The spring garden is rich in ephemeral flowers. Today they are here but gone in a day or two.
Not a leaf is left afterward.
We mark the spot in our mind; “here are the trout lilies.”
They exist only in our memory.
Ephemeral Flower
Rail Trail Weekend
This was a rail trail weekend for us. On Saturday, we hiked along a trail linking Ayer, Massachusetts, and Groton, and on Sunday, we walked the Bruce Freeman Rail trail in Concord. Between arthritis and hip replacement, the more strenuous sort of rough trail hiking that we used to do is problematic, but a rail trail offers the perfect compromise. You are out in the countryside hiking, but the surface is regular. All that was needed was a pair of sturdy walking shoes, water, a cane, and the bold guide dog – Max, the trailblazer, to guide you along the way. Max was there to protect against wayward red squirrels and the occasional rabid frog. He insisted that following him was the only way to avoid extinction at the paws of other hiking dogs who needed to be greeted in the prescribed doggy manner of a whoof and a sniff.
On the Bruce Freeman Trail, there is a section of very fragile marsh and swamp habitat. The local Concord Middle School provided informative signage on the types of plants and wildlife that could be seen. The bikers speeding by missed the clever artwork and brief descriptions, and by doing that, I think, reduced their experience. The signs were creative, attractive, and informative, and I found them interesting parts of the rail trail experience.
Messes
Some of us are on a safari, sampling life as we move from place to place or experience to experience. Others seem tied to one locale by an invisible byssus that holds them to one environment.
At some time in my wandering, I landed briefly at a coastal community and envied their sense of home location. They, too, wandered away for a while – to work a job, college, or a voyage. But they always returned to the cove, harbor, beach, or bay.
Occasionally, I like to visit, feel connected, and feel home away from home. So last week I called an old friend, Paul. I mentioned I’d love to visit and see the old town. He said come on and visit, but it’s not the old town anymore,” the only thing that looks like it used to is the Town pier, but that’s overrun with riff-raff off the cruise ships. I’ve been thinking about moving further Down East, but I understand they have the same problems.”
Perhaps somewhere off the map, there are still destinations where cruise ships cannot navigate, climate change does not destroy, or the coast is not inundated with the jetsam and flotsam of a world’s rejected plastics. But I’m not going to go on safari looking for it. I’d only be joining the mass exodus of people looking to escape the mess we’ve made of what we have while carrying the problems we’ve created to new places.
Paul’s advice to the people on the cruise ships? “Stay home, clean your messes up, and don’t bring them where I live.”
Lots of Tools
Craftspeople accumulate tools and supplies, and some of us could use the help of the tool police to keep us in line with purchases of new bits and pieces. But the current project on my bench proves I eventually use all I accumulate.
The carving currently occupying my workbench is of the schooner Ada Bailey*. As depicted, she is on a starboard tack and is slightly heeled over to port. This means that the observer can view parts of the inside of her starboard ( right side) rail.
It’s straightforward to portray a hull flat on the water, and most times, that is the favored view. In this case, I have to show that rail which adds depth to the carving ( about an eighth of an inch) and makes it necessary for the groundwork behind the vessel to be cleared even deeper. Fussy, fussy, fussy! And a bit of a pain to carve. Out come all the little U-shaped veining tools that hardly ever get used and the tiny rifler files to clean up the odd whisker of wood.
Shaping the sails and hull? No problem. Getting this little bit of perspective correct? Well, it’s getting there.
*Little survives of Ada Bailey. Built in 1884 in the Sewall yard in Bath, Maine, for the A. Sewall Company she foundered ( probably ran aground) in 1894 – location unknown. I’m basing this carving on the 1888 portrait of the vessel by Antonio Jacobson. It seems to be the only rendering that’s survived.
The river runs by the mill
You don’t have to go far in my area of New England to find old mills along the rivers. Water power propelled the early industrial revolution in this country, and the remains – old mills, mill races, and parts of old turbines dot the landscapes of our towns and cities. The world procured its cotton and wool fabrics from us.
The mills were built to take the pounding of the heavy looms and seem to have shrugged off years of neglect to emerge more recently as condos, offices, light manufacturing, and artist lofts.
Old Hand
Age can bring wisdom, but it just as often brings a fixity of opinion. And a fixation is a block to creative thinking and change.
The man who taught me to sail, the Cap’n, grew up with manila lines and Egyptian cotton sails. He shared an affection for the old materials that did not interfere with his adoption of newer and superior materials- sentimental affection was one thing, and obstinate stupidity was another. But, being a very pragmatic Yankee sailor, he had no space for that on board his ketch, Psyche.
