Hoppin’ down the muddy trail

Joy CloughLeave a comment

Take ten miles of soggy Bemis track oozing along the cutoffs and swamp lands of lower Mooselookmeguntic Lake. Add about three more miles of private dirt road snaking up the shore still shadowed by snow banks. Mix in plenty of early spring snow. Freeze, melt, rechill and thaw until soft, and what have you got? A route to town that looks like Oreo cookie left soaking in milk too long and feels like a rodeo rink.

As I said back in Finding Community, we don’t really live in Rangeley. We live in a “suburb” of town given the Maine-unique distinction of a “plantation.” I always thought the name stood for a place with tons more trees than people. But, according to Wikipedia, in colonial times when Maine belonged to Massachusetts, this term came in use to describe a “minor civil division.” So, in Rangeley Plantation (population about 155) we don’t have councilors or selectmen. We have assessors. And Mother Nature keeps them plenty busy assessing and maintaining the stretches of roads and bridges that connect us back to the big town.

“We don’t live on this road,” I told a first-time visitor last April. “This is our main town road. Our place is on a side road off of this road a few more miles from here.” We were about midway down the Bemis Road—also known by those of us who consider it a major thoroughfare as the Bemis Track. “Back when folks came here by train, this was actually a train track,” I explained. “See how straight it is? But it all got washed out in the Great March Flood of 1936, so now it’s a road.” I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or scared. He just jostled back and forth in the passenger seat, peering out the window in silence. But I’m pretty sure I heard him haul in his breath as we motored across the one-lane causeway bridge at the southern tip of the lake. “Almost there,” I promised rounding a corner and chugging up a small hill onto my “camp” road.

Friends generally don’t come here during mud season. And if they do, they don’t come out this far. They get part way into the Plantation and either park it and call for help, or spin around and slide back down the mountain. Even UPS—the guys driving huge brown trucks, wearing brown uniforms who look like they could handle a little extra wet dirt—won’t venture out past the town package depot this time of year. But, with our address label officially stating we live on a trail, I can’t say as I blame them for dropping our boxes off in another zip code and having us retrieve them there.

After more than 20 years of negotiating our way from southern New Hampshire, Tom and I knew what we were “getting ourselves into” when we decided to retire up here off the beaten track. Money, house, road. Boiled down to their essence, those were our determining factors as our thoughts turned from “Wouldn’t it be nice?” to “How can we make it happen?” Would our savings hold out? Could we really turn the old camp into a house? What was the likelihood we’d got stuck out there? Plus, lurking in the grey area at the end of the money-house-road list were generic retirement questions about health and sanity. Would our health and our fondness for each other’s company last as long as our savings? But in the big game of chance called life, we knew that mental and physical wellness were cards we’d carry with us no matter what road we chose. So, as much as anyone could, we prepared for all scenarios, got our ducks in a row. We vowed to balance frugality with adventure, to eat from our garden whenever nature cooperated, and figure out how much homemade wine consumption would fortify our hearts and souls without jeopardizing our self-sufficiency. We packed up our life in the bigger city and made the one-way trip to Rangeley.

For our “back home” friends, the route from there to here does take a little getting used to. TomTom and Garmin help with some of the trip, but get confused when friends type in our “trail” and get warned they’re on their own from Route 17. From there, they have to rely on plain, old Tom’s highlighted squiggle on the Maine Atlas and their own senses of direction and adventure. Personally, I think the resulting candid commentary tops their barking GPS monotones anyways. Where else can you go from “See how pretty the lake is over there?” to “I think I might see the lake again,” to “What the hell were they thinking?” and back again all in less than 25 miles?

So far so good, though, I’m happy to report. The pantry is full. Most days, we still talk to each other more than we talk to ourselves or the beagles. We haven’t found ourselves standing at the end of the driveway wearing tin foil hats barking at the full moon yet, either. We’re even managing to take frequent trips beyond and back without calling for rescue. But we don’t kid ourselves for a minute that we can take all the credit. We get constant support from some very special people—two in particular. Thanks to our lead assessor/town road agent and the plow man hired by our private road association—who defy all geological, hydrological and meteorological laws to keep our travel lanes clear —we’re staying on track with retirement in the woods. Even during this worst winter/spring in memory, we have never been stranded, marooned or otherwise stuck out here 13 miles from pavement.

And Tom and I don’t need to kid ourselves that pavement is by any means better than dirt. For more than 30 years, we lived right alongside a real city, tax-dollar funded road. Salmon Falls Road, it was called, named for the river bordering New Hampshire and Maine it follows. Once a place of fishing folklore and sprawling farms, it is now mostly a commuter corridor for folks wanting to work closer to Boston. To say it was paved would be generous. It was a long stretch of tar patches connecting pot holes through swamp land that ate hub caps like M&Ms. On those unfortunate summer evenings when we were back home from Rangeley, a steady stream of tire thumping outside our bedroom window kept us awake, longing for loons and waves lapping the shore. We were only a couple miles from  hospitals, stores and all those other things our city friends want us to be able to get to now. But, most days, the route to those conveniences was an obstacle course that gave us much less bang for our tax dollar and more pounding on the Subaru suspension than driving down the dirt roads in the Plantation.

Getting out here is never what you’d call a smooth ride, though, not a cruise control sort of commute. I was reminded of that recently while driving alone back from town through a low spot in the road. A torrent of melted snow rushed down off Bemis Mountain and across the track on its way into Mooselookmeguntic where no amount of maintenance or tax dollars could have kept the dirt surface solid. My Subaru tires started to sink like four fudge doughnuts and I sucked in my breath and steered my way through. “What the hell were we thinking?” I started to say. But then I thought I could see a patch of open lake water through the trees…and summer somewhere right around the corner.

Out like a lamb-eating Yeti

Joy CloughLeave a comment

Good thing nobody said it, at least not within earshot and, in particular, not while I was looking outside on the first full day of spring. Watching fresh snow pile up on the glaciers not yet receded from my yard, I knew that somewhere somebody was saying it: “Gee, looks like March isn’t going out like a lamb this year!”

“Looks like! Not unless it’s a lamb to the slaughter,” I imagined myself having to reply with a fake giggle. Luckily, I didn’t have to respond or come up with any new twists on restating the obvious. Alone in my kitchen with the Weather Channel on mute and my cupboards full from my last trip to town, I had no need to socialize and no risk of rehearing the same, lame, lamb-to-lion analogy I’ve heard every March since 1956. So I just stood there, staring at the latest blizzard. And, except for a couple feeble, lion roar sighs, I kept quiet as a lamb.

It’s human nature, I know, to lighten our Man versus Nature defenselessness by making trite fauna and flora seasonal correlations. We find the rote repetition of habitual phrases soothing—especially this year in these parts. Way back when, somebody worth listening to must have looked to the heavens and made a proclamation, right? “In like a lion…out like a lamb!” he announced and probably etched out some pictographs to record the whole story. Some years, he must have been right. Most years, his clan must have pointed to the faded drawings and retold the tale while hunkered down in whatever could shelter them from the unpredictable March weather. And the saying stuck.

