be glued to Facebook. Just like the social media critics warn, I’d be “forever stuck in high school” with my virtual friends−stuck, right where my Mum and I left off, swapping silly girl talk filled with smiley faces and hearts, and a few YouTube shots of her dancing in the kitchen.

For the first time this year, I posted a Facebook picture of Mum on Mother’s Day. I wished I could have found one of her out on the lake wearing her huge straw hat from Zayre’s department store. (The one I remember had a gaudy orange scarf attached to it so it wouldn’t blow off, and Jan and I swore if she ever wore it anywhere near shore we would act like we didn’t know her.) Instead, I had to settle for scanning in the last good Polaroid of her. The image was pixelated, grainy, but her trademark grin had never faded as it smiled back from my timeline.

It was only up on my wall for a couple seconds before Jan commented: “Miss you, Mum. XO Talk soon!″

(Author’s Note: I post this today for my Mum, my forever best friend, who died suddenly on July 25th, 1974. She’s found some very special ways to come back to me since. To read more about it, see my Come and Meet Those Dancing Feet stories.)

Procrastin-ista

Joy Clough1 Comment

You know the commercial. The girl’s never teetered off the pavement in her outrageously silly shoes. She’s wearing some sort of paisley scarf, a tweed skirt and a blouse more ruffled than a partridge on the prowl. Only the blouse is pink, and the necklace she’s draped it with looks like she didn’t bring enough money to a rummage sale. But she does have money—not enough to shop the high-end stores—but enough to go to TJ Maxx more than I brush my hair. At least that’s what she says when she stops mid-strut and smirks into the camera:

“I used to be a fashionista. Now I’m a Maxxinista!”

“Well whoopie for you, chickie,” I tell her from my TV chair, defiantly crossing my fleece-draped arms over my ancient jammie t-shirt. “I was a Maxxinista before you were born!”

Hard to believe to see me now, with my daily “look” featuring must-have items I pluck off a deer antler hook in the pantry. But I used to go shopping, as in actually going shopping. I’d drive to TJ Maxx, paw through the clothing racks, and drive home with whatever outfits survived me squinting at myself in the dressing room house-of-horrors mirror. Yup, I was a well-dressed up-and-coming working woman once, and I had the shoulder-padded tops and pleated pants to prove it. But that was back when I ran my own marketing communications business, and sometimes I had to match a skirt, blouse and blazer so I looked like I belonged in a boardroom instead of back home working in my basement office in my fuzzy pants. As it turned out, though, the classiness of my business attire was inversely related to my career success. The more skilled I got, the less my wardrobe looked like I drew a decent paycheck. By the time I’d made a name for myself in high-tech, I never got dressier than Dockers unless I wanted to start a rumor that I had a job interview somewhere else during my lunch hour.

Now that I’ve left my office job and moved up to Rangeley, I’ve got the no-nonsense, all-weather, mountain-to-shore wear to prove it. Gone are the blazers and most of the Dockers, and any footwear that can’t function as either slipper-shoes or boot-sneakers. All terrain Tevas are OK, too, as long as they’re loose enough to strap over wool socks. I stay in my computer chair for shopping sprees, pointing and clicking, and hoping for free shipping and a lifetime return policy. Yup, I used to be a Maxxinista. Now I’m a “remote” working-at-home-in-the-woods technical writer who works almost as hard to figure out just the right Rangeley outfit for any given moment. So far, I’ve been a couple weather patterns and a couple layers short of hitting it right.

As I said back in Fashionably Late, we don’t actually have summer, fall, winter and spring in Rangeley. We have summer (for about two weeks in August), almost winter, winter, and not-quite summer yet. Being weather-ready means having a huge row of deer antler hooks draped with all manner of L.L. Bean basics close at hand. It also makes putting anything under the bed or up in the attic because it’s off-season seem pretty silly. And you can bet I never bother to just “accessorize.” I don’t buy a plaid top just because one stripe matches a pair of mauve slacks waiting to be completed in my closet. All purchases must go with at least two other layers and, ideally, be water-repellent and wind-proof.

“Look at this cool top I’m buying,” I said to Tom. He gazed at the sporty little Spandex jacket on the Land’s End website and nodded his approval. “I’ll wear it over my bathing suit when I want an extra layer for snorkeling. It matches my suit perfectly! Plus it’s got some sort of sun shielding properties in the fabric.” Even so, long after I clicked “Buy,” I wondered whether I’d really get $50 worth of wear out of a bright aqua piece of beach wear called a “rash guard”.

“Hey, Mumma, do you think I’ll wear this?” Becky asked last month, “or will it just put me over the weight limit? I don’t want to pay a huge baggage fee for a yellow sweater that only goes with a few things.” Standing amid a sea of clothing, she was holding up a daffodil colored cardigan she’d plucked off one of her “maybe” piles. After spending a couple years living in the desert, a winter on the slopes in Colorado, and then a month rafting the Grand Canyon, she was packing to go teach in the Bahamas for a year. She was climatically confused, for sure, and coming to stay in Rangeley in May and June had messed her up even worse. “Maybe it’ll be good for layering if it gets cool at night,” she concluded, and stuffed it in the side of one of her honkin’ duffel bags.

“Hmmm, maybe,” I said halfheartedly. I was in her room to offer moral support and, hopefully, a bit of motherly advice. But what did I know? I was confused and more than a little off kilter myself. Stretched out on the bed, I was gazing listlessly at the tan still showing on the half-inch of skin between my sock ridges and the cuffs of my fuzzy pants. And I was pretty sure there was still some sun-kissed skin on my forearms where the sleeves of my little aqua Spandex jacket had left them bare and warm, even though I’d been too bummed to look for a month. You betcha, I’d worn the thing—not in Rangeley yet…maybe not ever in Rangeley—but on the balmy island of Bonaire. A month ago, it matched the Caribbean blue sea perfectly and had been my must-have layer for snorkeling and then sitting for hours sinking my sockless feet in the sand. “Yeah, layering is good, Becky,” I sighed, envying her upcoming destination but not her current location in cold, damp Mooselook surrounded by four seasons of gear busting out of giant Tupperware totes.