Despite modern, for that era, electronic navigational aides, he insisted on traditional methods. So I learned to adjust a compass using fixed navigational objects, just like in the old days. I also learned to use sight reduction tables and a sextant. The Cap’ns fixity of opinion on this was based on experience. Nothing was going to help you out if the modern stuff failed. You would have to fall back on the traditional meaasures. So here was where a career at sea came in handy; if it can happen, it will, was the maxim. Knowing multiple ways of doing things was a buffer between you and disaster.
Being all “prim, practical, and old school” was very good when it made sense. But not if it was just “because it’s always been this way” or ” this is how we did it when I was young.”
The Cap’n always maintained the young sailors got to be old hands by staying one jump ahead. Now that I’m getting on to being an old hand, I tend to agree.
Chateau Xenia – April Newsletter
Here at Chateau Xenia, work on the catnip plantation starts early. Delicate paw cultivation, constant supervision of the human “help,” and careful regular testing of the fresh buds are only part of bringing in a new vintage every year.
Chateau Xenia: Massachusetts Gold, Black Cat Supreme, and Col. Clancy’s Finest Kind Bastard Blend. Not just any store boughten nip. New England’s Finest Kind!
Available for discreet and discerning cats only. Accept no substitutes!
Lettuce
Around here, we seem to forge ahead with spring earlier and earlier each spring. Some of that concerns our gradually warming climate and the rest to devices extending our growing season earlier in the spring. But while it is technically spring here in New England, you wouldn’t know it. Friends in more salubrious climates laugh when I say it’s spring. More like late winter, with a few warm days thrown in. OK, but you have to work with what nature gives you. This is why many of us resort to artifice to get a lead on the growing season.
I use fine spun fabrics like remay, low hoops covered with greenhouse plastic, classic cold frames, and the device you see in the photo. It’s a large plastic tub with a plastic greenhouse tub top. My wife bought it at one of the job lot discount stores. It did not work out for the purpose she had in mind, but I used to grow lettuce all spring and again all fall.
I’ve already started my early spring lettuce crop indoors, but yesterday I decided to push a bit and planted some seedlings into the plastic tub cold frame. After all, as usual, I had planted too many, and they’d only need thinning anyhow.
The lettuce is not the only thing out in the spring rain this morning; garlic is too. Specifically, this was the garlic that I had seeded two years ago. This year it should result in harvestable bulbs. The garlic planted from bulb sets last fall is just barely popping up. My wife will have much more garlic this fall than we can use. If things go as expected.
But as you know, let’s not count our garlic bulbs before we pull them. Anything could happen between now and August to wallop our expectations. Last spring started with poignant beauty, but a series of late frosts hit just as the fruit trees were flowering.
Every spring, I have at least one experiment. I don’t think the early lettuce is going to be it. I’ll have to come up with something really fringe for New England – sugar cane?
Directions, Not Places
The other day I let my fingertips travel to the website of a small regional newspaper that covers the community on the coast that once was a focus of my life. I observed that some small things remained the same. But that many had changed. I chuckled when I noted that two grandchildren of folks I knew were now Town Clerk and a Select Board Member, respectively. Other things were eerily the same or different.
The internet saved me the six-hour drive that would only prove what I already knew. It’s true; you can’t go home again. Or, in this case, the place that almost became home.
I don’t think there is anything pathological about regret like this, provided you don’t dwell on it. But unfortunately, romanticizing the past is an easy trap to fall into. I had bookmarked the site but then deleted it.
Driving into work later, I recalled a favorite quote: “Happiness is a direction, not a place.” (Sydney J. Harris)
Romance
Romance is where you find it. For an anthropologist, it’s the places where you do fieldwork.
It’s like an old love, in the past but not entirely forgotten. Then, years after the separation, you find an old love letter and are transported on a wave of sentiment. That happened to me just yesterday.
I was sorting through a box of old paperwork and found some material I thought the local historical society in the coastal community I worked in years ago might like. I made the mistake of opening the folder and suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia rush through me- places, names, silly things, recollections of kinship relations in the community, and a specific boat swinging at its mooring.
Then I decided I was not emotionally ready yet to donate yet. Most of the stuff in the box was worthless junk and could go out in the recycled paper, but not that folder with the field notes badly typed, the pamphlet on the town’s history, or the newspaper clippings. So I’m justifying all this as material I’ll use in more stories about life on the coast. But actually, it’s the same reason we store old love letters away in the attic; some things we can’t easily be parted from.
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