I’m not sure what sort of creature this March is, but I know my daughters would have fun drawing it. Back when they were the only kids in the universe not allowed Game Boys, they used to occupy themselves during long car rides to Rangeley by challenging each other to morph as many animals as they could think of into one sketch. “This time, draw a moose-leopard-eagle-rhinoceros,” one or the other would declare, and the car would stay quiet from South Paris nearly to Rumford. I found one of the resulting animorph masterpieces shoved in an old dresser yesterday. Not really in full spring cleaning mode, but feeling like I should start taking baby steps in that direction, I was sorting through some 20-year-old camp stuff. Folded up next to a dog chewed Barbie, I came upon a pencil drawn creature with a long alligator tail, and both bird talons and moose hooves to balance his lion-like head on his camel-humped body. It was enough to snap me out of any sour weather doldrums I’d let myself slip into.

“Just keep laughing,” I told myself. “It’s all good. Spring has been finding its way up here every year without you around to fidget over it, so keep the faith.” For an extra boost, I dug out my brightest spring green sweater and put it on. Over coffee, I changed my Elmer Fudd-like Facebook picture to a profile of me enjoying warm weather and a bright blue shoreline. But when those strategies failed to do the trick, I knew it was time to shift into full-throttle attitude adjustment mode—to rely on my tried and true home remedy for keeping my chin up and my thoughts prosperous: Put the right gear on my feet, point them away from the cabin, and just get out there!

The right footwear part of my plan is crucial to its effectiveness, I’ve learned. Choose wrong, and a brisk walk to gain fresh air and a new perspective can easily turn into a death march. In January, in Ice Road Tracker, you might remember me professing my love for Yaktrax which, back then, were just the thing for keeping me safe and vertical during my daily walks. Well, I’m much worldlier now, and my needs have matured. Once my road surfaces got really serious from repeated thawing and refreezing, I had to ditch my Yaktrax like a middle-school crush. Lately, I’ve been going out with real studs—metal ones strapped to my boots so I don’t cripple myself six ways to Sunday taking a walk. And, when I want a real fling, I can still strap on my snowshoes and get way out there.

“I guess we’ll still be walkin’ on the wild side a few more weeks,” I concluded as I reacquainted myself with my snowshoes. My gear of choice the other day, they helped me negotiate my luge track of a driveway till I was once again trekking up my favorite hillside across the road. As usual, it wasn’t long before my attitude fell in step as I made my way up the path that always brings me back to center. No matter what kind of footwear and how much resolve it took, I’d walked this path—in summer, through winter, and back into the promise of spring. And, along the way, I’d eaten raspberries sweet as the August sun, watched lupines bloom and hibernate, and a moose leading her yearling to browse. On a snowy day not so different from this, I’d brought my first Rangeley Christmas tree down off the hill with me. Once again reaching the top on the first blustery day of spring, I paused to appreciate my place overlooking the lake and mountains, and the reasons why I was there came back into focus. As I pointed my feet homeward, I could feel the sun gaining strength and hear the gurgle of melting run-off finding its way down Bemis  beneath the snow. Spring was under there somewhere, I could feel it.

By the time I reached home, my Elmer Fudd hat was crusted over with new snow again. But even though I had to inch down the driveway like a drunken penguin, my smile didn’t fade. Not much can stop me from strapping on gear and getting out there, I’ve determined. I have given up, though, on trying to decide exactly what kind of creature the month of March is. He’s a gnarly one, I figure, with thick fur and long, ice gripping talons on the end of his paws—a beast that eats little lambs for breakfast. Whatever he looks like, I sure hope he lets spring come to Rangeley sometime before April showers bring May flowers.

Signs of spring

Joy Clough2 Comments

When the phone rang the other day, my heart did its little “Ooooh…somebody’s checking in on us!” dance and my feet had to join in to carry me to the other end of the house by the third ring. Caller ID said it was Becky calling from Moab, Utah, and I got breathless. What a nice girl, calling to check in so we won’t worry about her making it through the long, harsh winter all alone out there!

“Hi, Mom! It’s 65 degrees and I’m in flip-flops, shorts and a tee-shirt!”

“Great, honey…awesome!” I said. Although I kept my voice light, my upper lip instinctively curled into the kind of snarl a dog does when you put a treat just out of reach and then snatch it away.

“How about you guys?” she wanted to know. “Got much snow left?”

“Yeah, you might say that,” I said, shuffling back to the window. I knew I could give her a Rangeley weather update without up-to-the-minute visual clarification, but I still needed to look one more time just the same. No longer propelled by happy feet, my walk slowed to the pace I get when I go on food recognizance in the IGA. I gazed outside with that same expectant look I get when I survey the grocery aisles—thinking maybe if I search really hard, I’ll see something new—my favorite tea, or maybe more produce from distant, exotic lands. But, once again faced with the evidence, I must accept what’s right in front of me. The snow piles and contours in my back yard are just as I remembered from the last surveillance. I can look away, blink a bunch of times, or hide my head like a spoiled kid. But when I look again, not much will have changed. Although I am starting to see some bare roof shingles on my out buildings, and I’ve heard tell there’s a patch of pussy willows somewhere between here and Stratton, for the most part it seems spring is hiding away in the land of gourmet tea, green, leafy vegetables and flip-flops.

“Remember those pictures I posted of the back yard on Facebook?” I asked Becky. “That was two storms and another foot of snow ago.”

“Woah,” she said. “The grass is all green here and I got a sunburn playing volleyball yesterday!”

“Humph,” I replied. “Well, I’m down to just one layer of underwear, I got to leave my ear flaps up all day yesterday, and if the dogs jump really high I can see them out in their pen above the drifts. So, no grass yet, but there’s a big brown spot up the end of the driveway we’re hoping is dirt!” Thanks for sharing, I told Becky, and to make sure she put sunscreen on. Right after she hung up, I’m pretty sure she called her sister and asked her to drive up from New Hampshire just to double-check on us.

I’ve known for years that these Western mountain lakes generate their own weather and the winter-to-spring cycle can run slower than cold molasses. Now that I’m here year-round to actually witness the process, it must be like watching the proverbial pot boil, and Old Man Winter really isn’t taking any longer than normal to loosen his grip and let spring take over. But I’m thinking there is some twisted connection between our prolonged winter and the sign out in front of the Oquossoc Grocery. As of this posting, it no longer reads “Do the Snow Dance!” which we apparently did with abandon. Now it declares “Snow All Year Round!” I’ve never actually seen anyone out there changing the letters on that sign. The words just somehow appear in the middle of the night. If I wasn’t so petrified of ladders, I just might get up there and alter its cosmic energy pull. Something like “Spring: It’s a Fun Season Too!” might do the trick.

