Creatures stirring

Joy Clough1 Comment

So, if there was a creature stirring all through the house, how would you know?

Living in the Maine woods on cold, pre-winter’s nights gives me ample opportunity to ponder that age-old question. The challenging part comes in never knowing the precise moment I’ll go from idle speculation to launching an in-depth investigation.

Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

“What IS that and where in the hell is it coming from?” It’s midnight and I’m interrogating Tom about the frantic stirring in our bedroom wall. Moments earlier, I’d laid my weary head on my pillow, grateful for my quiet serenity, my flannel sheets and my double layer of fleece blankets. As I snuggled in, I thought about the nighttime sounds we’d left behind in favor of our new blissful stillness. We weren’t victims of big city noise pollution by any stretch, but the incessant thumping of road traffic slamming through the potholes in front of our old house made our current address a more restful retreat.

Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

“That’s really loud and it’s right next to your head!” I declared to my husband and official noise patrol officer who, by now, was bolt upright in bed, blinking furiously into the darkness. Moments earlier, he’d been sound asleep with visions of big Rangeley deer dancing in his head. Thanks to years of training, though, he quickly answered his call to duty and began assessing the situation.

“Whaaat? What noise are you talking about? I can’t tell where it’s….” Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

“It’s right there, in the wall, next to your head! You didn’t hear that?”

“Sssshhh! Of course I hear now! Will you be quiet and let me figure out what it is and how it got in there?”

Typically, it takes a minute for Tom to fine-tune his hearing to my ultra-sensitive Mom- ears wavelength, and for me to throttle back the intensity of my verbal inquisition to match his calm style of methodical examination. But once we sync up, we are Team Invincible. Having a long history of shared critter invasions to draw from, we wasted no time zeroing in on our little trespasser(s).

“Bats should have migrated or be hibernating by now,” Tom stated. “It could be a mouse, I suppose but I just can’t imagine how that’s possible. There’s no droppings anywhere. And there’s no way he could have gotten into that wall.” Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump! “Jeez, I hope it’s not a friggin’ flying squirrel! They do live around here, you know.” Standing in his underwear with one ear plastered against the wall, I could sense the intensity of his concentration. Cautiously, I waited for breaks in the scratching and snuffling to offer up suggestions.

“Bats would squeak, remember…like that chirping noise we heard at the old Moosehead camp before we poked a couple dozen out of hiding. But it sure does sound like it has wings. Can you hear that sort of flapping noise? How could it do that without wings? And if it is a mouse, we sure can’t just leave it in there! Remember the time in our other house the mouse died in the wall, or at least it smelled like a mouse died in the wall? We’d have that dead mouse smell right behind our bed for months! Ewwww! And remember the mouse that died on top of the water heater and you didn’t find it till……”Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Attempting to shut me up, to scare the critter back outside, or both, Tom slammed on the bedroom wall so loud that the beagles started barking out in their pen. I crossed my fingers, calmed the nerves that had just levitated me a couple inches off the mattress, and hoped a noise that forceful would send whatever it was scampering away. Wasn’t it just the other day we were congratulating ourselves on being mouse proof—getting all smug about the new cabin being tight as a little drum with just us and the beagles allowed inside? As I drifted off to sleep again, I reminded myself to never get over-confident with Mother Nature. And never argue with your mother-in-law when she insists that, no matter how hard you try, you’re just borrowing living space from the forest animals. “You were right.” I admitted. “Good thing our visitors have left us in peace again, for now….”

Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!  WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Finally we decided to call off our investigation until morning. We screwed ear plugs in so tight our ear canals must have looked like the inside of a rifle barrel, and hunkered under the covers, waiting till we could add daylight and the power of Google to our plan of attack. Thanks to the Internet and a fresh outlook, Tom clarified our options to take back our territory. It was definitely a stirring noise, he figured. Possible sources, in this order, were: 1) a mouse who fell down inside the wall and was trying to leap and scramble his way out; 2) bats with no sense of seasonal timing; or 3) a friggin’ flying squirrel. No matter what rodent—winged or otherwise—needed relocating, his strategy would be the same. Like most home improvements, it would be a do-it-himself project, since rodents are not in my contract. Plus, he didn’t need an expensive exterminator to come out and charge big money for stating the obvious problem and taking care of it with the very same tools he had right in his own workshop.

Ultimately, reclaiming quiet here required a drill, ammonia, hornet spray with a super long nozzle and foaming caulk. Also invaluable was Tom’s deduction to make the inside corner of the bedroom closet the point of attack. Whatever was stirring in the wall is gone, for now, leaving it so quiet we can hear sleet against our windows and the wind blowing all the way down the lake from Upper Dam.

Portraits of Thanksgiving

Joy Clough4 Comments

Back in my teens and early twenties, I thought posing for the family Thanksgiving photo was kind of annoying. Just about the time I’d be digging into my carefully allocated favorite foods—while declining any not-so-favorites still circling past me in the hopes I’d free up some precious plate space—the request would be made. “Look up…over here…and smile everybody!” I’d oblige, mid-mouthful, smiling just enough to not mess up my spearing and shoveling momentum. Even when I became a hostess rather than a guest, I’d pause only for a half-seated pose, saying “cheese” then “Who wants more gravy?” mid-route back to the kitchen.

“What’s the big deal?” I wondered silently. “We all know what we look like. Besides, I already have a shoe box full of these different-year-same-diningroom-table-type shots.” And then, I found the old Polaroid.

Sometime in early motherhood, the little girl things I’d taken for granted became vitally important pieces of a legacy I needed to preserve. And the decades of old Polaroid pictures hiding in the shoe box were treasures worth sharing with my girls. Way down on the bottom, we found one of my first Thanksgivings captured in black and white.

