Anatomy Trains

All week I have had to be ‘good’ in that sense of being ‘on’ with a lot of different people. Not much refuge for a recluse. Tonight, with the last of the meetings wrapped up and Quan taking off with friends to ride in the moonlight, I took a large slug of rum - two, i’sooth - and with my jaw thus loosened, I set off rowing. The night was exquisitely still, the river flowing glass, the pentacle moon wraithed in vapor, the trail of swirls fractaling out behind me as I cleared the boats of the cove out into the river proper. With one of Enya’s slow Gaelic carols on the iPhone, I am in the middle of a Scottish loch, magically cold within the hills and almost solid under a winter sky.

One of Mark Knopfler’s sea shanties paces the run across the channel, the rhythm marred occasionally as an oar hits a lobster pot. On the other side a long inlet runs up for a couple of miles. James Taylor’s steady picking and warm chords take me into its funnel, narrowing like some lazy southern river heading for a rapid, the oars rising and falling in time to the music, the bow singing as it broke the water ahead of us.

As the banks narrow down and I must pick my way more carefully though the curves, Etta James makes it a hot Louisiana bayou, schools of little herring sizzling out of the water ahead of the boat with each stroke, the overhanging branches closing out the moon until finally - no headlamp in the iPhone - bumping into the end of the salt water tide in total blackness.

Headphones off, I let the silence sink in until it was no longer silence but a rich blanket of sound - the plops and clicks of nearby insects or fish or birds, way up in this isolated, people-less cove. It is a little creepy, a little Stephen King, but wonderfully my own at that moment - ultima thule for this night’s journey. There is nothing to harm me, but my ancient self hidden under the social veneer doesn’t know that - my imagination puts anacondas in the black branches, and giant squid under the black surface.

I reverse the oars to align the boat back up the funnel, pumping out of the miles to the bouncing steel ball of Ry Cooder’s guitar. It feels so good - my feet are planted wide on the thwart before me, and I yield into my legs as I reach down and forward with my arms, not bothering to feather in the windless night. My pelvis rocks over the sitz bones, riding up along the ramus toward the pubes, arching my back. As the oars dip into the water I lean away from my arms, feeling the back of the arms engage right up over the shoulder and the bones elongate within the flesh. My legs push me back, twisting all those bones together from foot to hip into one piston rod, rolling the pelvis the other way on the seat toward the tailbone.

Push-yield-reach-pull - I’d been teaching it all last week, and now the tensegrity feeling of this frog-like movement overtakes my body as if I am leaping over the water - hands, then feet, hands, then feet. My breath falls into the easy rhythm, the movement creeps into the stiffer areas of my spine, especially the chronic panicked flexion behind the kidneys. Suddenly, with a fluid rush the kidneys open into the movement. The spine creaks into action, old water flushing, mossy shingles of locked open facets closing, adding to the movement as the enclosing X’s of the Functional Lines links the upper and lower parts of me in a new but familiar way. The arms reach as if pushed from the adrenals and the arching kidneys; the push of the feet linked all the way to the psoas to embrace them again.

It all feels wonderful and effortless, but like any new movement of course it isn’t, so I am grateful when the music fades to allow me to hear the ring tone, and I stop to drift as I talk to Misty, excited about her impending leap into college, the headphones doubling her lilting voice in stereo. As I drift I pass a wonderful scene of the moon shining through a row of trees and lift the phone to take a picture while I am talking to her. Everything on this little hand-held computer is so intuitive - I haven’t needed to access the manual yet. Within a very few clicks, you can get from any one thing to any other thing. An easy on-and-off switch avoids mistakes and saves the battery. The map bit alone is worth the price of admission.

Bending to it again with Roslyn Turek wailing out Bach’s English Suites, I fly through the warm August air toward our cove, where I finally turn to see Quan waiting anxiously on the dock with a light, “Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over. What if something happened to you? It’s eleven o’clock!”

I pluck out the earphones. “Why didn’t you call?”