Folks in other social circles are blaming this year’s tough winter on a mixed up Ground Hog’s Day prediction. Back in February, he emerged from his hole and said spring was just six weeks away. The nerve of that wood chuck! How could he and his stuffy handlers come out with all their pomp and circumstance and say that? Aren’t there laws against false advertising? Shadow or no shadow, I wasn’t paying all that much attention. Up here, we don’t have Punxsutawney Phil or anything close. We have a bad ass red squirrel who hangs out in the shadow of the wood shed hogging all the bird seed, and he’s not real prophetic.

Tom and I did manage to have ourselves a little spring fling when we learned we’d be getting some money back on our taxes. It wasn’t a terribly huge sum as far as those things go, just enough for us to splurge on some California vegetables to go with supper, and to dive into the Margarita mix we’d kept cold since summer hoping for such an occasion. Thanks to springing the clocks ahead, we could still see the big expanse of white that used to be our lake from the dining room window. We toasted to that, to our most memorable winter yet, and to warmer days ahead. By a few sips in, we started to feel downright tropical. A few sips later, we recalled a winter vacation when we tried to describe Rangeley to our boat captain in the Turks and Caicos. Tom told him that yes, we had a boat of our own, but since our lake was iced over we had to wait till May to launch it again.

Our guide gazed down at the turquoise water like he was trying to form a picture that just wouldn’t come into focus, and slowly shook his head. “Only ting ice be good for, mon, is puttin’ in drink!” he said.

He did have a point, we agreed, swirling our frozen Tequila around in our drinking jars. But ice had also come in real handy for holding us up on our snowshoes out on the lake too. “It sure was pretty out there this winter,” we concluded. Not Caribbean pretty, but a different, breathtaking kind of pretty that warmed our hearts and invigorated all our senses. We drank to that, too, and did a little spring dance.

The cooking of Joy

Joy Clough1 Comment

Hog in a Quilt. Sex in a Pan. Marinated Chicken Boobs.

With menu items like these coming out of my kitchen, it’s no surprise I’m not being featured in any community cookbooks. Good thing, though, because I stopped saving recipes in the ’80s after all the clippings and copies I shoved—with the best of intentions—inside my Joy of Cooking bible finally blew out its binding. When the cookbook came out and I was a newlywed, I did have a fleeting fantasy that I could personalize its best-selling title, that maybe it was my birthright not only to master mealtimes, but to delight in doing so. The honeymoon was over as soon as I figured out the crock pot was my most cherished wedding gift and, as long as I put potatoes on the bottom and remembered to turn it on, viola, dinner was served. I have had a few Julia Child moments over the years. But, for the most part, I’ve come to rely on whimsical recipe names, plenty of homemade wine, and a dimmer switch on the dining room light to conceal my lack of zeal in the kitchen.

My culinary roots just don’t run very deep. My mother, bless her soul, gave new meaning to the word casserole. She knew all the old-fashioned basics well enough, but reserved them for holidays and company. Most days, she relied heavily on Campbell’s, Oscar Meyer, and that little Hamburger Helper hand to whisk her through mealtime. She showed me how to mix spaghetti sauce from an envelope and how to blend in good humor so, hopefully, no one cared. Most of her concoctions she called “glop”—leftover turkey glop…hamburger glop. Growing up, I thought it was just her Midwestern way of saying she was making a casserole, that her lingo was as interchangeable to my New England friends as “pop” was to soda or tonic. It didn’t take me long to learn though, that when it came time to ask their moms if they could eat over my house, telling kids my mom was making glop for supper didn’t translate particularly well.

Once I had girls of my own, I did my best to not let history repeat itself. I found Prego in a jar and defaulted to spaghetti as my yummy, generic kid-friendly meal. For my older daughter, Helen, it was “what Mom was fixing for dinner” for friends for 12 years in a row. By the time her best friend coughed up the courage to tell her she really didn’t like “sketty,” they had graduated high school and it was too late to change the menu. Luckily, around that same time, their Dad rediscovered another wedding gift, the wok. He turned into Chef Morimoto with the thing, serving Becky’s friends stir-fry as the house specialty throughout her high school years. To this day, it’s still a company favorite…at least no one is admitting otherwise. Tom and I do complement each other in the kitchen, rounding out the meal selections with our own signature dishes. As the breakfast cook, his “Tomlettes” keep company full and focused for all kinds of Rangeley morning fun. And, when it comes to barbecuing, he doesn’t just go outside and grill because it’s his God-given male duty and he can bring a beer with him. He rocks—and he’s been undisputed grill master since sometime BC (Before Children).

“Da Da cooker,” Helen would declare, pointing to the burger spatula when she was just learning to form sentences. Thanks to his spatula skills, his prowess with “hot dog scissors” (aka tongs) and his stir frying finesse, Tom has rounded out my repertoire admirably. Like I said, I’ve had my memorable cuisine moments. I’ve made Willard Scott’s favorite three-tiered crimson Christmas cake with cream cheese frosting. I’ve perfected a Scallops and Linguine dish that flies in the face of the Food Network judges who insist that cheese must never garnish shell fish. Interesting…they never told that to my relatives who’d ask me to make it in trade for a car tune-up, an interest-free loan, and other favors. And, they certainly didn’t tell that to the Johnson and Wales University judges who awarded Helen a scholarship when she recreated the dish for their recipe contest. (Yup, the universe did a mysterious balancing act and Helen, my mother’s namesake, earned a culinary degree and has been teaching me new tricks ever since!) Recently, she showed me how to make Hog in a Quilt, a dough-wrapped pork tenderloin slathered with onions, peppers, mushrooms and cheese so delicious it doesn’t really need its quirky name. My dinner guests who’ve tried it are delighted, but probably not for long. Once they realize I’m the one who’s been hoarding the entire stock of pork tenderloins the minute they go on sale at the IGA, they’ll get a bad taste for my cooking, for sure.

Thanks to my younger daughter, Becky, I’ve also recently expanded my dessert horizons beyond everything blueberry. “Hi, Mom, I’m having Sex in a Pan tonight,” she called to tell me from her work-study job in the Bahamas. Although mature beyond her years, she was only 17 and I prayed she was talking about a dessert. She was, but I still had to see for myself. When I visited her and her chef friend made some, eating the layers of cream cheese and chocolate pudding swirled together with illicit amounts of whipped cream became a vacation high point. It was better than the rum drinks, sunning on the beach and even…well, you get the point. Last month, when I found myself stumped over what to bring to the Valentine’s Day pot luck at the sportsmen’s club, I decided it was time to unveil the recipe in Rangeley. “Sex in a Pan” the heart-shape sign on the dessert table underneath my frothy, mint chocolate chip garnished tray read. In the fine print, I included a blurb about its tropical origins and, for any not-so-frisky sports in the group, a list of ingredients showing it was safe. Folks got intrigued real fast. Some didn’t even bother to finish their casseroles before they dug in. And, judging from the smiles on everyone’s faces, I think they’ll want to try it every month.