Ah, this was the year I was going to return to Rangeley with spring in full swing. None of that still winter, not-quite spring crap. This was the year I’d keep my island clothes close by instead of waiting to haul them all out again sometime in August. After all, ice out had come wicked early and folks told me on Facebook that, the minute I went away, it was 80 degrees in Rangeley—”the same temperature” I thought required a long flight south. Strategizing on the plane ride home, I had a smug grin a lot like the girl in the TJ Maxx commercial. I was going to think positive, stay on top of my fashion game, and swap tank tops for sweaters the minute I got home because I’d need that summer stuff soon! And, for the first year in my adult life, I’d done just that. I had all my woollies stored and my light ‘n airy clothes handy. No procrastination. No digging through Tupperware. I was ready to enjoy quality time with Becky, to guide her in being practical yet fashionable, to get her in the tropical spirit.

‘Course all that “it’s so warm we’re drinking beers out on the deck here in April” was only a cruel joke. When I got home, summer was still way far around a cold, rainy corner. It  didn’t get here till after Becky left and had been gone long enough to wonder what ever possessed her to bring a daffodil colored cardigan to the Bahamas in June. And, when summer finally did come, it blinded me. Still in the sweatshirt and flannel-lined pants I’d hauled back down from the attic, I was sweeping trailings from having to get the wood stove cranking in June out the back door. Suddenly, the sun came blazing out from behind a cloud and stayed there, intensely hot! I spun around on my slipper-shoes and went to dig out my cute little Spandex jacket, knowing it would double as a windbreaker over my bathing suit when summer changed its mind again.

From Daddy’s little girl

Joy Clough3 Comments

(Author’s Note:  The following is from my writing archives (circa 1988). I post it in honor of my stashed-away memories—of my dad, of spending my best Father’s Days in Rangeley—and, especially, of Helen and Becky and their awesome fishing/adventure buddy, Tom.)

Dear Dad:

Mom said I should make you a special Father’s Day card ’cause I’m such a good drawer. Plus I’m the big sister and little Becky can’t really hold onto a crayon yet, never mind write big girl words. Mom used to let me just point at cards in the store and then she’d buy whichever one sounded pretty good, but she doesn’t let me do that since I won that Mother’s Day card contest at Hannaford. Now I gotta send my very best to everyone.

I did sneak a peak at the store cards, though—the ones Mom says tons of dads would be opening up all across America the same time as you. Know what? Mom was right. None of ’em were really for you, Dad. They all had pictures of golf clubs or cartoon puppies holding up hearts or just “Father” in gold, squiggly letters. I only found one that showed a guy on a pond early in the morning but there wasn’t one trout rising, so that wasn’t any good, either! After all, Father’s Day is for fishin’ with your dad, right? Why else would it be on a Sunday in June?

So I started drawing some fish to decorate your card, but they sort of looked like hot dog buns with wings. Then I got a better idea. Remember how Wheaties stopped putting pictures of basketball players—and that little Mary Lou something or other from the Olympics who was kind of like Minnie Mouse in a leotard—on their cereal boxes?Remember how they just left a white place on the front and everyone was supposed to draw in their own faces? Well, we have a box that Mom’s been trying to make me eat ever since I begged for it in the store. She says it’s the breakfast of champions. I asked her if a champion was somebody who liked old flaky stuff with no sugar on it. She said: “No, it’s someone who plays a sport better than anybody else. Now eat up or you’ll be late for school.” So Dad, I drew you in the face on the box, with your fishin’ hat and your pole, and that silly grin you get when you pull in a lunker. It came out real nice and I was gonna cut it out for you. But then Mom hollered ’cause I’d been sitting there in my pajamas drawing for a really long time, and she grabbed the box and stuffed it back in the cupboard. That’s O.K., though, ’cause we should finish the Wheaties before I cut the box open, and you’ll probably need some this weekend to give you big muscles for turning that huge crank on your boat trailer. I betcha Michael Jordan can’t pull a boat right up out of water like that!

Mom says I’m pretty lucky you take me fishin’ all the time cause lots of dads go off by themselves instead. Wouldn’t that be kinda boring though? You wouldn’t have anybody to talk to just floating around all day alone. And who’d share their cheese curls with you and get your beers out of the cooler and tell you knock-knock jokes?

Thanks, Dad, for being my fishin’ pal. You’re the nicest guy in the whole world. Someday I hope you buy me one of those vests with the tiny pockets all over it just like yours ’cause I bet I could fit about 20 hundred mini Snickers in there and I’d never hafta go in for supper. Maybe when I’m seven or eight, O.K.? Boy, when I was four, I didn’t even know how to get the line to come off the fishin’ pole out into the water without making a helluva mess, remember? Now look at me, I can do it so good that my hook goes to the very bottom, right down in the rocks and weeds, and stays there. Maybe next summer you’ll let me push all those neat buttons on your boat. Like on that beeping box in front of your seat you said helps us find fish, and that giant up and down humming reel off the back of the boat you’re always playing with to catch ’em once you find ’em. How do they work…sort of like magic? If I push the buttons, too, maybe we’ll really find some fish!

You show me lots of things when we’re out fishin’, like how important it is not to talk to people we’ve never seen before. It was a good thing you didn’t answer that man over at Quimby Pond when he asked you what you were catchin’ all your trout with. You acted like you didn’t even hear him, which was very smart ’cause he was a stranger.