The year was 1958. Nine of us are seated around my Nana’s table: myself, my cousins, my aunt, my uncle, my sister, my mother, and my grandparents. We’re all in various stages of spooning and serving and planning out second helpings when the camera froze us for a happy, hectic instant. I am two-and-a-half, perched on a step stool beside my Nana in a frilly dress I still dimly remember. My mother, seated on my other side, has just turned 30. She’s beaming a wide, relaxed smile while her arm is poised like a safety spring to hold me, her youngest, from toppling over and taking the holiday festivities down with me. Nana, looking over her shoulder with a hasty grin, seems to be saying something like: “Hurry up and take the picture before everything gets cold!” The only evidence of my Dad in the portrait is the burst of his flash bulb in the upper corner of the mirror hanging over the table. Below, three generations of heads turning toward the photographer’s light for a few immortal seconds, are reflected in the mirror, too.

Like all middle-aged moms, I have special Thanksgiving prayers about family and food, love and well-being. Before saying them, though, I think back to that old Polaroid print. It’s in the scanning of the grey setting that my here and now becomes vivid, because all the adults—the grandparents and parents posing at that Thanksgiving table—are now gone. After the flash bulb burst and my Dad sat back down, we all went back to our steaming plates, blissfully unaware that most in our precious gathering would, one by one, be leaving the table way too soon. I imagine my Mum looked up from her holiday feast thinking she was posing for just another snapshot. How could she know she’d already lived two-thirds of her short life?

The photo from 1958 is now archived somewhere in the moving boxes I have yet to unpack. Someday, I’ll take it out of the shoe box and preserve it like it really deserves, stuck for posterity amid the prints of my daughters’ birthdays, holidays, vacations and everything in between. By mid-February, I figure, I’ll be more than ready to take up scrap booking to get myself through my first Rangeley winter. Meanwhile, I’ve got a  slide show playing in my head of the most memorable year of my life. It’s been another year of challenge and loss, of beauty, hope and abundance, of my wildest dreams unfolding before me. This Thanksgiving, as I pause, smile, and really look at my family around the table, I will celebrate being there with them. I will give thanks for my daughters, now grown into beautiful, strong, amazing women who mother me back while keeping me young at heart. I will commemorate this year as one of great balance, of growth and simplification. While my home and lifestyle became comfortably smaller, my world once again includes my sister and my niece. And I’ve gained a new love and understanding for Tom’s brother and sisters, making my extended family closer than ever. I will give thanks for all of them, especially Tom, my husband and forever friend—the center of my beautiful collage. I will sit still for the annual picture, aware that it IS a big deal, being another year older sitting around the same old table.

I will never lose sight of my old Thanksgiving Polaroid. It’s a necessary backdrop for me. In contrast, though, my here and now is too vibrant for me to dwell on portraits of my life gone by. Spirit willing, I picture myself in my 80’s surrounded in living color by my family and friends, focused on the blessings right in front of me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Be blessed.

(For more on Thanksgiving, see Quirky Turkey.)

Happy half anniversary

Joy Clough2 Comments

When my girls were toddlers, we originated half-birthdays – celebrations marking six months till they turned another year older. Giving us a good excuse to eat cake and act silly in the middle of winter, this tradition stuck into adulthood. “Happy half birthday!” I still shout into the phone, picturing my half-birthday girl treating herself to a cupcake with one festive candle. Posting on Facebook, or planting a candle in a cookie is also acceptable, as long as the sentiment is expressed.

“What’s a half birthday?” one of Helen’s friends wanted to know last January after I acknowledged the occasion on her Facebook wall. “Duh…It means I’m 26-and-a-half years old,” Helen explained, “going on 27!

Tom says my ability to recall dates is a female thing. Whether it’s the specific day back in 1973 he finally asked me out – or when we bought our first car, brought a new beagle home, or traveled to a particular destination – I can rattle off the date like it was yesterday. I can’t say with any certainty who I met or what I read about just yesterday, but ask me to list significant occasions and I’m a savant.

“Hey, I’ve been living in Rangeley for exactly six months today!” I announced recently. “It’s my half anniversary!” We were driving down a dirt road covered with mixed precipitation, which triggered my internal almanac. Half a year had gone by since moving day in May, when I was driving down that same dirt road (covered in mixed precipitation) with the last load crammed into my Subaru!

Why does my date recall click in semi-annually rather than waiting a whole year? And how can I calculate lunar cycles when I can’t even finish a crossword puzzle? Beats me, but I think it has less to do with my gender than it does with my ability to filter my world through the eyes of an overgrown six-year-old. I romanticize the past and dream about tomorrow. Each day I learn something new, I surprise myself. If I’ve been sad and suddenly someone tells a joke, I remember the moment I stopped crying and started laughing again. And, while the kid part of me is doing that, the adult part of me is doing a daily assessment of where I’ve been and how far I still want to go.

It was almost 30 years to the day I’d moved into my house in Rochester that I left it to move to Rangeley. Three decades of birthdays, holidays and weddings I’d celebrated there, mixed in with passings and other sad anniversaries, too. My first house had endured all my momentous occasions and my trivial ones. It sheltered my family, watched us grow. While packing, I thought I’d mourn leaving just a little bit. I thought I’d want to linger in my kitchen near the door frame that tracked each girl’s height from birth through high school with pen carvings in the wood. Instead I felt relieved, ready to start my new life in my favorite home on the lake. As I drove away for the last time, I could almost hear the girls in the back seat, chattering about Indian Cove and s’mores and all the adventures they’d have when we finally got “up to camp.”