Aside from these culinary triumphs, though, most days the only Julia Child-like thing about me is my voice after I’ve put more wine into myself than into my cooking. I’m cool with that, with knowing my kitchen experimentation will never make it into a recipe book, or even on an index card to be passed along to my grandchildren. I’m content with focusing on “tastes better than it looks.” If folks around my table want their eyes stimulated along with their taste buds, I figure they can look out at the lake.

I do miss quiche, though, and am planning to add that back into my menu choices as soon as I can get a box of Bisquick with the makes-its-own-crust recipe on the back. It used to be real popular in my house until the day I found I didn’t have bacon, mushrooms, or the two kinds of cheese I was supposed to make it with. I hoped American cheese and an over abundance of onions would substitute for an extra trip to the grocery store. It didn’t. Tom named the resulting dish in honor of Steve Blah (pronounced the way it’s spelled), a guy who kept asking me out in college even though I was engaged. “You can call this Mrs. Blah’s Lazy Day Quiche,” he announced to a burst of giggling from the girls. “Be quiet and eat,” I said. “And just be glad it’s not glop!”

Snow daze

Joy CloughLeave a comment

“Gee,  wouldn’t it be kinda cool to see how high the snow is around camp now?”

Back when I relied on folklore and friends who visited Rangeley more than I in the winter, I heard tales of drifts piling up to the windowsills. Still, the desire to be “upta camp” no matter what the weather warped my reality and, by the first of March, I’d fantasize about my little cabin nestled in the snow just waiting for ice out so I could show up again. “Even though it would take a whole day to heat up the place, I wish I could see it.”

Well, here I am, smack in the middle of my first Rangeley winter! And, boy, am I seeing it! Guess I never listened to all the older, wiser people about being careful what I wished for. Guess I should have remembered why my Bahamian friends (those blessed, barefooted souls) were always problem-free. “Don’t put mouth on it,” they’d say, unless you are totally sure what it is you be asking for!

As I’ve said right along, I do love living here year-round. I love snowshoeing on my big frozen lake right from my front door. I love my new friends and how they’ve given me a sense of neighborhood, even out on the quiet shore in the off months. I love how Main Street looks like a Currier and Ives painting and how my Elmer Fudd hat is never inappropriate attire. And I love how Mother Nature is blessing our local economy with dump after dump of fresh powder on the ski and snowmobile trails. After all, that’s what keeps the lights on along Main Street: all this white stuff and the folks who come up here to play in it—and eat, drink and sleep in wintry wonder—until they need to go earn more money so they can come back and do it some more.

But, c’mon already…wish granted! The snow isn’t up to my windowsills yet but, as of this post, it’s steadily approaching. Back in November, we could only wonder and wait. “What kind of winter do you suppose we’ll get?” Folks started speculating with the same tone of awe and surrender they’d use when predicting the annual black fly hatch. We all knew  some snow was inevitable, living in the mountains of Maine and all. But after a barren year that left local businesses hankering for winter tourists, the big question was “How much?” Will we get serious footage, some good ground cover that won’t scrape our sleds? Can we hope to be skiing in our short sleeves just days before the fishermen return? Those who believed Mother Nature evens things out from year to year predicted a wallop. Those who swore by the Farmers’ Almanac agreed that “a cold slap in the face” was in store, combined with plenty of precip. But, just to be safe, most called forth rituals that had worked in years past. “Pray for snow!” store and restaurant signs beseeched. “Do the snow dance!”

Now that it’s March and winter has blessed Rangeley with a rockin’ Snowdeo weekend, the best-ever conditions on Saddleback and me, personally, with snowshoeing thighs of steel, I think we can all say: Mission accomplished. Somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth storms, I began thinking up my own sign. Bright red and octagonal, it will spell out my one commandment to the weather gods: STOP! If I can ever break trail long enough to make it back down to the lake, I’m thinking I’ll make it big enough to spot by satellite.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in feeling this winter thing has gone from kinda cool to, as my Nana would say, “too much of a muchness.” Even my self-proclaimed snow bunny friends, who wouldn’t trade the brisk beauty of tromping around Rangeley for a beach chair in Florida, have seen enough white stuff to last them the rest of the winter, if not their lives. As the drifts keep piling up, we’ve even had to expand our ways of describing its impact and our ever evolving coping skills. “The dogs can’t go snowshoeing alongside us anymore,” my friend reported the other day. “They’re porpoising.” After seeing my beagles try to go off-road, I could relate. And, now that the snow banks are getting higher than Tom’s shoulders along the bobsled chute we used to call our road, walking them there is no easy alternative, either. When each dog decides he wants to be king of the hill on opposite sides, Tom may  as well trade in their leashes for bright orange flags and go get a job at the Jetport.

It is Christmas card pretty out here, though, and Tom and I try to find at least one way to voice our appreciation each day. Food analogies worked for a while. “Look, it’s like we’re walking on a giant glistening sugar cube field,” we raved during a recent trek. Then, after another storm, we thought the marshmallow fluffiness stacked all around us was magical. We also repeatedly fall back on our version of that old “dry heat” observation folks make when they’re baking to death in the desert: “At least it’s light, fluffy snow,” we tell ourselves. “If this was all wet snow, we’d really be in trouble.” Tom said that again just the other day and I agreed. But silently I concluded that, once the snow starts inching up past his mouth and nose cavities next time he’s out there trying to shovel, it won’t much matter if it’s fluffy.

During the most recent storm, our positive outlook ran a little thin. As we stood staring out the kitchen window, watching the sheds get buried, we couldn’t think of much to say. But we weren’t completely quiet, either. By late in the afternoon, Tom was making a noise echoed by others around town when the “s” word is mentioned and how deep it’s getting. Each time Tom looked out the window, he’d let out a half-growl, half-groan, then a long expulsion of air that sounded more like a punch in the gut than a sigh.

Yup, I sure picked quite a year to jump into the reality of Rangeley winter. No more hypothesizing from another state. I’m here, seeing for myself, with all my climatized senses fully involved and invigorated. It’s definitely an adventure—experiential learning at its best. And now that I’m fully immersed, body and soul, I’m learning for sure that the real thing is way better than theorizing from anywhere else.

Mustang memories, Subaru soul

Joy Clough1 Comment

It was one of those Indian summer afternoons that had us fooled into thinking we could get by awhile longer with light fleece and no gloves. Tom and I were in the Subaru, glad to have the windows open enough to blow the dust off one last time. With errands done and weather just right for moseying around without spoiling our groceries, there was no particular place to go but home, and no particular sense of urgency propelling us there. We had that footloose feeling of driving aimlessly we’d felt as pre-oil crisis teenagers, balanced by the wisdom that we now needed to suck every last drop of practicality out of each $50 tank of gas. We were “riding around” Rangeley-style. Having shuttled ourselves to all points on our plotted route and, circling back from the grocery-dump-PO loop, we were optimizing our fuel consumption by poking along and enjoying the ride.