I want you to have the best Father’s Day ever, Dad. Maybe we could take the canoe down the Salmon Falls River to that cove where I went swimming once by accident. It was all mucky and weedy and you said pickerel like that kinda stuff. Too bad Mom didn’t. Or maybe we’ll try Winnipesaukee. I like it there ’cause it’s fun to watch all those boats racing around. Mom calls ’em “fancy assed” because they’re way sparklier than our boat and must remind her of the time I dumped glitter all over the kitchen floor. Do you think Don Johnson is a bass fisherman? I’m pretty sure I saw him go by last time we were out. Boy, I bet his kid was having a blast!

No matter where we go, I don’t want you to sit and worry about work and whatever it is you do there. And I sure hope we can find a spot where there’s not too much wind, where the water’s not too warm or too cold, and where there’s lots and lots of fish biting all around our boat. That’s what I’m wishing for you on Father’s Day, Dad, ’cause you sure deserve it.

Your daughter,

Helen

Songs of warmer weather

Joy Clough1 Comment

South of here, the sounds of spring would call me out of my seasonal semi-stupor even if I  was still hunkered down and had barely cracked a window yet. I’d be driving somewhere in a fog or maybe stuck in my kitchen, hoping that first blast of fresh April air would blow some dust off me. Suddenly spring would reach in and knock me upside the head.

“Peeeeeep…..Peeeeeeep…..Peeeeeep!” Peepers! Their familiar falsetto was loud enough to jerk me awake—to make me look hard for daffodils and other boisterous signs of the season I’d probably missed—and mesmerizing enough to make me leave the window open till the heat had to kick back on.

Once they caught my attention, I’d be all ears for the peepers. Standing on my back deck in my fuzzy pants each evening, I strained to hear them bring every little pucker brush puddle back life. As the tundra thawed, the crescendo swelled until, by May, hundreds of teensy frogs—wound to a frenzy in the circle of life—surrounded me in one, long tumultuous chorus.

Peepers weren’t the only species to wake me from my hibernation. During one particularly belated spring, I didn’t even need to open the window to hear the rhythm of pent up instinct bursting forth outside.

“FWUMPPP….Fwapp, fwapp, fwapp, fwapp….flop.”

I lay in bed listening and wondering. An early morning illusion perhaps, a figment of a pre-dawn dream state? “FWUMPPP….Fwapp, fwapp, fwapp, fwapp….FLOP.”

The only other noise it resembled was the coffee maker. But, this was way before Mister Coffee came with a computer chip to automatically respond to my brewing habits and—unless wishful thinking had somehow started it perking—the thing wasn’t even on. I shuffled out toward the kitchen to be greeted by the roundest-breasted robin ever perched on the deck railing staring at my dining room window. He peered up at the glass so intently it was obvious he wasn’t just admiring my African violets on the other side of the sill. He’d cock his head from side to side, take a running leap and FWUMPPP… right into the window he’d go. Then he’d hover and peck, perch and fly…FWUMPPP and repeat. Over and over and over and over.

Our first explanation was that he had the worst case of jet lag in bird history and was disoriented and starving. Five days later, we were still waiting for Nature to help him get his groove back when we finally went out to observe his view from the deck on the other side of the window. “He sees another big robin sitting all fat and sassy in a tree in his territory and he’s fighting back,” Tom concluded. And judging from the appearance of the deck railing, this feisty fella was at least a pound of food a day away from starving. Two days later, he was still defending himself against his own reflection and driving us completely batty. “What is that bird’s problem?” I hollered for the 15th time in a row.

Way too much bird-and-bee kind of energy, I figured. I was grateful that my friends the peepers could keep their spring fever percolating out in the swamp where it belonged and didn’t use it to propel themselves headlong into the house!

At the time I didn’t fully appreciate my little heralders of spring and their constant background noise. I didn’t realize that moving north would trigger a complete role reversal—that I’d be the one busting forth announcing to the world I’m ready for spring, yearning for an answer to my call. Sometimes I’m drawn to go outside in my PJs or even out in the yard till my slippers get soaked. Other times, I find myself on shores even more exotic than Mooselook.

“Ruck…ah…caaaauuw!” I sang off my lanai. It was early spring a year ago and, after a winter in Rangeley that almost froze off my tail feathers, I was more than thrilled to answer the call from the nearby plumeria trees. “Ruck…ah…caaaauuw!” (A couple mornings later, I’m pretty sure the folks from California on the balcony next to me were much more curious about my mental state than where I’d traveled from on the mainland.)

Luckily, by the time I migrate back to Rangeley, the songs of spring aren’t far behind. But, more than ever, I need to go out of my way to listen. “WhaWHO….WHO…ha…WHO….WHO…ha…WHO!”
Filtered through my R-25 insulated log walls, the first loons on the lake beckon. I rush outside, closer to the sound, tilting one newly-naked ear to the night air. Sometimes I answer, especially if Jim Beam comes with me. But mostly, I look out over the dark, ice-rimmed water, and smile. Soon, the Joy Birds will join in the song!

Much as I love peepers and loons, if I ever had to set my feelings for my Maine home to just one melody, it would be the Joy Bird’s. He’s been calling me back here ever since I was a kid, letting me walk without ever missing an IPod. “BOO..DOO…bum-ditty…bum-ditty..bum-ditty…bum!” To sing that sweetly, I imagined he had to be prettier than anything that came to my feeder before the squirrels took over. Must have lots of red on him to sound like that, or maybe blue, I thought. Then, when I finally got my first good look at the lusty whistler, I stood in disbelief for a long time before consulting Audubon and finding out my Joy Bird was actually a white-throated sparrow. A rather nondescript brown and white-throated sparrow, he was, with the tiniest thatch of yellow on his fervently singing head. “Fondly known as the ‘Whistler of the North,” my bird book said, “this sparrow heralds spring in the woods with his familiar song: Oh sweet, Canada, Canada, Canada.”