Finally I got out of the river for a week, sailing Tycha with Annie then Quan on Penobscot Bay.  Making my way home on my own for a few days, the winds were light and variable so I made my own adventure.  On the last morning though, the dawn flew in from the north, driving silver scud like scrubbing brushes across the sky above Monhegan.  By the time I finished breakfast the boat was pitching fore and aft.  I set the jib and mizzen only, leaving the large main furled, sailing upwind in long tacks straight into the wind over Pemaquid Point.  On my side in the sea of heaving green, I was quite comfortable though unable to leave the wheel for more than a few seconds for the three hours it took to make it to the Hypocrites.

It seemed to be abating, so I put up the main to sail up the river to home.  Immediately regretted it. The northerly funneled down between the banks of trees, slapped me sideways with water coming into the cockpit over the coaming.  Every tack was a mind-rattling fight for control of the sheets.  The water was tropical green now, but with white spume coming off as gusts topped 30 kn. in gusts.

I veered off the wind a little and limped into Jones Cove - rested, ate, shortened sail, and skittered up river on the last of the flood at 7 knots with no more than a working jib and the mizzen.

Needed a minute to stop shaking after I made the mooring - such was the nature of the exercise.  The wind is quite solid at that speed, and it’s good enough if nothing goes wrong.  But my boat is old and that’s a tall order.

But funny to have made a cruise where I first time soloed my way onto Brimstone to collect rocks, and explored the coves on the swelly east side of Ragged, and did the Turnip Yard upwind by sail (that was with Annie - wouldn’t have done that alone).  Finally, after a full summer of doing nothing but going up and down the river, I have a cruise - and the biggest challenge of the week is coming back upriver.

All this recent travel has left me a bowl of stewed prunes - soft, wrinkly, and full of farts.

One packs a lot into this week at home - Quan and I have to readjust to each other, each having been ruler of our respective domains. I need a day of de(com)pression, and hours in the office with Tammy to keep Kinesis rolling.

So it is with great pleasure - no matter how I grumble - that I turn to the physical work of making the waterfront ready for the summer.

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional cusp between winter and summer here, spring being non-existent in Maine. This year is no exception - it’s the end of May and spring has been so cold that we are just between the forsythia and the lilacs even now, when suddenly we have a day so hot and still none of us can move, and in 48 hours bare trees are fully-leaved, the apple trees are in full blossom, the rhubarb has bolted, and the yard is yellow with dents-des-leons.

And the black flies appear in the garden, making weeding a misery. Annie, fully sleeved and wearing her bug-net hat tucked into her shirt, looks as if she has adopted radical Islam. Mosquitoes are bad - and they’ll be here soon - but the two weeks of black flies are worse, going for your eyes and under your hair in the back of your neck, leaving bleeding holes that scab and itch.

But I to the shore must go: the rowboats must be launched and commissioned, my mooring chain pulled up from the bottom and the bridle and ball reattached, the water turned on and flushed in the summer cottage, its swimming float and runway lifted into place, an iron rod driven through the rusty metal fittings, and most of all, my father’s old scow must be wedged down the ways into the water, in a yearly ritual even though it gets very little use any more.

Each task requires more tools than I remember to bring, so at first I curse my inefficiency and resent the time, but gradually the joy of work returns, and I warm to the simple use of muscles against something other than these computer keys, even welcoming the blisters and splinters and gouged knuckles as I lay the wooden ways with grease, lever the heavy old scow 1/2″ at a time at each end with a long iron pry until it gets over the lubrication. Then each pry gets a gratifying three or four inches until the big old thing hits the water for another year.

Over a couple of days, the working waterfront loses its winter feeling of terse abandonment into the luxuriant burble of bobbing boats, rubbing against the dock like happy kittens nosing your hand. The last task, after the heavy old outboard has been clamped and cursed into grudging life, is to fix the fendering - the rope and fire hose that lines the docks - so damaged in last fall’s hurricane (see the entry ‘Black-Clad Char’ for a description of this storm).

The fishermen are there too - the lobsters have just started to move from their winter torpor, and they are busy transporting traps from their yard to a pile of 20 or more on the pickup, swung into the boat and dropped into the ‘holes’ in the river bottom, there to feed the young lobsters (who can move in and out of the traps easily, feeding on the bait) and to catch the market size ones, who can get in but not out, spiky bugs that they are.