I did indulge in a brief period of feeling sorry for myself a couple days after I moved in my last load. I was standing in my new kitchen, watching Tom drive away, and I was as mournful as the beagles to see him leave. His retirement from teaching was still a month away and, weekdays, he had to live with his sister until school was out. Meanwhile, the beagle boys and I had to hold down the fort.

On that lonely afternoon in May, those weeks till Tom could join me for good seemed like forever. But I bucked up, marched away from the window and got busy. I unpacked till the sound of tape being ripped off a box top made me want to cry. When I got tired of stocking cupboards, I blasted WTOS and danced around my kitchen in my PJs. At night when I could finally bring myself to turn the TV and the radio off, I put the wind-up alarm clock from our Moosehead cabin next to my bed, lulling myself to sleep like a puppy. I learned how to bake bread and how to grow flowers. I conquered my childlike cravings for giant gobs of peanut butter and, most days, fed myself dinner salads. I relearned how to like my own company as I watched the lake warm and the lupines bloom. Looking back on it now, that stretch of moving in alone time was a brief blur in the start of my momentous transition year. Before I knew it, Tom had hung up his teacher clothes in favor of jeans and a chamois shirt, and had joined me and the beagles out on the dock to  toast his retirement.

Until a week ago, I’d never determined my own half-birthday, figuring it was a rite reserved for my younger generation. But all the beginnings and endings I’d been through must have given my internal calendar wheel a spin. “Well, let’s see, I had my birthday about a week before Tom got here, so that would mean….”

When I turn 54 and a half this month, I’m psyched for some sort of personal harmonic convergence. Turns out, it happens right around Thanksgiving, right after my six month moving in anniversary, and right before Tom’s. I think I’ll find one of Helen’s candles, stick it into a homemade peanut butter sandwich, and rejoice.

Fashionably late

Joy Clough4 Comments

When it came to fashion, old-time woods hermits had the right idea. Clothes were for covering up, keeping warm, and for pocketing tools and bait. One outfit was sufficient, typically consisting of overalls and various inner and outer seasonal layers. Weather permitting, she would put a lump of soap in the pocket of her overalls, fasten them to a low branch over the water and let the current do her laundry. What she wore during wash day is a mystery, but I’m pretty sure it had a lot to do with why she was a hermit.

I don’t want to be a hermit. I do plan to go into town more than once a year. But I still envy the simplicity of a hermit’s clothing options. If a particular layer wasn’t hanging on the deer antler by her bed, or out in the lake rinse cycle, it was on her back. She didn’t have to dig through a closet full of hangers for just the right shade of slacks or find the Tupperware tote marked “Christmas sweaters” before it was too late. While I’ve never been what you’d call a clothes horse, I still have inventory control problems this time of year. I can’t seem to keep my available wardrobe in pace with the seasons, and end up either freezing or roasting while my timely seasonal stuff stays packed away.

My most fashionable period came and went in the early ’90s. As sole proprietor of my marketing communications business, sometimes I had to match a skirt, blouse and blazer so that I looked like I belonged in a boardroom instead of back home, working in my basement office in my fuzzy pants. Fortunately, I gave those outfits the heave long before moving up to Rangeley. Convinced by my daughters that shoulder pads were not coming back into vogue, and that pleated slacks did not flatter my midsection, I purged at least half of my wardrobe before I began packing. I only held onto a couple of “nice” outfits, just in case I win tickets to Broadway, or Tom surprises me with a big splurge down to Portland, and I want to look presentable. I also tucked away my default “really fancy” dress with the sincere hope I would be dragging it out for more weddings than funerals. Otherwise, I’m now devoid of couture and career wear, reserving closet and dresser space for my Rangeley “business” attire.

Rangeley attire, I’m figuring out, is not nearly as snazzy as L.L. Bean portrays. I don’t own any “casual countryside” pants, or a parka that’s only good for “those occasional summer showers.” And, if I did, they would still be packed under the bed on that one fraction of one day I’d fit the exact scenario described in the catalogue. The business of living here  requires plenty of L.L. Bean, but mostly the plain stuff you see in the “Tried and True” and “Classic Comfort” sections – the stuff no one needs to model because everyone already owns a pair. Being here year-round also requires a new definition of dressing for the seasons. Although “getting ready” for spring, summer, fall and winter is a marketable notion in other climates, seasons can’t be categorized neatly enough to sell any special ensembles up here. We don’t actually have summer, fall, winter and spring. 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 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.

Good thing I’m already an expert on wearing the “layered look.” Back when I was a warm weather resident, I kept some camp clothes in the old dresser – mostly stuff that should have been left at Goodwill decades ago. I had some stain-splattered dungarees, a couple t-shirts, turtlenecks, the obligatory hooded sweatshirt and my really versatile red camp sweater. If I got overly optimistic about the weather on Memorial Day weekend and didn’t pack any warm clothes, I could just layer my camp duds. If the temperature rose, off they’d come. Factor in menopause, and I acquired incredible agility and speed, peeling off and piling on clothing like Superman turning back and forth into Clark Kent. These days, I’m outfitted for any given excursion with short- and long-sleeved layers and at least one layer of fleece. I top that off with a waterproof parka that looks almost as sporty tied around my waist as it does zipped up to my chin. In my pockets, I’m packing gloves, sunglasses, and a variety of head coverings. When I get caught in those occasional not-quite spring or winter squalls, I’ve discovered that I can tie my hood over my hat even when it’s already over my ear muffs.