“Really?” I thought. I guessed BOO…DOO…bum-ditty…bum-ditty..bum-ditty…bum was too much of a mouthful for the Audubon folks.

Back outside with the bird book closed, my Joy Birds concurred. “BOO…DOO…bum-ditty…bum-ditty..bum-ditty…bum” they called, reminding me that the simplest creatures often sing the most beautiful songs. “Sweet Canada, my ass!” I chuckled, these little guys know the sweet spot is right here 40 miles from the Quebec border. Throwing my blonde-tufted head back until my parrot-bright tie dye peeked out from under my almost-summer fleece, I answered: “Oh, sweet warm, weather warm, warm weather!“

Alike mother

Joy Clough2 Comments

“No mistaking where those two girls came from!”

People never wait for Mother’s Day to point out the mother-daughter similarity in my family.  When the girls were small, folks called it to my attention so often I started saving them the trouble by introducing Helen and her little sister, Becky, as “my clone kids.”

Twins born in different years—carbon copies exactly like me, they said. While triplets inspired amused curiosity, and same-day maternal twins sparked attempts to tell which name went with which baby, we got sidelong glances as though I’d never gone to the maternity ward but out to the garden to generate pods.

“Cripe, are you sure you went through labor and didn’t just crank out a duplicate?”my dad asked, gazing down at his second tow-headed granddaughter in her hospital bassinet. It was his first meeting with half-a-day-old Becky and, as usual, he couldn’t help but mark potentially poignant family moments with stand-up comedy.

“Yes!” I asserted with a bit too much postpartum fervor. “She’s exactly 11 ounces smaller than her big sister was, and three inches shorter. Besides, she’s got a little birthmark just below her right wrist.”

As Becky grew and the mirror image of her sister and me as babies didn’t fade, I felt tempted to show people how they both had crooked left incisors and bits of red in their hair just like their dad. But before too long, I just nodded at folk’s clone comments, taking full credit, hoping someone would alert the National Enquirer so I could sell my story for the girls’ college tuition.

There was never any arguing who gave birth to either one of them. They got their mother’s blonde hair, their mother’s brown “Oreo cookie” eyes, and I got the road map of their gestation where I used to wear a bikini. But those who swore we were just “three peas” straight out of the pod never saw Helen riding a bicycle at age six or Becky bending her dad to her will just by bringing a tear to her eye. I was never able to do either.

“I’ve been riding Katie’s bike,” Helen said casually at breakfast one long-ago May afternoon.

“Where?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

“On the road by her house down the big hill.”

“A two-wheeler bike?”

“Yup.”

“With training wheels, right?”

“Nope.”

“No training wheels down the big hill?” I didn’t know how that could be. She was much too young, too little. By the time I learned how to balance a bike, I’d stripped the rubber off my training wheels and had been riding them for months on the rims.

“Who’s been teaching you how to ride, Helen?”

“Why should anybody have to teach me? I just hopped on and went!”

Who, I remember wondering, was that person previously inside my 40 pounds of  stretching-by-the-minute baby skin? Whoever she was, she was somehow wearing my face from long ago but didn’t need to bother asking for assistance before plunging headlong into life. No child of mine! And who exactly was the two-year-old little sister version shoveling in cereal next to her who could engage passersby with a grin and then entertain them with one of her three personalities? None of my doing!

With both my baby girls, I played the producer’s role to the hilt. Laying in my hospital bed, I accepted the flowers, ate most of the chocolates and let their father wait on me as much as possible. Every muscle in my body told me I deserved it. As soon as I began to walk again without wincing, though, the exclusiveness wore off.  Could flesh of my flesh be so perfect? Six weeks later I’d be puzzling over such mysteries, the origin of  symmetrical ears and other flawless features, when their newborn smiles appeared out of nowhere.

“Hi honey,” I whispered. “Where in the world did you get that beautiful smile?”

Certainly not from me. I was a face full of furrows rarely smoothed by sleep.

By the time the girls were gooing and gaaing and semi-upright, I’d attributed most of their milestones to ancestors other than myself. Fruit of my womb would not bounce repeatedly while suspended from a Johnny Jump Up spring inside a door jamb for half an hour and love it. Then, far too soon, Helen just bounced right past me without any support—soaring full speed ahead until my safety net was nothing but threads—showing the way for her little sister. On her first day of school, she created a time warp of sorts for one veteran teacher. She told Helen she’d been at school for my first day, too, greeting a dark-eyed girl with the same sun bleached hair and much the same dress. When Becky showed up four years later, the poor old teacher felt like her classroom was stuck in a parallel universe.  I guess she saw a legacy where, some days, all I saw was an inherited passion for peanut butter off of a spoon.

“Mommy, how did I get in this black and white picture?” Helen wanted to know soon after when she came across my first-grade school picture.

“That’s not you, that’s Mommy,” I said, examining the image for the first time in 25 years. “That’s me when I was your age.”

Later, Becky saw the photo propped on my desk when she came to say good night. “What’s Helen doing in that picture?” she asked. I brought her into my lap to tell her what I’d told her big sister. But when she swung her legs around me and bunched up to nestle under my chin, I kept quiet. Even back then, I wondered where the time had gone since my girls could curl up against my heart without adjustment.

With their growing-up years now a bright but hazy blur, I know for sure my daughters are passing through me more than coming from me. Because of them, the sun has shone over “my hair” in so many incredible places and “my eyes” have seen far beyond where I stand.  Meanwhile, they’ve certainly done their dad’s DNA proud, too. Especially during science fairs and athletic events—anything requiring eye-hand coordination and more common sense than God gave geese—they’ve made it increasingly apparent how much they do take after Tom.