Lobster fishing is now essentially a large unfenced aquaculture project, with millions of pounds of bait put out to catch slightly fewer millions of pounds of lobster - the young ‘uns are essentially supported by the bait until they’re large enough for market.

We celebrate the completion of the work (and the departure of a friend from the community) with a lobster feed, the first of the year. At this time of year, before these exoskeletal bugs ’shed’, the meat is tight against the very hard shells, and we squeal as we ‘get’ each other with bits of shell or juice when we use the ‘crackers’ on the claws. Bacchanalia ensues, and Quan and I are up late washing every surface around the table, for nothing smells like old lobster.

This early in the season, we pay a ‘high’ price to Timmy - nearly $6/lb for the freshest seafood imaginable. Lobsters were so plentiful here in the 1700’s that they were gathered in barrels on the shoreside and used as garden mulch (what a smell that must have been). Because they were bottom feeders, they were thought of as ‘trash fish’, and eaten only sparingly - along with that other bottom feeder, the oyster - by the lower classes, like the indentured servants. In those days it was the cod - high in the water column - that was most highly prized.

This morning I got a report from the Maine Aquaculture Association.  Two surprising facts relevant to the ’saving Clarks Cove project’:

There are only 20 miles of Working Waterfront left on the 5,300 miles of Maine’s Coast, 50% of it in private hands, and thus subject to loss in generational and economic change.
Over $750 million dollars in state revenue and 35,000 jobs are supported by this mere 20 miles of vulnerable Working Waterfront Access.

I so hope that Clarks Cove can be among those properties preserved for the world’s remaining fisherfolk.  Our little property supports 4 lobstermen, 3 aquaculture companies, 2 yachts, and a host of smaller things like clamming, seaweed harvesting, et al.  A community of about 15 - 20 people carve their living from the thin thread of access over our pier.

Cap’n Bill claims 61, but looks 70. He’s been a commercial captain sailing the East Coast and the Caribbean for many decades, though he looks instead like a retired executive – short silver hair, a square face, patrician features – but barefooted and unconcerned as only 3 of the 8 people booked for today actually show up. His fin-keeled sloop seems able enough, if a little rusty as we push away from the pier under the Spanish fort and lighthouse, though you could not get below for all the wire, tape, line, and detritus he has covering every surface. He does not – could not – live aboard. I am glad the rest did not show up – the cockpit holds only the four of us comfortably – the rest would have been lolling on the deck, and 1500 pounds of flesh would have affected the 30’ footer’s handling.

All I want is to sail, and the wind obligingly freshens for a beam reach across to Culebra, with the soothing sound and feel I will not have again until my boat is launched in May, but the arrogant young Frenchman with his diffident American wife is itching to show off his ability to free dive to seventy feet, so we bring her alongside a reef (with a heart-stopping moment as Cap’n Bill sails across the ridge of the reef, the water going from deep blue to coral heads right under the keel in seconds – but he does this every day, so he knows where he can go.

Yes, does this every day, with an endless procession of tourists. Cap’n Bill has long since stopped listening to what we have to say – if he ever did – something drives a man to sea, and he rides over whatever anyone else is saying with ease and aplomb. Fortunately, his patter and his stories are good enough to cancel any rudeness. I drop over and follow his directions into the coral garden of the reef – bleached like most of the Caribbean, but offshore and thus richer than most of what I’ve been seeing while snorkeling from the island. We’re on Cap’n Bill’s own mooring he set out here, in about 40 feet, so he wants the Frenchman to dive down the lines to check the shackles and thimbles for wear. Thomås puts on his huge diver’s watch and drops over the side, but in going down, he apparently catches himself on some part of the mooring gear, so that by the time I get back from my tour, he is shivering back in the boat, with a cut down his sternum as neat as a heart transplant. The poor guy is bleeding pretty profusely, even though it’s not very deep, with paper towels pressed to his chest, and his wife still reading her book. The wind has petered out and we motor back to the dock, them to their plane to frigid, snow-bound Chicago, while Cap’n Bill keeps me working for another hour on some sailor’s errands around the boat, regaling me with stories of the stupidities and the ‘There we were…’ stories that are the staple food of all sailors’ repertoires.