“No regrets, you know,” I proclaimed. “Not even a twinge.”

I’d told Tom as much on several occasions. As always, he gave me his “good thing ’cause you’re stuck now anyways” nod. But on this particular day, I wasn’t simply making a general observation about our new lifestyle compared to our old lifestyle. I might have sounded like I was riding around just repeating myself to keep my vocal cords limber, but my reaffirmation was prompted by something so specific and serendipitous I’d spotted along the road that it demanded comment.

A red Mustang convertible had just passed us with its tunes blaring and top down. The driver was heading from the overlooks toward town, not looking in the least like he was concerned with groceries or gas. He was lettin’ that pony just run wild, grinning and singing along, with the wind in his hair. He flew down Route 17 like a shiny red rocket, blowing by the Subaru in a blast from my past.

Not too long ago, I had a car just like that. Torch red she was, with black leather interior and a black convertible roof. I called her the Joyride, a name she wore proudly on her license plate, never allowing me to drive anonymously anywhere near where I used to live. (Technically, her license said JOYR1DE. When I went into the DMV to claim my vanity plate, some other New Hampshire Joy just as clever with word games had already beat me to it. I stood there crestfallen, with no second choice, until the DMV clerk offered a solution. “The numeral one is often used when the letter “I” is not available, and it’s an acceptable substitution,” she stated. Her tone said she didn’t care nearly as much about making my license plate dreams come true as she did moving me the heck out of the way of the next person in line.)

Before that, I’d been a Subaru girl for years. The first brand new car that was really mine  was a cute little mallard green 1997 Impreza. I called her the Hovercraft because, unlike our Jeep and Tom’s horrible little commuter sh**box, she seemed to hover over the road. Thanks to her high MPG rating and all-weather dependability, she made traveling to my job assignments along the Massachusetts tech corridor feasible. Eventually, my resolve and sense of adventure for Route 128 started to wear out long before that first Subaru.

So how did a practical, all-wheel-drive girl end up joy riding in a Mustang? Well, like most other flights of fancy not rooted in Rangeley, it began in the tropics. For our silver anniversary trip to the Keys, I splurged beyond our usual sh**box car rental and surprised Tom with a silver Mustang convertible. Somehow during that vacation week my dream shifted from allowing myself to enjoy a recreational splurge to seeing myself in the driver’s seat and my name on the bumper.

About a year later, the Joyride was in my garage. Actually, she came to me in NH by way of Wiscasset. Although every salesman in this half of the universe tried to sell me a green, blue or black Mustang, it turned out that the only Ford franchise with my specific car on the lot was Downeast. When I finally got her, it took me at least six months for her bright, fire engine red newness to stop scaring me enough to chill out and just drive. Even then, I was in a perpetual state of awe and disbelief each time I got behind the wheel. In my head, I still felt like I should be driving my little Subaru. But then a cop or a high school kid would look at me differently, or I’d catch my reflection in a store window and realize this was not your average Mom bus. “Now that’s a midlife crisis car!” people would say. “No, it isn’t.” I’d insist from under my matching red visor. “It’s a midlife celebration car.”

She was the boldest, raciest, biggest show of status symbolism I’d ever allowed myself to acquire. She made me beam with pride and sing my gratitude to the open air every chance I got. But, at the same time, she made me want to justify, to somehow explain that I wasn’t just spoiled or shallow, that this wild pony exterior was actually cloaking a utility vehicle soul. I needed a new car, after all. Tom had traded his latest commuter heap in for an Outback and Becky would be taking the Impreza off to college soon. Plus, the time was right for me to let myself live outside the box a bit, to run unbridled by my inner critic. “Who would have ever thought?” I’d marvel when I’d climb in and see the galloping pony stamped on her steering wheel. She had ponies all over—one on the grill I polished compulsively, one on each door, on the glove compartment and even on the rubber door casings. My favorite embellishment, though, was something I added aftermarket: A tiny angel with blond hair, a festive red gown, and a playful smile hung on my visor, always watching. She was my Prudy angel, a pin my step-mom wore on her johnny during her too frequent stays at Maine Medical battling leukemia. Prudy smiled nearly nonstop. To her, everything was wonderful, the sun rising and setting, my job, my vacation plans, even my cooking on a bad day. When she lost her battle, she left me with her angel pin, a fierce desire to seize all the wonder in life, and enough of a nest egg to go out and grab it with the wind in my hair.

“How do you get that thing through the snow?”folks would want to know out in the parking lot each winter. I’d tell them about my Blizzak rear tires and the 50 pounds of dog food in my trunk which, in theory, got me around town without fish tailing. No putting the Joyride up on blocks, she was a practical, four-season sports car, I’d explain as I scraped ice off her vinyl roof. “After all, I didn’t name her FearRide,” I’d remind myself as I clenched my jaw and spun away. Luckily, for five years, I was blessed by more than enough smooth cruising to balance out our few treacherous excursions. Then, slowly but steadily, I found myself noticing how pinkish my pretty car looked covered with road salt, how impossibly heavy those low-slung doors were, and how the backseat was sort of a joke. I started to see my prize Mustang as just a work horse. Another dream—of a new house and a new beginning on a rough, lakeshore road—had captured my attention. Sure, there’d be some rare Rangeley days when we could pop the top and take her for a spin. But one trip down our road would have left the Joyride battered and bruised.

“Thank you, Prudy. It’s been a wonderful ride,” I said when I gathered up my CDs and unpinned my angel from the visor. We’d traded in the Joyride for a new Forester—a nice Rangeley mountain top blue model—and I was saying my goodbyes in the Subaru lot. She didn’t sit there for more than a day before she was whisked away on her next adventure. Her new owner, I’m told, calls her Kitten (or maybe K1TTEN) now. 

I did expect to miss my Mustang. Those one or two days I would have taken her up over the Height of Land or to the Pine Tree Frosty would’ve been sweet, for sure. But, these days, nothing compares to the joy of getting there and back with the dogs and the groceries and the building supplies in all-wheel drive dependability. We haven’t given this car a name. She’s simply The Subaru. And, I can’t for the life of me remember what my license plate says anymore. What I do remember, though, each time I see my Prudy angel hanging from its visor, is how grateful I am to have arrived here—safe and sound, and just this side of practical—with fond memories of my little red party car.