And now that they’re in their 20s, they’ve brought me to a place where I feel I need to broadcast my connection just in case there’s any question. Turns out, those newborn smiles were just the beginning of what they had in store.

“I’m Helen’s mom!” I announced recently to anyone I figured would wonder what the heck I was doing at the poshest party this side of Manhattan. It was Helen’s cast party and I’d just witnessed, front and center, how she put on a stellar production at the Portsmouth Music Hall Loft featuring costumes she designed. Just as I was flashing back to her as a fairy princess—the last homemade Halloween costume I mustered—there we were in a penthouse overlooking Market Square, eating miniature Beef Wellingtons and toasting my daughter’s success. When did this beautiful, red-headed woman teach herself to sew? How did she take flight when, if not for Super Glue, I couldn’t have managed to give her the golden fairy wings she’d asked for so long ago? Her true origins still remained a mystery on that magical night, until we made the exact same yummy dessert face over Kahlua cheese cake and it was plain as day.

There are still times with Becky, too—especially when I’ve matched my blonde to her particular shade—when our resemblance elicits comments and a bit of confusion. “That’s your mom, right?” one of Becky’s Bahamian friends asked. “For a second I thought she might be your older sister!” Slurping on my second rum punch at the dive resort where Becky worked, I knew I was probably starting to act like there wasn’t 31 years between us…but look like her? Not even in paradise on my best day! “Bless you, I’m her Mumma!” I gushed. Even though leading shark dives was her specialty—and when she wasn’t doing that she was teaching kids how to navigate Class Five rapids on the Colorado and scale the same canyons featured on I Shouldn’t Be Alive—people can see we’re cast from the same mold.

Coming across my old first-grade picture again the other day, I had to admit I saw it, too. Years faded into one sweet memory of holding each daughter next to my heart. Who knew? The three of us had probably been in the same portrait even way back then, long limbs and all, waiting to unfold.

Season of passage

Joy Clough3 Comments

(Author’s Note: The following was first published in my column in the Rochester (NH) Courier on April 21, 1987. I’m reposting it 25 years later in honor of my late father-in-law, Lee Clough. Thank you, Lee, for getting the dream off the ground and showing us that it was possible—and only a little bit crazy—to own a place on a big lake way the heck up in Maine.)

Ice out. You won’t find those words on any calendar but, for our house, the event marks the beginning of vacation season. Now that there is open water in Alton Bay, we will be making regular outings to Winnipesaukee. In May and early June, when the sun has thawed more northern waters, we’ll be spending time in the Rangely Lakes region clearing brush on our special spot of the shoreline so our new camp can be built. And, naturally, we’ll be fishing a bit while we’re at it.

But no matter how big the fish or how spectacular the sunsets, our minds are sure to wander even further north to a handsome little A-frame on Moosehead Lake that we won’t be visiting this year.

“That’s camp,” Helen has said, pointing to the picture on the refrigerator, from the first moment she was able to put a name to the home-away-from-home where Daddy doesn’t have to leave for work every morning and life is one continuous picnic.

We have been going “up to camp,” three or four times a year since she was a newborn and we laid her in the handmade log playpen. The place was brand new then, too, just a big open room with a roof over it that Tom, his father, Lee and I had built ourselves the year before.

The photo that Helen likes to keep permanently displayed shows the final results of four summers of family labor. “Rustic simplicity at its finest,” I always imagined a real estate ad would say about the hideaway we had finished with sliding glass doors along the whole front and a large sleeping loft facing a custom designed pyramid of windows that stretched all the way to the 21-foot peak in the roof. From the loft, we could watch the sun rising over the lake before we got out of bed or just lay back and watch the tree tops billowing in the breeze.

Tom and I were sitting up there on the floor one evening last year, our legs dangling into the livingroom area below, when we first admitted out loud that “camp”—at least not this particular one—might not always fit in with our plans as a family. We hadn’t said a word for about half an hour and, normally, that would have been OK. We were used to just relishing the silence that descended there with the darkness and letting our thoughts go still. But this night was different. Our minds were churning enough to drown out the faint sputtering of the gas lamps and, when we finally spoke, we were quietly defensive.

“You know, once I’m up here I love it, I’m totally happy and relaxed, but it sure would be nice to not have to spend a whole day driving and loading everything in and out of the boat to be able to enjoy that feeling. It takes me a day just to wind down from the trip,” Tom said. He was looking into the blackness beyond the windows, arguing not with me, but with each of the timbers around him he could remember pounding into place.                  ‘

“Well, you certainly know how I feel about this old lake and how I hate saying goodbye to it,” I said,” but maybe we could find a place closer, one we could get to by car, that we could work on off and on and still have time to fish and everything. We always feel like we have to accomplish X amount of work putting up paneling or cleaning up the lot so it will be better for next year. And the next year comes along and we can only make it up here two, maybe three times.”

“Too bad it’s so damn far away,” I finally blurted out and Tom nodded slowly, still staring into the night.

“You know, Dad would understand. He was thinking of selling for the same reasons,” he said. Now he was looking up at the great A-shaped rafters they had erected with ropes and pulleys and a good deal of sweat. His dad hadn’t lived long enough after that to fully enjoy what they had made. But he was a practical man, one who soon realized that a lot of money and effort was going into a camp that sat empty for 50 weeks out of the year.

Tom and I and Helen won’t be at “camp” for ice out this year, but another family will—a family bought the place because they loved its rustic simplicity and they lived near enough to take advantage of it regularly. They plan to generate electricity and do all the little odd jobs we never had time for. Maybe they’ll even have running water before long.

And this year will be the first time in a while that the Cloughs won’t have a camp to go to. We’ll have a beautiful lot though, on a large, quiet lake three hours from Rochester. We’ll have plenty of plans, too, for a new camp with indoor plumbing, electrical appliances and a nearby road accessible during all four seasons.