I’m still figuring out which fashion essentials are my “must haves” – which combinations protect me from the elements, keep my thermostat adjusted, and won’t draw stares in town. I haven’t bought any overalls yet, even though I could really use the extra pockets. The hardest part in updating my fashion statement has been throwing away my retro red sweater. When I first unearthed it from the bottom of the Hefty bag it was packed away in during our cabin reconstruction year, I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. “I found my camp sweater!” I sighed, as I saw its familiar red silhouette, felt its comforting chenille. Then it disintegrated in my fingers, falling in a heap of soft shreds atop the mouse-eaten blanket it had been layered next to all winter. I had no choice but to make that sweater a piece of my fashion history, comforted by the knowledge that my taste in clothing was shared by a really stylin’ camp mouse.

Self storage ins and outs

Joy Clough2 Comments

It’s not a saying you’re likely to see made into one of those overpriced wooden wall trinkets. But while moving our belongings from the old camp to the new camp, and then from the old house to the new camp-house, Tom and I had a motto that became so ingrained in our psyche, it may as well have been burned onto a pine plank and hung in our entryway.

“Crap goes out. No crap comes back in.”

Three years ago, “out” referred to moving all our Maine stuff to our garage. Since the roof was coming off to build our cabin up two stories, everything had to go or risk being demolished by a Sawzall. Back then, we weren’t experienced movers. In 30 years of marriage, we’d moved our things only twice: once from an attic apartment nicknamed the Hobbit Hole to our first house, and once from a water-access-only camp we’d sold as furnished (minus a moose steak-sized cast iron skillet too well seasoned to leave behind, and a few other must-have items for setting up our next rustic kitchen we’d thrown in a Roughneck dish pan). No biggie, we figured. Carting stuff across the back lawn to the garage in Rangeley would be a logistical breeze compared to lugging it down those Hobbit Hole steps and into the back of our pickup, or ferrying it across the northern end of Moosehead.

So, standing at Point A, my kitchen, looking out the window across the relatively short expanse to Point B, my garage, I felt pretty cocky that Memorial Day of 2007. Not too much packing required, I figured. No moving boxes even necessary. Nope, the only box I’d need was my box of drawstring garbage bags. And why bother labeling them? After all, I was only packing camp stuff and moving it 70 feet for a few months until construction was finished. Come Labor Day, I’d just cart it all back in…..

Not-so-fast forward to February 2008. Camp-house reconstruction is almost done. I’m thrilled with my new kitchen, living room, bedrooms and bathrooms, and am eager to outfit their brand spanking newness with a few household essentials. “At least one lamp. That big old spaghetti pot. Definitely the coffee maker and, if I’m lucky, another flashlight.” I’m rattling off a wish list of items to retrieve as I make my way out to the garage along our Iditarod Trail, so-named by our builder who’s had to shovel his way to work since early December. Turned out, my Labor Day end-date for construction was, as we’d say in engineering support operations, an “aggressive” deadline. Tom and I had made short work of moving all the old camp crap out on that balmy May afternoon, stacking bulging bags atop our old book shelves and cramming all manner of things into dresser drawers. “It’s getting real now,” we declared as we bid farewell to the empty log shoebox of a camp that used to be our summer home. Our part of the project was done, now “presto-chango, full speed ahead,” and we’d back in before snow flies, right?

So…I miscalculated by several months. Meanwhile, snow had definitely flown, drifted, blanketed and flown again while I acclimated myself to what was real and possible when erecting a three-story salt-box out of an old shoebox shell 20 miles from the nearest building supply store. Also unrealistic, I discovered that winter, was thinking stuff could just be moved back in as effortlessly as  it had been moved out. That would have meant I could actually find the coffee pot resting inside an old wastebasket atop the bookshelf, that I could pinpoint whether the flashlight was in my old sock drawer or at the bottom of any given garbage bag. Actual pinpointing of any sort, it turned out, was impossible in the freezing garage. Who knew back in May that drawstring garbage bags don’t reopen for gloved fingers and only expose their contents to mice who find what they’re looking for among the ancient camp towels?

Yup, the Iditarod Trail hampered all but a staggered approach to the garage-to-camp return trip. And, actually, abiding by our “no crap comes back in” motto had to be a staged effort as well. We did immediately rid ourselves of the really ancient junk – things like plastic juice tumblers that probably came free in boxes of laundry detergent back in the 50’s, a sugar bowl I think my mother got with S & H Green stamps, and assorted nicky-nacks we’d accumulated from well-meaning relatives who figured our camp was one step better than Salvation Army. In all practicality, though, since selling our Rochester house was still a ways off, we had to hang onto the old spaghetti pot and the lamps and such that had already lived a hard life before being deemed good enough for camp. Until we could move to Rangeley permanently, our motto had to be revised to “some crap comes back in, but goes back out as soon as its newer or better replacement arrives.”

I think we’ve succeeded. Six months since our big migration up the mountain for good, we are packing and moving experts. We rented a storage pod and tracked its contents with first-in-last-out precision. We bubble wrapped and boxed and carefully labeled. We merged and purged until there’s only traces of semi-serviceable camp junk mingled in with our new stuff. We’re all unpacked now, except for a few miscellaneous boxes tucked away on the third floor we’re ignoring till the dead of winter. Like the one labeled “Hall closet crap.” That one’s gotta go back out to the garage.

Lasting memories

Joy Clough4 Comments

“What if it was the last time you’d ever see the lake and your camp, would you want to know?”

Our neighbor and longtime friend, Ed, used to pose this question annually. It would be “closing up” time, and we’d be sitting around a stick fire, toasting the end of another great summer season with one or more adult beverages. His favorite movie, “On Golden Pond,” made him raise this question each time he watched it, which he did every winter when he began to get homesick for his place in Rangeley. He always came to the conclusion that, no, he wouldn’t want to know, and Tom and I would agree. Even if we got as old as Norman Thayer in the movie and, heaven forbid, fell ill right on our front porches, we would still want to think there would be one more summer on the lake.