Rustic romance

Joy Clough3 Comments

Last Valentine’s Day, I didn’t get a card, flowers or chocolates. I did get a Hallmark moment though, in the form of a purchase and sales agreement. A nice young couple appeared almost like magic, wanting to build a future in our old house. They were ready to move in as soon as Tom’s school year ended and Rangeley mud season receded enough for us to drive a U-Haul with all our belongings up over the Height of Land,  down the Bemis track, and up the Upper Dam trail. Two dreams took flight that day we signed papers with our buyers. Theirs was about youth and new beginnings, about graduating from an apartment to a mortgage and a backyard, about breathing life back into a well-worn house. Ours was about staying young at heart, about stepping away from two houses into our one true home, about breathing a big sigh of gratitude that life by the lake was no longer happening “maybe sometime” but soon. No doubt both of us couples drank a special bottle of Valentine’s Day wine that night—excited and more than a tiny bit scared by our new-found fortune.

This year, even though it’s the first Valentine’s Day of our new life, we won’t need to celebrate with chocolates, flowers or over-priced cards filled with someone else’s words. We say the words all the time for free and make our own version of the hand-holding Hallmark couple staring off into the sunset. This year, we’ll breathe an even bigger sigh of gratitude and relief that we’re here, moved in, and figuring out that February in Rangeley is not only feasible, but fun. We do have a romantic evening planned, featuring something so special it makes my heart flutter: We are going out to eat! Out, as in away, down the trail, into town. Not for our typical night out either, which usually happens because we’re still in town and it’s almost suppertime and we know we’ll be too hungry to put away our groceries if we don’t cram in a burger. This Valentine’s Day, we’ll be enjoying a breathtaking Rangeley tableside view, a gourmet menu and some special wine with our new BFFs from the sportsmen’s club. We can do the “just you and me by candlelight” thing any night of the year. But nothing says “I love you” out here in February better than getting together with other like-minded souls over some prime rib and chocolate moose (er…I mean mousse). I already have two possible date night red sweaters picked out. One is a soft, clingy turtleneck. The other is an Icelandic cable knit good for 10 below zero.

After 35 years of Valentines, I’m happy to say the romance is still strong. I can’t imagine growing old in my Adirondack chair next to anyone other than Tom. But wisdom and a rural lifestyle have changed my definition of true romance. Unlike the TV commercial women, I don’t yearn for Tom to give me diamonds showing me his open heart or the shape of his arms muckled around me. He’s given me plenty of jewelry, and probably would have given me more if I hadn’t asked “Could I be going on a Caribbean vacation with what this cost?” each time he handed me an expensive-looking box. We did purchase ourselves a special treat this year, one that’s sure to keep the warmth in our relationship far longer than diamonds or a trip to the tropics. We’ll be anticipating it all during our nice dinner, the ride home, and our rush upstairs to get into bed. We bought each other a heated, his-and-hers, dual control mattress cover! My core body temp spikes just thinking about it.

Speaking of heat, I nearly forgot it was Valentine’s Day until I walked by the magazine display in the IGA. All the issues not plastered with snow machines or rabbit dogs shouted out: “Do you want the fire back in your marriage?” or “What’s your sizzle factor?” I just smiled serenely and walked past in my quest for produce that had as much spunk as those titles. When it comes to fire, my husband could teach those Madison Avenue women a thing or two, I figure. He’s kept one burning for me all night—and all through the day—since November. It may not generate the thigh-radiating, breast-searing heat that’s the stuff of romance novels. But, in my book, a stoked wood stove tells me I’m cherished like nothing else.

I know my version of sparks flying isn’t what sells Valentines. But, it sure keeps me happy at home, cleaved to my husband’s side. A cozy wood stove, toasty toes snuggled up in bed—it’s the little stuff that counts, right ladies? Plus real romance lingers throughout the year. Flowers die and chocolates evaporate. Things like trapping mice and spraying the hornet’s nest out by the clothesline, now those are sweet, enduring gestures that remind me why I married him. And I want to tell you, when he gets his drill out and promises to hang up new towel racks, I swoon!

Not to seem sexist to my guy readers, I must say that I know romance goes both ways. I may only bring a couple logs in from the wood pile now and again, but I do my part to make sure Tom knows he’s appreciated. His favorite gesture—a small thing for me, but a biggie for him—is when I bake him a blueberry pie. Yeah baby, homemade wild Maine blueberry pie—he loves it better than, well…anything. Also, for example, last fall I devoted myself to figuring out how to clean his favorite fishing hat. When I handed it back to him looking as good as the day he first put it on, I’m pretty sure his knees buckled.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! May you all be cherished.

Snowshoe redemption

Joy Clough5 Comments

Not long ago, snow + shoe was an oxymoron for me. Once snow fell, shoes stayed by the back door until absolutely necessary for getting back and forth to the car. For all other activities inside the house and around the yard, I relied on slippers (with emphasis on slip). The fact that I now keep a pair of snowshoes leaned up against my porch and put them on because I want to, not because I need to, is nothing short of an evolutionary miracle.

I’m in good company these days, I know. Used to be that only game wardens, trappers or other seriously snowbound folks wore them. Everyday business shoes, they were, the wing tips of the Great North Woods. But now it seems all manner of people are strapping on a set and trekking across the deep drifts for fun. And, for staying in shape and blowing off the cabin dust once in a while, you can’t beat snowshoeing for a cheap, easy alternative to skiing. No lift tickets,  gas money, or fancy cross-country technique required, just pop ’em on and get out there! Fortunately, snowshoes’ widespread evolution from necessary footwear to desirable athletic gear has paralleled my own personal journey out of the Dark Ages of winter exercise.

As I pointed out in Ice Road Tracker, I’m not the most graceful girl in the bunch. I went downhill skiing once (as in one run) on the bunny slope at Gunstock back in the mid-70s. I did it so my then-boyfriend/private ski tutor, Tom, would be impressed. He wasn’t. Later, as my husband, he soon accepted that he wasn’t getting a snow bunny as any part of the deal. He did help me graduate to cross-country for a while. One Christmas, he gave me my very own pair—waxless, new-age jobs with the latest step-in bindings and, in theory, nothing to stop me from gliding away toward new horizons. He even gave me countless lessons on cadence, stance, and how to, basically, not fracture my tail bone. But, not being particularly ambidextrous with my lower limbs, what should have been “step-glide, step-glide, step-glide” was, for me, more like “step-drag, step-mini-glide, step-drag.” I was OK on vast, open, flat surfaces with relatively light snow, which I found twice in about five years before giving up skis for ice fishing cleats and a seat by the hot dog fire.

The first time I tried snowshoes, I was hopeful. They looked like a way to elevate me from a wintertime waste of skin to passable year-round New England wife material. Old “modified bear paws” they were, with rawhide-laced bindings. Compared to Tom’s huge tear drop models they were streamlined, but I still managed to drag snow, rocks, dog poop and an occasional squirrel nest on the back of mine till the laces loosened up and I had to stop and re-calibrate. I soon realized why old-fashioned snowshoes made such good wall decorations. They deserved to be hung way up high in the peak above the fireplace, out of reach.