Best of all, we will have full knowledge that it’s not those amenities that make our vacations memorable. Our happiest times—moments we haven’t been able to recreate in luxurious motels or posh restaurants—have surprised us when we’re 20 miles from a telephone and badly in need of a shower. I’m sure we won’t have trouble reminding ourselves of that as we watch Helen—and her soon-to-be-born sister or brother—swimming, catching trout and having fun “up to camp” in years to come.

(Author’s Note: We figured out later that Lee most likely looked at our Rangeley lot before buying the one on the northern end of Moosehead. My girls, now 28 and 24, still call the year-round home we built out of the tiny original cabin “camp.” And, I am delighted to report they have spent every moment possible here with us—trading card games by the wood stove for Nintendo and long bike rides for hanging out at the mall—never once telling us there was any other place they’d rather be.)

For more “Rooted in Moosehead, too” stories, see

March of the medicines

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“Grammy’s cookies come from big trays out of the oven!”  Helen announced when she was just big enough to teeter next to the counter on a stool. “And she showed me why those bread things are called rolls…’cause you’re supposed to make dough and roll it out with a big wooden thing and then cut it into circles. Did anyone ever show you?”

“Of course,” I told her. I’d spent enough hours watching my Grammies bake that I decided it was called “from scratch” because of their fingernails scraping the counter top as they endlessly kneaded and squished and scratched the last morsels of dough out of the cookie bowl inches from my eager face. “But Grammies usually have more time—and a lot more  space—for things like that.”

Time and space. Before the Big Move to a better kitchen and a simpler life, those were the elemental ingredients that forced me to defer to the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Keebler Elves. On any given day, I’d have sworn I just didn’t have enough of either. Looking back on it now, though, I’m pretty sure I might have found the extra hours in my stay-at-home mom days to channel more Betty Crocker. But I still would’ve needed more space—lots more kitchen counter space.

Back in the days when “food processors” were out in the field, the coffee maker wore an apron and stood by the stove, and the microwave was still a Jane Jetson fantasy, my “roll model” cooks had miles more counter space. And while I needed half a drug store’s worth of inventory stretching from stove to sink, they got by with a jar of honey that doubled as cough medicine and a bottle of elixir for all other ailments not eased by chicken soup. Come cold and flu season, Nana didn’t have much of a choice. She kept her head bent to baking—making use of all that prime kitchen real estate—and hoped that hearty, homemade food got the family through till spring. I, on the other hand, had so many vials of medicine on my counter top by the end of March that God knows what I may have greased my cookie sheets with or substituted for vanilla extract in her old-fashioned recipes.

“Medicine time!” I’d announce, and two mouths would automatically appear for up-to-the-minute treatment of various symptoms. On good days, they’d get vitamin pills and whatever antibiotic was keeping their little bodies free from the latest viral attacks. On bad days, they’d get an antihistamine and/or a decongestant and/or an anti-diarrheal, salve for any topical reactions, and enough chewable fever reducer to keep them comfortable until the next round of antibiotics. Between bouts, when their facial openings were dry and their cheeks were glowing rather than “burning up” red, I’d begin to see the Formica near my sink and the light at the end of the tunnel. Slowly my optimism would build and, one by one, symptom by symptom, I’d remove the syrups and salves out of the mainstream and into temporary storage.

“All better,” I’d declare, whisking away the Pepto Bismol, the Robitussin and the Tylenol bottle that had given me arthritis in one hand. The girls would each suppress a cough and go on about their business of absorbing germs. They couldn’t understand why I’d bother to move the bottles, having a visceral wisdom about a fact I’d refuse to accept. They would need each and every one of those medicines soon, probably that very night when I’d have to thrash through the darkness of the hall closet, hoping the plastic bottle necks beneath my hands belonged to cold remedies rather than cleaning solvents. Within 24 hours, I’d have my over-the-counter prescriptions back within easy reach out in the kitchen.

At least the girls learned their colors while I dolled out relief. Red pills meant “stop my runny nose,” while the green stuff meant “go night-night and not wake up coughing.” And that pink medicine did not taste as pretty as it looked even though they sipped it out of an alligator spoon. Still, the rainbow was never quite long enough and, deep down, the girls knew that. Their little membranes were always one step ahead of any full alert, color-coded homeland security plan I devised.

“Ears feelin’ O.K.?” I remember asking Becky en route to Rangeley when she was about three. She nodded. “Coughing stopped? Nose better?” She moved her head up and down, up and down. Medical update positive. All secretions in check. My therapy was right on course, I thought, especially crucial since were were going “up to camp” for the weekend. Then she looked at me.

“Becky, what is that coming out of your eye?”

She shrugged and dug at her left tear duct.

“Yucky stuff,” she said after a brief observation.

Nasty infectious stuff, it was, untouched by pharmaceutical fluids already administered—not even that pink panacea we brought from home which was so expensive it should’ve been prescribed with smelling salts in case I passed out while reaching for my wallet. First thing Monday morning this yucky stuff required a detour to the drugstore for special ointment—a tiny tube that kept getting wedged between my stove and the edge of my counter. It was the one thing not in my northern arsenal against sneezing, coughing, stuffy head, drippy orifice attacks. Even though I had a “one butt” kitchen here back then, I backed up my line of defense until I needed a spreadsheet to track which half-congealed or partially disintegrated medicine was in which house at any given moment in time.

“Hey Mom, where do you keep the red pills now?” Helen asked shortly after we moved up here full time.

“In the bathroom drawer!” I announced proudly.