Ed died suddenly one May, just as he was getting ready for his first trip back up here for the season. In his late fifties, active, and in seemingly good health, I don’t imagine he knew as he stood on his dock the previous October that he’d never make it back. Not consciously, anyway.

In years past, come Columbus Day, I’d look down the lake one last time and remember Ed. The Subaru would be packed with canned goods, dogs and dirty laundry to take “home,” and I’d walk as slowly as possible back up the path to start my trip down the mountain until May. I’d say a final goodbye out loud to my camp like it lived and breathed, already looking forward to the day, seven months later, when I’d fling the door open and yell: “I’m baaack!”

Things are different this year now that I’m a full-timer. I won’t have that going away feeling, wondering how my cabin will make it through without me, and I without it. I won’t get that silly conflicted sensation when I speak of “home” and know that, half of the year, my soul is rooted somewhere other than where my physical body must reside. Still, with the leaves turned and the summer folks gone, I find myself thinking back to Ed, to cycles, to seasons come and gone, to wondering: Is this the last day I’ll go outside without a jacket? Is this the last morning my mums will still be yellow when I wake up?

It’s a natural turning, I remind myself, to be reflective and a tad melancholy. As my landmark first-time year of permanency stretches past summer, it’s OK to look back on all my last-time journeys, too. And, I believe, it’s healthy and healing to not forget Ed’s big question. Not to deliberate and brood, mind you, but simply to honor it and not let it float out of my stream of consciousness.

In this season of closing up, of settling in and hunkering down, I’m allowing myself to ponder beginnings and endings. Like many people, I have a legacy of lasts, of losing loved ones, my livelihood, and sometimes even my sense of humor. I have spent repeated “last” Christmases and birthdays with terminally sick relatives, while missing just as many last celebrations with others taken in the wink of an eye. Would knowing – somehow being able to determine exactly – my last times with them changed how I spent those precious final moments? No. My answer, I’m thankful to say, is no. I would have laughed, cried, hugged and loved just the same.

But what has changed through these experiences is my certainty that, as the universe  moves in mysterious ways on its eternal timetable, I am left with choices. I can ebb and flow with it, or try to resist. I can assume “life sucks and then you die” or I can declare each new day a possibility. My choice – bolstered, I think, by my choice of lifestyle and surroundings – is to run headlong into life like an overgrown 8-year-old. My answer is to learn from my beagles, who don’t go on first and last walks, but barrel through the woods whenever and wherever we take them like it is the only time they are running free, the only time the ground smells so sweet.

Figure every time might be the last, that’s my strategy. And it’s a strategy that’s working wonders for grabbing the gusto out of everything from food to friendships, from adventures to everyday encounters. Take snorkeling, for example. I loved it so much when I first tried it in Cancun, I cried. “I finally found a water sport I love to do for hours, and it’s in the Caribbean ocean! This is the last time I’ll ever get to go!” That was 18 years, and 15 trips to seven different islands ago, and I still hover, transfixed for hours, figuring each colorful fish is the last one I’ll ever see.

When Big Mike, another longtime friend, came up to visit recently, we had a hard  time remembering the last time we saw him. It was sometime, we guessed, before we got grey hair and eating healthy became a worthy topic of conversation. No matter, though, we just took up right where we left off in college. Tom took him fishing for the last days of the season at Upper Dam. We told the same old jokes and laughed like we’d never heard them before. And the lobster we brought back to the cabin after showing off the peak foliage was the best any of us had ever had.

Coloring my world

Joy CloughLeave a comment

The editors from Country Living haven’t called yet, but when they come to do a feature on my interior decorating style, I’ll bet they describe it as “L.L. Carib-Bean.”

The new touches I’ve added to my 20-plus year-old dwelling have not, I don’t think, placed it outside the quaint little cabin category. It’s definitely not one of those places you’d drive by and wonder “Don’t they know they’re in the Maine woods for crying out loud?” But while it may not qualify as froufrou, my decor is by no means a standard fishing and hunting “it gets us out of the rain” type place either.  As the pros would say, I “brought the outside in” with natural earth tones, lots of pine paneling, birch floors and dark cherry cabinets. I added a tile hearth in the same vivid blue that, on a good day, matches my view of Bald Mountain and Saddleback. And, of course, I threw in plenty of prerequisite forest (a.k.a. Rangeley green) accents. Then I kicked it all up a notch with splashes of color not often naturally occurring in the environment, at least not at this latitude. The end result makes a unique statement about my remodeling influences, including:

  • I’m making up for the fact that, in my formative decorating years, I defaulted to brown. Thirty years ago, when I moved into my first and only completely brand new house, I had little decorating experience and even less furniture. I did, however, have a tan Naugahyde couch and chair set and a couple beige lampshades. So I put in brown and rust-toned carpet that would “go with everything” I hoped I would later have, while “not showing any dirt” from the  outdoor dog I had and the kids I eventually would admit I hoped to have. My kitchen and bathrooms featured harvest gold, avocado, copper and all those other stuck in the ’70s shades. Behind closed doors in my bedroom, I even had a bright red carpet. But my living room stayed brown and blah for at least a decade.
  • Tom and I agreed we wouldn’t just go with the typical moose and loon motif when making renovations. We do love moose and loons, of course, and still are left with almost as many inside as we see outside. We just strived to be a bit different. So, instead, we came up with wild flower bathrooms. To contrast the knotty pine paneling throughout the rest of the house, we had the two bathrooms and the kitchen sheet-rocked so they could be painted. Buttercup yellow was my choice downstairs, accessorized with Black-Eyed Susan print curtains and (coming soon) wild flower art. For the upstairs bath, I chose the palest pink to compliment my purple, pink and white lupine shower curtain, my hummingbird and lupine stained glass in the window, and one of my favorite pieces of artwork: A moose standing in a field of lupines! (He’s your typical Maine moose picture, but just a bit different, hanging there in his pink and purple habitat.)
  • My color scheme was dictated primarily by stained glass. As I showed you in Come and Meet Those Dancin’ Feet (Part Two), my favorite keepsake and interior focal point in my previous house was a piece of stained glass – a particularly vivid piece featuring green grass, cobalt lake water and three bright red roses. I’m sure in reality my decision-making timeline spanned several months, but here’s how I remember it: 1) Tom told me I had a window of opportunity to decide on colors for paint, countertops, etc., for the Rangeley reconstruction. 2) I didn’t take him seriously enough quickly enough because: a) I had been living in the same quarters for so long that picking stuff out meant a quick trip to the Home Depot for either damage control or camouflage, and b) having a virtually clean redecorating slate was too good to be true and, in a twisted way, scared me into inactivity. 3) I was sitting in my Rochester kitchen, drinking coffee, gazing at my stained glass in bewilderment, wondering how the heck I was going to not screw up my one big chance to showcase my treasures in a new home, when my “window of opportunity” suddenly solidified right in front of me. I knew I would hang the stained glass in my new Rangeley kitchen. It would be a focal point forevermore, shedding light and color throughout my first floor, contrasting beautifully with my dark woodwork, matching my mountain-blue hearth and my grandmother’s blue Danish plates I’d hang on the beams! And the green glass of the grass would make a perfect paint color!
  • I matched the color of my kitchen walls to green stained glass (see previous bullet) on a really sunny day. With my new focal point in mind, I immediately marched off to Home Depot and made color choices in record time. (A true believer in supporting the Rangeley economy rather than a big box store, I wasn’t going to buy paint, countertops or Congoleum there. My mission was to match up swatches to bring to the Rangeley Building Supply for them to make the order.) What I described as New Leaf for my green kitchen color, the paint manufacturer actually called Swamp Splash. While this lively spring green did match perfectly with my stained glass still hanging in Rochester, it initially alarmed our building contractor with its incandescence. Adding in appliances and dark cabinets toned it down considerably and, to my knowledge, hasn’t scared anybody since. The end result is a Key West sort of ambiance in the western  mountains of Maine. 
  • I have a serious passion for red. Red cars, red-headed men, red carpeting (see first bullet). Fortunately, when devising my scheme of rustic jewel tones, I tempered my passion and incorporated red as an accent color only. I have a bit in my area rug, a few pieces of my mother’s ruby glass displayed here and there. Tastefully toned down, I’d say, and not what people expected I’d come up with given free rein. Those who knew my passion for red and pictured me remastering Belle Watling’s front parlor on the shore of the Big Lake seem relieved.
  • My other favorite place in the whole world is a tropical beach. I hope my readers aren’t dismayed when I admit that, even surrounded by Rangeley’s four-season splendor, I still often dream of turquoise waters and beaches lined with palm trees and hibiscus. In terms of decorating direction, this polarity has left me somewhere near the intersection of Rangeley Plantation and Coconut Grove.

Whatever collection of quirks has influenced my unique style, I’m glad all those decorating decisions are behind me, literally. The color wheel has stopped spinning, the paint palate is dry and I am most pleased with how I made my window of opportunity shine. I am especially glad this time of year, when I look past my hearth and my ruby window ornaments to the reds, greens and golds of fall in Rangeley. Country Living will call it “Kaleidoscopic!” That is, if they hurry up and come out here while the leaves are still on my trees.

Any given Saturday

Joy Clough6 Comments

I was browsing the greeting cards at a local gift store recently when the announcement was made: “Oh….it’s Saturday!”

It came from a woman standing in between the complimentary coffee carafe and the cash register. Her tone was not one of dismay or panic, but rather matter-of-fact with just a hint of urgency. She chuckled, pleased at her own sudden recall, made her purchases and left to go about her business.

“Yup, it’s Saturday, all right,” I thought. And then it hit me. There I was, reading through the same cute moose and hummingbird cards I’d seen repeatedly, wondering which critter went best with which upcoming birthday, and I hadn’t even been distracted by the woman’s announcement. I’d simply nodded in silence. I already knew it was Saturday. And, without even looking up, I felt I knew this lady just as if we’d sat down and had coffee face to face. She must be a local, I realized, and I must be almost one, too.

With house moving check lists, real estate deadlines, and 9-to-5 work weeks behind me, most days I’d be hard pressed to tell you what day of the month it is. I do have a calendar pinned to the refrigerator like everyone else. But unless it tells me it’s time to send off a cute card, pay a bill, or remind Tom to stop fishing and start hunting, I don’t use number dates to monitor my activities much anymore. I’ve switched over to a day of the week system instead. It doesn’t so much matter which calendar week I’m in, as long as I know “What day is today?” (Except when you’re talking about the third Thursday of the month. Everyone knows that’s pot luck dinner night at the Rangeley sportsmen’s club.)

Out in Rangeley Plantation (see my description in Finding Community), Saturday is dump day. It’s also fresh seafood truck day, post office and bank in the morning day, library before 2 o’clock and building supply store before 4 day, and make it to the IGA before last week’s sale items run out day. But, first and foremost, it is dump-is-open-all-day day. As you can imagine, Waste Management curbside pickup stops way south of here, leaving us responsible for our own garbage disposal. I can’t run out to the curb at the last minute in my slippers hauling green bags in one hand and pulling a recycling bin in the other. Tom and I need to haul our own by-products to the “transfer station,” so-called because it’s not really a dump, but a place where we dump all our refuse and recyclables so they can get transferred somewhere else to be dealt with. And, if for any reason, we have a total brain freeze on the dump hours of operation (meaning when the gate is left open), we can’t transfer our garbage out of our garage and must deal with those consequences for another week.