Thank goodness I eventually got a pair of new, high tech Tubbs. Unlike my previous pair, which just felt like bathtubs strapped to my feet, these snowshoes are named for their simple oval shape.  Strapping these on and keeping them strapped on is a breeze! No more nearly useless rawhide one-size-doesn’t-fit-all lace-up bindings. Tubbs nifty rubber straps actually bind to my boots, cinching and uncinching efficiently without the need for cussing or contortion. Once on, the Tubbs actually gripped onto the ground. They had some serious snow traction—a vast improvement over my old bear paws, which had no claw-like properties whatsoever and left some terrain slippery like, you guessed it, walking across the bottom of a bathtub with shellacked wooden shoes. Thanks to the marvels of modern frozen footwear technology, I could get out there, on top of the snow, and stay out there! Finally, I could participate in a popular, self-propelled winter sport that was supposed to make me walk like Quasimodo!

Even so, for several years, I remained an infrequent weekend warrior. Snowshoeing was  something I did as an alternative to sitting around or sorting laundry. It let me watch the beagles romp and gave me occasional verification that, yup, it was still winter outside. My seasonal exercise of choice was indoors, on the elliptical at the gym, watching Dr. Oz. Last year at this time, it was a winning combination. I trimmed down and toned up. I learned  answers to all the medical questions women like me want to know but are too embarrassed to ask—so they tune in while acting like they’re exercising. When I moved to Rangeley last spring and switched to good, old-fashioned outdoor walking, I was ready for fresh air and pumped to outdo my “personal best” from previous summers. I still loved Dr. Oz, but I loved the balsam-lined terrains of my own backyard even more. By late fall, I’d met my goals without the gym and had moved into maintenance mode.

First snowfall came, it seemed, before the Thanksgiving meal was cleared from the table. Suddenly, maintaining my optimal body mass required more than just Nike’s and will power. My beloved Yaktrax were OK for most daily road trips, but what would I do when rum cake, cabin fever, and perhaps rum with no cake forced me to take my workouts to the next level?

Turns out, I only had to ponder that dilemma for a couple days back in January. With my Tubbs strapped on, my everyday routes put me in the cake burning cardio zone again. Add the ski poles necessary for me to maintain lateral stability, and I’m working my arms and pecs better than any elliptical. Or, I should say, better than any elliptical I ever programmed. I’d choose “moderate,” not the heart-throbbing, or Mt. Washington climbing settings. And the only thing that might have stopped me from powering down after an hour would have been Dr. Oz going to a 90 minute show. Compared to virtual gym walking, real Rangeley snowshoeing provides all I need to literally “kick it up a notch.” There’s no hopping off a machine when I’m an hour out on the trail and I’m ready to quit. There’s only me and my tracks leading home. And the scenery and sounds of nature are so much more sensational than Dr. Oz even on his best day! I am, however, still learning how to ease into my new routine safely, how to turn around even if I’m feeling “in the zone.” On a recent snowshoe across the Big Lake, for instance, with the windswept snow glistening for miles around and Bald Mountain’s blue dome beckoning me like the Hope Diamond, I was pretty far from home before I remembered I was alone and it was late afternoon. “Wouldn’t want to get stuck on Toothaker Island overnight and have to eat my shoe laces like the snowbound pioneers of long, long ago,” I said to myself as I turned around. “Oops…no more rawhide, anyways. That’s on the old snowshoes hanging on my cabin wall!”

Keeping up with clutter snarl

Joy Clough2 Comments

One thing these bone chilling days are good for, besides standing at the back door peering at the thermometer, is catching up on my reading. Lately, I’m finding women’s magazines particularly entertaining. When I’ve memorized the latest Rangeley Highlander, I’m tired of the Mother Nature bashing on Facebook, and the novel I started is tucked somewhere too far away from the wood stove to make it intriguing reading, I turn to my pile of magazines and open a window to another world. As the mercury plummets and my tea goes tepid, they show me how many ways I’m not keeping up with “most” women, and how much I’m really not missing out on living in the Maine woods.

According to the editors, the top item troubling most women at the start of this new year is household clutter. Really? What happened to not enough family time, world poverty,  shrinking our carbon footprints, or maybe just our growing waistlines? Nope. Categorizing, containing and covering up our stuff is supposedly keeping us awake at night more than hugging our high-fructose filled kids, or wondering if we’ll keep our jobs long enough to pay our cell phone bills. An orderly life—or at least one that looks that way—trumps all.

“Phew…check off that box!” I congratulated myself as I tossed the magazines into the burn pile. “I know exactly where all my stuff is!” And, at any given moment, I’m within ten minutes, two flights of stairs, a couple cupboards, drawers, boxes, baskets and/or totes away from laying my hand on whatever item becomes crucial to my well-being. Who knew that moving everything up to Rangeley was fulfilling my dreams and achieving what eludes most Good Housekeeping readers?

But it wasn’t long ago that any article on household organization would have featured me as a “before” profile, not an “after.” Heck, I’d have earned my own little side bar devoted to how my kitchen had more junk drawers than fully functional ones. “We all have at least one,” the lead in would say, “that retractable wooden rectangle about four inches deep hiding about six inches of worthless odds and ends under our countertop. It’s the great American junk drawer.”

Up until a year ago, I was a junk drawer junkie. With limited counter space in my previous kitchen, I put all manner of things “away for later” in drawers until, eventually, only two  were functional. The remaining six held everything but silverware, napkins, utensils or other sorts of necessities that kitchen drawers are supposed to keep easily accessible. The last time I managed to pull it out far enough to look, the biggest drawer held birthday candles with frosting still stuck on them, three boxes of toothpicks, a hospital ID bracelet, a bubble blowing wand, half an envelope of Rapid Gro, that special doohickey I needed for my dehumidifier back in July, keys to my ’68 Rambler, and a gadget I should have entered in Yankee magazine’s “What the Heck Is This?” column. The whole ungodly mess was tangled up with string, pencils, a couple shoe laces, and laying on top of some weird wooden utensils I’d received as wedding gifts and hadn’t prepared any food items in the last 30 years that had given me cause to use them. From the outside, of course, all my drawers looked identical—right down to their decorative brass knobs. My guests never needed to know what secrets lay within but me, unless they made the mistake of offering to help set the table. They’d pull out what they thought was a logical place for forks and spoons and realize too late they were wrong. Leaping back, they’d beg for assistance, and I’d have to free a rusty spatula or old tape dispenser imbedded sideways before I could level off the underlying junk and roll it all out of sight again.