Turquoise won’t do it – the water atop the sandy bottom on this windy day is malachite.

We have a lovely private beach – well, as private as anything is on this seemingly communard island – textbook perfect with palms and sloping sand out to the reefs.  Except for the glass – how did so much glass get here?  Go a quarter mile in either direction and there is little, but here, it abounds.  One could imagine the locals breaking their beer bottles here – it is clear, green, and brown, mostly small pieces, some tumbled to frostiness (Annie will like that for her bottle lamps), some new and sharp.  But some is mis-shapen, and melted together as if subjected to great heat - as if a tanker full of beer exploded just offshore, and these are the remains.

A white egret perched atop a grazing horse.  This is repeated many times during our visit – an act of grooming?

The unique feature of this otherwise delightfully bland Caribbean island is the omnipresence of the pasofino horses.  Some domesticated, others left to roam but still tolerant, of people some wild in the jungled hills of the island.  These horses are as small as a pony, but with the distinctive horse shape, such that the riders look unnaturally large atop them, to our northern eyes.  They clop along with a distinctive short gait, which sounds choppy on the road, but take the rider on a straight, smooth track, rather like our Tennessee Walker.

Last night, a couple of young men sprinted down our beach, looking for all the world like Arabs with their t-shirts around their heads like jalabahs, dark skinned, bareback but for a small piece of carpet for a pad.  At the far end of the beach, they ventured out onto the coral reef – maybe a foot of water.  The horses went willingly enough, even with the waves breaking around their ankles, but it seemed so dangerous to us – one slip into a hole in the old coral…

Quan is intrigued with the horses, and when a couple of them wandered into our yard to graze on the meager grass, she went out to look.  One horse had a crop of ticks within its ear so thick they looked like mussel seed on a rock – literally hundreds of ticks in each ear.  Quan, using some bum plums we got from the market, tempted this wild horse down the beach and – reluctantly, but those plums! – into the water, where she was able to rinse and clean his hind leg where it got torn on some barbed wire.  He will not sit still for any treatment of his ears, however.

Quan has uncharacteristically adopted a dog.  A tiny Benjy-type of terrier, this beach dog was surviving on the voluminous garbage one can find in every nook and cranny here. She looks well if scruffy, but with matted fur and the usual insectivorous collection along with her.  Banjo (an evolution from Benjy) now lives with us, and eats better than most dogs in Christendom.  She guards the house when we leave, and sleeps under it at night, barking only at other dogs, and the horses, until we taught her not to.  On a long walk over rocks, I essayed picking her up to carry her to the next stretch of sand – thinking I might get bit.  But she rested easily in my arm, and clearly understood, licking her gratitude before I set her down again to run.  The local shelter worker, whom we met last night on the beach, says the dogs here eat alright, but often die of heartworm.  We are in a quandary as to what to do with her when we leave.

In the winter the sunset lasts for hours. Finally released from a string of welcome but unending Sunday drop-ins, I headed for the shore as the sun went low to bail Dad’s boat of the latest rain, but then went on and on though the woods, alternately crouching and working with silence in silence, then crashing at speed between branches in the undergrowth - scaring the deer and crows ahead of me.

One of the few times in Maine that you can be warm yet in the woods with no bugs.

To balance a day spent lugging books, going around around the stairs of my tall house from the aerie to the cellar, I set outside in the last of the winter sun. The shore called, and I got in a rowboat, went out to the oyster boys for a natter. When - not often on a day after Thanksgiving - I felt the heat of the sun on my back, I pulled against the wind to Carlisle, the only place I felt safe walking in the woods on this last afternoon of the deer season. The geese are overhead - high now as the cold deepens - but the gulls are still around, and an unperturbed seal bobbed up by a lobster pot in my wake. The osprey are gone, but their nest awaits them for next spring. Mate for life, they do.

Pulled for home in the shimmering track of the sun, a lane of gold across the surried surface, scaring a heron off the rocks with a squawk with an outstretched neck and then levered into flight, and then the neck retraction into aloof disregard.