“Jeez, is it Saturday yet?” I wonder long about Thursday during unseasonably mild weather when what’s left of what I bought off the fresh seafood truck the previous week is in desperate need of transfer. (While most welcome in all other respects, Indian Summer is a bummer when it warms the garage after the dump reverts back to its winter schedule. In the “winter,” meaning after Labor Day, I lose the respite of having the dump open for a couple hours on a couple week nights.)

So if our noses haven’t reminded us, our bio-rhythms hopefully have and, come Saturday morning, we load up and head off for the dump. But, unless we are in dire need of emergency garbage transfer, we are not headed just to the dump. Out in Rangeley Plantation, 13 miles from the post office and 20 miles from the hustle and bustle of the Town of Rangeley, we strive to never make the 12 miles to the dump our only stop. We do what we call “the loop.” The loop will take us around to all the previously mentioned places of business. It consolidates our errands and conserves on gas, while preserving our sanity and rural way of life. And, more importantly, it reminds us why we came and why we don’t care so much about forgoing bigger city conveniences. At the dump, we are greeted as “hun” by the longtime attendant who has told me she will sort my recycling for me. A true honor, indeed, in these parts where co-mingling and other offenses have banished others to a lonely life of digging through their own smelly cans and sour bottles. At the post office, we aren’t a box number, but Joy and Tom who have a book from Amazon that was too big to put in the box so is handed over with best wishes for our well-being and weekend plans. On any given Saturday, one of us might stop in at the only hair salon that’s on a pond next to an ice cream store, where we have a good hair day as long as we don’t giggle too hard at the proprietor’s jokes and make him slip with the scissors. In our travels, we might also run into the guy who installed our TV dish and wonders if our reception is OK. He’s the Rangeley installation guy, not the DirecTV contractor sent from Waterville who refused to go up on the roof and told us we were out of luck. Our local guy runs into us in the building supply store or in the bank and wants to make sure we’re happy because, if we’re not, he’d “make the trip out” again. On any given Saturday, our “loop” is bigger now, but connected by people who would go the extra mile with us.

Maybe the woman in the gift store realized it was Saturday since that’s the day they switch over to Back Woods Blend in the free coffee carafe. If she was a renter, chances are she wouldn’t have even been there to make the announcement. Come Saturday, she would’ve hung her head and headed south while a local guy picked up her garbage at her rental cabin and transferred it for her. Nope, my guess was that she was a local and headed out of the store to make it to the dump before the gate closed, and after she got fresh seafood and did the rest of her loop.

“You know, when you retire, every day is Saturday,” our neighbor reminded Tom and me when we were making dinner plans awhile back. “Jeez,” I thought, smiling at the possibilities. “You mean the dump is open every day?”

Going inside…outside

Joy CloughLeave a comment

I’ve never needed much prompting to go to my “peaceful, happy place.”

When I first started going, I wasn’t much more than seven years old. I’d just tumble out of my camp bunk before anyone else and go sit there for hours, at peace with the water lapping against the dock, mesmerized by the mountains mirrored in the calm lake. It was a real location, my peaceful place, one I could occupy by myself with no more than a tiny canvas chair, back when mothers could let their daughters figure out how to keep themselves safe outdoors. I was content to watch the sun dance through the trees and along the green dappled rocks near shore. It was good for me, I’m sure, to just sit there with my hair still bed messy, not worrying or wondering about much. But at that age, there was no context for needing fresh air, for relaxation, for reconnecting with anything. If you’d asked me about healing, I would have shown you a Band Aid on my knee. Was I worried about being balanced? Oh, yeah, I’d admit. If the gym teacher made me try to walk across that scary, skinny little beam, I’d always fall off till she just let me go sit on the bleachers.

Much later, after losing a lot of that innocence and idle time, and losing the parents who used to share my peaceful places, I had to settle more often for returning there in my mind. And sometimes I’d need just a little coaxing from a guided meditation coach or CD to head me in the right direction. “Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, and with each breath, picture yourself in a beautiful, tranquil place where you are totally relaxed, totally at peace….” I’d close my eyes, be a couple breaths in, and poof, I’d be walking down a moss-covered path toward the sound of waves and out to my little canvas chair. I was seven years old again in my special spot. Once there, I felt soothed that life could flow as effortlessly as the lake beneath the dock, that my world could be as secure as the unmoving mountains. For a few precious moments, my mommy could be inside the cabin at the end of the path, cooking breakfast for me and my daddy, who was waiting to take me fishing.

Over the years, I got really skilled at traveling to my peaceful place in my mind. When the physical destination was not possible, I could escape to that oasis in the space of a quiet moment and a couple breaths. This was a very good thing because, while my life hasn’t been what I consider unbearably stressful, or traumatic enough to land me a guest spot on Dr. Phil, I’ve had my share of stuff along the way. And, if I ever get close to running out of stuff, I wouldn’t have to look further than the latest magazines or TV ads to find new reasons to de-stress and detoxify. Who knows, maybe that super stressed out woman in the scented candle commercial has been  sharing the same shoreline with me. She’s kicking off her high heals and transporting herself there, only to run into the “Calgon take me away!” lady who’s been out there since the 1960s trying to drown out her screaming kids and demanding husband. Maybe my metaphysical dock is actually pretty crowded.

I do know that, with more and more people needing to escape society’s pressures every day, teaching my daughters to literally take “out” their feelings with as few props as possible was a parenting priority. I helped them transcend anger, sadness and adolescent frustrations even when a real dock wasn’t available. But, while my intentions came from love, my methods weren’t always yogi-like.