After a delightfully brief search there, she came back to the kitchen, pills in hand, wondering why no one ever told me I wasn’t supposed to keep Sudafed that expired in 1998. Her tone was reminiscent of her Grammy cookie questions 25 years ago, with only a tinge of sarcasm. I hadn’t rotated my inventory since consolidating houses, I told her. Plus, as long as we remembered to wash the Walmart guck off our hands after long runs to Rumford, her dad and I were making it through the winters just fine with my hodge-podge of under-the-counter stash.

And wouldn’t you know, now that I have gorgeous expanses of new counter top, the only family member who needs medicine within easy reach is one of the beagles! Twice a day I administer a plain white pill so tiny I have to be careful it gets in Toby’s mouth and not lost somewhere en-route.

I can’t tell you that all this space has turned me into Nana reincarnated in the kitchen yet. But it has given me room to spread my wings farther than ever before. I do make my own bread, sort of, out of a machine that moves off the counter only if I have to search for a dog pill underneath it.  Tom now rolls out perfect homemade pizza dough like nobody’s business. And Helen, when she visits, makes great use of my uncluttered kitchen, showing us what she learned at culinary school. As for me, when no one is looking, I take a deep Rangeley cleansing breath, run my un-floured hands along my long, sleek counter top, and smile.

Snow dancin’

Joy CloughLeave a comment

If I stood on the porch and really listened, I could almost hear it. Carried on the wind gusts off Saddleback and sweeping through town before blowing across from Haines Landing came a song of celebration—of voices lifted in chorus. So thrilled were we with gratitude, yet so stunned with disbelief, we sounded like Whoville when the Grinch brings back Christmas just in the nick of time:

Welcome snowfall! Welcome snowfall! Welcome snowfall, come this way!

I watched the first flakes fall with childlike fascination. Just like a snow globe, living in Rangeley in the wintertime was…at least that’s what I’d come to believe. Last year it nearly buried us in our tracks, barely leaving room for our little green-roofed village to peak out above the drifts before Mother Nature shook down a fresh blizzard. While I didn’t relish a repeat of that landscape, I felt a flutter of hope as the first flurries turned to serious powder piling up on the porch railings and turning my mudslide of a driveway white again.

Content to be settled in and no more than a couple slipper shuffles away from the wood stove, part of me did long to be out and about. Rangeley folks love a get-together and—especially this time of year—we drum up all sorts of reasons to see how our neighbors are “making it through” and if our friends from away still think we’re worth the trip. We hope Mother Nature will cooperate, of course, by keeping enough snow in Snodeo weekend, and letting us dance on the lake during our Icestock Music Festival. But if she doesn’t (which certainly seemed to be the case this year), we’re almost as happy bringing the party back indoors—warming our spirits at the Chamber’s chili/chowdah cookoff and brightening our mood at the flashiest Fat Tuesday party this side of the bayou. But nothing, I bet, rivaled the revelry of winter returning to Rangeley! Up on Saddleback, staff from behind the ticketing desk must have burst into the night, joining the trail crew in a huge circle of merriment. All over the land, from Loon Lodge to Bald Mountain Camps, pockets of happy dancing erupted as proprietors joined with winter vacationers on the verge of giving up and going home. And there were just as many silent prayers, too, I imagined. Uttered from faces lifted to the night sky as folks at the IGA and Oquossoc Grocery turned off the lights and started dreaming of a busier tomorrow, an echo stirred: “God, it’s about time!”

Those of us already home in our snugglies watched winter make its comeback via TV satellite. Our hopes grew as the Maine weather map turned the western mountains from a green “could be slushy” hue, to that in-between “we’ll get three inches if we’re lucky” pinkish purple, and finally to white—pure, glorious white. We posted the colorful NOAA maps on Facebook like kindergarteners proud to have something worthy of tacking on the fridge. Come morning, when snow actually had covered the landscape once again, we shared more Facebook pictures of it than if we’d seen a bull moose walk into Tall Tales Tavern and order a Sam Adams on draft!

Yes siree, Rangeley was back in business! With the hum of plows and snow machines signaling our pulse had returned to normal, the heavier the drifts got, the lighter we all became. I could feel it, way out here, even though I don’t ski and I rely mostly on my own fuel to get out on the trail. A huge weight lifted as we surveyed our fresh horizons full of new possibilities. In my neck of the woods, the turn in the weather meant I could change my footwear, a momentous event indeed! I could rip off the serious grippers that kept me vertical but feeling like a drunk penguin and go back to my basic Bean boots, walking softly in the snow that now graced my luge track of a road. I could relax, pick my head up, and fully appreciate Nature’s clean slate.

White…is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black…God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously…as when He paints in white.”
— G. K. Chesterton

Living in Rangeley through the winter has brought its share of pleasant surprises, and becoming a full-fledged, year-round outdoor person as well as active in my new neighborhood is at the top of the list. Turns out, I can be as solitary or surrounded by people as I desire. Instead of just toughing out the cold as I once envisioned, I immerse myself, appreciating the stark beauty in my big backyard and the colorful community of hearty, like-minded souls outside my doorstep. “We bring our own slippers this time of year,” my new friends told me last January, stomping off the snow and leaving their boots just inside the back door. It was a simple routine, a natural rhythm that told me I’d fallen in step with the right people in just the right place.

I do love warm white, too–especially warm white sand that gently slopes into tropical water. But I’ve discovered nothing quite compares to winter white in Rangeley. It is, as Da Vinci said, “the first of all single colors,” the backdrop that makes all seasons relative. Out here, softly enveloped, I watch the trees wait against the sleeping shore. I feel the promise of new-leaf green and lupines. And, if I really listen, I can hear the hum of ice-out fishermen trolling the lake for trout, bringing us full circle.

Homebody building

Joy Clough2 Comments

My in-town friends tell me Rangeley has the best health club ever seen in this neck of the woods. They invite me to check it out next time I come in, take the tour, get a membership. “Where else,” one of them asked recently, “can you get in a workout while looking out over such a gorgeous view of the lake and mountains?”