Then it’s up into the field where the neighbor’s dogs are poking through the horseshit. They bark at my like I’m the intruder, but of course they give way to let me pass - they know the hierarchy. As I take the crest for the view of the russet sunset, I surprise about 30 mallards in the little farm pond, drawn by Quan’s cracked corn. Only one remains, a female who can’t fly out for some reason.

I stop a minute in the gathering stillness of twilight, and see something moving along the surface of the water. At first I think it must be ducklings, but it’s too late in the year for such little ones, and as I watch it forms into a muskrat. Fascinated - I have lived for four years across the street from this pond - this puddle really - and never have I see a muskrat in it - stock still, I watch him circle the edge toward the duck, disappear, and then the duck comes flying up again, sratled. What can the muskrat want with the duck? It’s the size of a large squirrel, with a strong muscular tail - it is over by me now - spiky fur on his back, but otherwise sleek - but no way could he tangle with a duck.

At home in the dark, I try to look up muskrat iin Ted Andrews’ wonderful Animal Speaks, but oddly it isn’t there. Clearly, the muskrat had a message for me - no one else has seen him and he came right over, but what is it?

Later:

A friend found some information on muskrats :

Identifying animal tracks of the Muskrat indicates resilience, detachment and adaptability. “Muskrats have many attributes such as inhabiting both land and water, able to adapt to surroundings, being relatively waterproof, and having a knack for going about their business undetected. Given this, when we cross paths with the Muskrat we are encouraged to tap into our own ingenuity and adaptability when dealing with our present circumstances - realizing that everything has a potential for positive outcome (no matter how bleak appearances may be).”

So, at the moment, appearances are bleak on my ability to save the Clarks Cove farmland from development when the generational changes come.� I was enjoying the land and thinking about all the people and animals that depend on it when I spotted the muskrat.� Glad to hear that if I tap into ingenuity and adapt, a good outcome is possible.� � The muskrat specifically put the single female duck into the air, without hurting her.� So will I.� Stay tuned.

Sunday - especially the first Sunday I am home in weeks in the autumn - is anything but a day of rest. Quan has a list of things undone that require a second pair of hands or strong legs, and though she starts by taking me off the computer with, “Can you just help me with…?”, the list inevitably expands like a Hoberman sphere, and goes on and on, well into the dying afternoon of these increasingly short days. Finally, we stop from exhaustion, not from satisfaction - because the list for this rural farm - like the list for my somatic education enterprise - goes on forever.

But after an hour of mild fretting, I settle in. There is something very satisfying about the destructive power of a sharp chainsaw, and though I cannot understand anything else about President Bush, I get, on this wan afternoon, his satisfaction with brush cutting. It is pleasantly mindless, and produces a palpable result - in this case, more light for the garden next spring. It also produces wood, which I slice into stove-size pieces, and we truck it around to stack under the eaves. The branches mount up in the burn pile - it’s a yearly thing, a burn pile or two - always fun on a damp spring day to reduce it to a pile of ashes - I usually miscalculate and have to stay into the night to make sure it doesn’t stray.
But the garden has been covered with digested compost, rototilled, and mulched with rinsed seaweed to restore minerals. I am not a farmer or gardener, so all I supplied was the muscle power, but I am impressed.

Fall is the time of putting away here.� � Annie and I trigged the old scow to the mushroom mooring around low tide, and I leave Quan’s warm side to trudge through the gravel to the shore in the cold, now that it’s about high.� I feel like my father, in knee boots, and old coat and pants, sneaking a cigarette.� I am about his kind of errand in any case.� The oars rock loudly in the total stillness - no, there’s a plane.� I have an efficient new little LED light on my forehead, red leaves your night eyes.� The scow is riding now to it’s anchor, the mushroom now floating some 12 feet free her, and gun her toward the shore. When the mushroom hits and drags, I cut the trigging line and leave her with a bouy, though she’s likely just where I want her in the intertidal zone, where I can find her in the morning.

On the way back I stop to give the horses a treat of grain, but they are afraid of my forehead with its strange red light.