It’s funny how quickly even the most ingrained habits can change with the promise of greener pastures (or, in my case, greener woods and a better kitchen by a lake)! One moment, Tom and I were talking to our realtor about market values, and the very next day I was “staging” my property for selling. “Staging” is realtor-speak for the crucial steps I needed to take to make my old house look like the best show in town. Stage One: Clear out all the furniture and knickknacks not worth the space they’d been taking up for decades. Stage Two: Pack up everything else, including what’s in storage nooks, closets, cabinets and, you guessed it, junk drawers. Basically, this stage entails dealing with all the places you hurriedly stashed stuff so Stage One buyers wouldn’t see it as clutter. If you’re lucky, like I was, Stage One lasts just long enough for you to wish you’d had that much elbow room years ago. Stage Two, on the other hand, can drag on until just before you leave the keys on the table and walk out the door.

Moving out took weeks of sorting, selling and selective packing, plus a four-page spreadsheet, a storage pod and, I’ll admit, a couple sleepless nights. On the Rangeley end, as I explained in Self Storage Ins and Outs, it took a pledge: “All crap goes out. No crap comes back in.” But when the move was finally complete, I’d managed to conquer clutter snarl, to use my beautiful new pantry with reverence and respect. Now that I’m really settled in, I sometimes need to remind myself how I originally labeled the sketches of my kitchen layout. “Silverware…cereal…Tupperware….” Not one square inch of storage was reserved for junk. It is still tempting to hoard, though, living 20 miles from a hardware store with a husband who I know can fix a toilet with string, duct tape, and a plastic fork. We haven’t stopped hanging onto stuff for reuse, since we do live in Maine, after all. We’ve just become craftier about where it takes up space before it’s brought back to live. 

“Wow, my clutter control must qualify for a Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” I told myself as I stoked the fire with another magazine. And I have no intention of returning to my days of snarled, sub-counter chaos. Besides, now that I’m caught up on my reading, what better do I have to do on these long, winter afternoons than keep my crap compartmentalized and where it belongs? It’ll be at least another month before any more magazines come and I get a whole new stack of burning issues to look into.

Ice road tracker

Joy Clough4 Comments

I don’t know much about the guy who invented Yaktrax. But I do know one thing for sure: I love him more than life itself. And, since he has saved my life more than I can count, I’m pretty sure my husband would be OK with me confessing my devotion to this wonderful, genius of a man.

For those of you who winter somewhere warm, dry and predictable, Yaktrax are indispensable footwear on Rangeley-type terrain. Superior to cleats, which only help navigate across glare ice, Yaktrax are metal coil-encased rubber boot-bottom straps that provide better traction over the wider spectrum of frozen surfaces I might need to negotiate on any given day. Strip me of my long underwear, my thick socks or my Yaktrax this time of year, and I’d be moving back south faster than a Canadian goose with ice on her fanny feathers!

According to an article by a fellow devotee in The Seattle Times, Yaktrax were invented by a teacher/climber/entrepreneur named Tom Noy. The idea came to him during an Everest expedition when he became determined to design traction that wouldn’t shred his tent and sleeping bag when he wasn’t gripping on to a sheer precipice. I only rely on mine for good old-fashioned walking—my exercise of choice, my way of getting fresh air, natural vitamin D, and a chance to wave to my neighbors. Especially this time of year, my daily walking ritual maintains my fresh outlook and keeps me from (as my friend from Down East would say) needing to strap a “wide load” sign to my backside. While my expeditions are a bit more tame than scaling Everest, most days the foot gear it inspired is the difference between me getting outside and vertical, or staying sprawled by the wood stove.

Once I’m out there, keeping myself vertical is still my main challenge. My physical therapist once said I have “gravitational insecurity”—a kinder, more gentle way of explaining why my family calls me Queen of the Flying Trip. The various ways I’ve managed to keep that crown on my head while sailing parallel to the pavement from Manhattan to Grand Cayman will need to be covered in a separate post (maybe more). But, for right now, let’s just say that I could’ve been the poster child for those bright yellow “Watch Your Step” falling stick figure signs you see anywhere there’s the slightest possibility of mis-stepping. Been there. Done that. In all those places and then some!

My Outward Bound instructor daughter, who gets paid to help people buck up and figure out what they’re made of while outside their comfort zones, says my brain just needs more confidence in what my lower torso can actually manage. “Read it and run it,” she tells me. That’s whitewater lingo for studying what lies between you and where you want to go, and having faith that instinct, guts, and the good sense that God gave geese will get you there in one piece. Come wintertime, with the accumulation of white-on-whiteness that obliterates any obstacles on my path, I’m less about “reading it and running it” and more about peering at it and tippy-toeing nervously toward and around whatever it is I think might impede me. Thanks to my Yaktrax, my confidence, speed and performance have vastly improved. Even if I fail to read my terrain, at least they let me spend most of my time perpendicular to it instead of sailing spread eagle over it.

My next challenge is to figure out exactly what indoor surfaces will still keep me safe while wearing my Yaktrax. Technically easy to remove and put back on, the practicality of doing so is, however, not an exact science. Unlike cleats—which turned me from nimble ice fisherman into a floor shredding stumble bum when I’d forget to take them off outside—I can leave my Yaktrax on while “running” errands. In theory, I can even wear them out to dinner. Knowing this was especially handy on my recent anniversary trip to the Old Port. So romantic, it was, muckling onto my husband of 33 years—filled as much with love as I was with fear that those ancient sea-sprayed brick sidewalks slanting down to the waterfront were going to be too tricky for my Yaktrax. I did look really classy from the ankles up and, not wanting to spew salty, gritty slush on the other diners in our favorite posh restaurant, I opted to leave my Yaktrax on. My secret was safe under the table. But I think I turned some heads when, a couple Margaritas later, I decided to negotiate  intermittent tiled surfaces on my way to the ladies’ room and my trusty boot grippers became roller blades. When I wasn’t half slipping, I was making a clumsy clicking sound across the floor like a Sea World penguin on skates. So romantic.

All in all, though, Yaktrax give me the confidence to keep forging ahead that coordination and good eyesight didn’t. Soon, I’ll be forced to graduate to snow shoes. Meanwhile, I can’t help but imagine as I track up and down my private ice road that my Yaktrax have turned my boots into the Rangeley version of those toning sneakers advertised on TV. All I have to do is keep trudging along and, by March, my buns will be as chiseled and toned as the boulders along the Penobscot, right?

Plus, now that most of my fear of face planting is gone, I can relax, tune into the gentle clickety-clackety rhythm of my body in motion, and let my mind ponder life’s greater mysteries. For instance, part way home the other day I got to contemplating the age-old question: “If you could invite any three people to lunch, who would they be?” The first two never change. They’d have to be my mother, God bless her soul, and Bono. But the third guest changes from Oprah, to Obama, to Thich Nhat Hahn—depending on my mood, the state of world affairs, and how competent I feel to make meaningful lunchtime conversation. Lately, I’ve been thinking it’s got to be the Yaktrax guy, God bless him. I just hope they all pick a restaurant where I can leave mine on without killing myself!