The view is spectacular, I agree. I really enjoy it each time I drive by the club on my way down Dallas Hill Road. And it was particularly awesome from outside the building on the lawn last July where I saw the Doobie Brothers’ perform a stellar benefit concert for our health clinic. But, while I do miss the social aspects of club membership, I politely decline going inside to join up. I’ve done the math several times and 40 miles round trip to walk on the treadmill or splash around in the pool takes the wind right out of my sails before I even think about throwing my gym bag into the Subaru. Besides, completing “the loop” to run errands, get groceries—and maybe hit the dump if I time it right—is workout enough on my going-to-town days. So I settle for sticking to my “at home” routine, substituting the extra car travel with just “getting out there” under my own steam. Out here I can’t socialize in my sweats or ask my girlfriends what’s up while we’re getting pumped for water aerobics. But where else can I do the “road wave” to which ever neighbor passes by on my fitness circuit?

Before moving away from proximity to such amenities, I often did carry a  gym membership of some sort. Over the years, I migrated from pounding the pavement at the YMCA to a snazzy, high-priced athletic club—where I needed to put on an attitude with my Reeboks and Spandex. Then, when the more down-to-earth Planet Fitness opened close by, I was thrilled. I got the huge “thumbs up” just for walking in and, once inside, knew I was OK as long as I tried to keep in shape alongside  everyone else who drew breath and could afford the $99 a year membership. Who needed a snazzy club when I could use the same fancy equipment painted in screaming yellow and purple? The color scheme alone drove me to want to jump on and go like hell.

Yup, I’m happy to say my gym going days are over and that, since I moved up here “working out” at home is working out better than ever. No longer is it just an excuse I give my former snazzy club member friends who wonder where I went. It’s a way of life.

“Gosh, you look great!” my former aerobics instructor would tell when she’d run into me in the grocery store and I didn’t see her coming first. Her smile seemed genuine, but her eyes said something more like: What in God s name have you done to your hair and did you actually ask for it to come out that way? My other aerobics classmates claimed they missed me, too. In gym buddy speak, though, that only meant they missed secretly eyeing me for cellulite and exchanging pleasantries prior to sweating. In any case, they seemed quite curious as to why I hadn’t packed on the pounds or lost major muscle functions.

“Been working out at home,” I ‘d tell them. I didn’t go into detail and let them picture a mini-gymnasium in my basement. They didn’t need to know I owned just one piece of equipment—an exercise bike—and at that particular time, my home workout routine entailed pushing the bike as hard and as fast as I could out of the family room so guests could use the bumper pool table. To compensate, I relied on tips from fitness experts who claimed those without the time or discipline for a regular routine could still stretch and tone while riding the train or standing around the copy machine. I didn’t do either, so I had to be really inventive.

At that point in my life, I was blessed by not needing free weights or upper arm equipment. I had kids—one who’d reached the too heavy to carry but too hazardous to leave running around stage, and another who needed to be lugged everywhere. They made me wonder how childless women kept in shape. Besides having way more time to go to the gym, they’d have to hoist a potato sack filled with 25 pounds of dried beans and a couple of cats or other small, squirming animals to feel the burn I was getting! Another key to my success then was the layout of my living quarters. I lived in a split-level home with everything necessary for survival divided equally between two floors. My washer and dryer was on the lower level, along with most things I needed upstairs, while stuff I needed downstairs in my office was on the second floor, often under the bed. Multiply 24 climbing movements (12 up, 12 down) by the number of times I’d check my laundry, answer my door and lug my kids around, and I was proof positive why stairs are a training staple for all athletes. Eventually, I kicked that up one more notch by putting a baby gate at the top of the stairs. What a way to improve my agility while building up my calves and thighs! I even added a couple nice shoulder stretches by dropping a sock from my laundry bundle on each stair on my way down!

Especially this time of year, in my old neighborhood I’d stick to indoor workouts out of preference and necessity. “Winter recreation” was an oxymoron back then. Plus my road had so much traffic that, even in fair weather, I chose to stay housebound and alive rather than clipped by a dump truck while out for a walk. But now that I’ve traded that address for my road less traveled, I’m tickled to have moved my workouts outdoors where I’ve swapped my Reeboks with Yaktrax or snowshoes, my Planet Fitness purple and yellow with Rangeley blue and green, and my Airdyne bike for riding in fresh air.

There are some days, though, when Mother Nature has different ideas and staying housebound is still a survival strategy. That’s when I focus on my upper body and get inventive again. I augment reps of “throwing another log on the fire” with grocery bag lifting. When filled to capacity and used with proper technique, I’ve discovered grocery bags to be every bit as effective as free weights. I grab the two heaviest bags, one in each hand, and then clutch a third with whichever hand I don’t need for opening up the door. I concentrate on improving my load limit with each shopping trip. And, as I build up my tolerance and swear I can’t possibly hoist anymore, I reach out with one thumb and hook onto another IGA bag or maybe just a gallon of milk before charging up the porch stairs to my  kitchen. Another homebody building secret is to never ever put anything within arms reach. Canned goods for my favorite recipes need to be at the back of the cupboard, I figure, to do me the most good athletically. I aim for height too, stretching my hands above my head and then really pushing myself to go at least two inches above that point. Whatever casserole dishes and pots and pans I don’t have room for up near the ceiling, I store down low in a floor-level cupboard—way up against the back wall—and feel that stretch!

As I write this, it’s Fat Tuesday and I guess I’ll need to go out for a brisk walk to burn off tonight’s party food and drink. And when I come back inside, I’ll need to kick it up one more notch to avoid a Fatter Wednesday. I figure a couple circuits with my Swiffer duster will be just the right combo for adding strength training and agility…as long as I don’t forget to hit the really high shelves and the stairs!