“Go outside now and don’t come back in this house until you’ve figured out how to calm yourself down!” I’d yell if either one had an explosive moment of teenage angst. And they would, even in January, and even when the only sanctuary they could find was beneath a fir tree at the edge of the backyard in Rochester. Becky got so good at it that she stays outside now, as an Outward Bound instructor, teaching others how to center themselves in nature. It probably didn’t fit anywhere on the job application, but she’s told me since that her timeouts in the backyard gave her a solid foundation for promoting the benefits of wilderness therapy.

“Don’t ever haul that old tree away that’s laying down next to the brush pile,” Helen, now 27, told me during a recent visit. The cedar had been a favorite hiding spot for her and Becky to play “wilderness Barbies,” dressing up their dolls in fern and leaf costumes. In between checking the minnow trap, swimming, and building sand castles, they’d go there to dry off in their special thicket, not needing too many other props, and not caring that somewhere else, kids were playing Nintendo.

No, the tree’s not going away and the dock’s staying put too. And, now that our special spot in the woods and by the water is also home base year-round, we all need even less coaxing to surround ourselves in peace and quiet each day. Sitting there, I can still hear my little girls giggling and splashing, or shutting out the rest of the world as they wait for a fish to pull their bobber under. I know when they join me in person, they let the setting bring them back, too. And I know a big reason why we have sought out this space together is because we’ve never really left.

I won’t ever be seven years old again, at least not physically. And I won’t really be able to share my waterfront with my mother or other loved ones passed. But when I breathe deeply and listen to the waves, she is there. My dad is right there, too, being uncharacteristically quiet as he appreciates the morning air. My wonderful step-mom is sipping coffee and smiling, looking down the lake to where the water meets the sky. My mother-in-law, the last to leave, is admiring the new paint job she applied to the 20-year-old bench that now sits proudly facing the best view. If the light is just right, I think I can even make out the “Reserved Seating” sign.

Finding community

Joy Clough2 Comments

Isolation, we’re figuring out, is more a state of mind than a geographical predicament.

It is a valid concern, though, voiced regularly by those closer to bigger lights and brighter cities. “What do you expect to do all by yourselves way out there?” That’s what they wonder out loud, anyway. And even though we rattle off our list of comings and goings and the lakeside decathlon of events we engage in on any given day, silently they seem doubtful. What they’re really saying behind their raised eyebrows and nervous giggles is: “Yeah, but summer’s not going to last forever. Then what?”

Sure, it’s only September still, but as fall begins and we enter into the “then what” phase of this wonderous experiment called early retirement, we don’t feel loneliness encroaching. Call us naive, totally in denial, or just plain stupid, but we don’t expect to be lonely, either. Right from the early planning stages of deciding to live in Rangeley permanently, building a new sense of community has been just as important to us as building a newer house. So far, we’re finding what we came looking for.

When we moved, we went from being two of the 30,000+ residents of the City of Rochester, NH, to becoming new additions number 154 and 155 in Rangeley Plantation. (Technically, you see, we live in a “suburb” of the Town of Rangeley 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 described a “minor civil division.” As far as I can tell, when Maine split off on its own, places like Rangeley Plantation kept the name and a lot of summer folks, but dropped all other Massachusetts correlations.)

Soon after settling in, we went from numbers 154 and 155, to Joy and Tom, or just “the new folks living on the old Upper Dam Road all winter.” And in the four months since, we have mingled, been entertained, reciprocated, and basically hung out with people more frequently and more intensely than we did in the 35+ years we spent packed closer together with them in Rochester. Why? Well if you’re a Rochester reader and are about to stop because you’re feeling this is a Rochester vs. Rangeley “the grass is greener and the people sure are swell” comparison, please don’t. I love you and want you to still spend gas money to come see us because you were included in the friendship intensity I just mentioned. And, if you’re a Rangeley reader, please don’t stop because you think I’m saying you aren’t above and beyond what neighbors should be. You are. You see, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a geographical cure for loneliness. I believe you get what you look for in people, no matter where you go, if you choose to look. I believe people are giving, open and nice to be around unless and until proven otherwise, and I trust them to believe in me the same way. Whether I’m talking to the clerk at the DMV or someone I meet out walking, that’s what I put out there and, in large part, what I get back. So, the difference – the reason Tom and I are more closely knit with friends even though we moved “away” has not been so much a change in attitude or a change in population. It’s been a sharpening of focus, a recommitment to building relationships and the luxury of time to make it possible.

“Having the time” to stop in for coffee, to check in on our nearest neighbors, to participate in town and township events, has really been nice. ‘Course we had the time all those years we were commuting to jobs and busy with kids and any number of other things that put friends further down the list, but we didn’t take the time. Now that we have more time, taking advantage of it is a top priority. We’ve joined clubs. We’ve been to three festivals named after fruit harvests, and are reaching the limits of my “friends over for dinner” menus. One new friend has even invited me to join her group of bikers who pedal to the Oquossoc Grocery for muffins and coffee each morning! As the farthest away, with a 13-mile one-way trip on dirt roads to get there by 7 a.m., I can’t imagine what she’d ask me to do if she didn’t like me. (Just kidding. I love my new friend and am sure I’ll accept her invitation sometime between now and July 2012.)

So, while building a sense of community isn’t as cut and dried as building a year-round house, we are just as glad to be surrounded by friends this winter as we are to have R30 insulation in our new walls. We are glad to be finding what we’re looking for – friends new and old to keep us company, to call us by name and ask what’s up as we come out of the IGA or the bank. And when we look over their shoulders while chatting with them and see the gorgeous Rangeley lakes and mountains that are now our back yard, we’ll know we are doubly blessed.