Maine Metaphor: The Green and Blue House. S. Dorman

altogether? But on impulse I’m allowing my feet to hurry onto the more mysterious shady path. I look back to remember the shape of this turn. I can always return if this track doesn’t work out (famous last words in the woods?).

      Treading forward, on and on. Now sounds of traffic come up to me, traffic of Tansy Town somewhere below. I imagine homes, trees, neighborhoods. And feel encouraged. But at once the path takes a downward trend. And I’m walking on, dissatisfied, disquieted. Don’t want to waste time on a downward trail after a two-hour climb. Thick woods on my right begin rising steeply. I’m sinking and it feels all wrong.

      Back at the questionable fork in the road I felt myself to be fairly on top of the mountain. Now it’s all downhill. Ah, but the rewriter is encouraged to see the root “quest” in the questionable word. Our coming to Maine was like this. Allen prayed for the right place to raise our sons, but the arrival in Maine’s Western Mountains was freighted with worry and trouble. It has been difficult to feel this move right. One sensitive son was hazed mercilessly in school; I misinterpreted Yankee insular small town manners. My husband got saw bitten, and then injured his back shifting a battery out of the car. An errant dowell rod in a glue pin factory knocked his vision askew, requiring corrective lenses. Rock slopes in the woodlands rose up around us, obscuring. We sank, bewildered, unable to see the wide view.

      On this downhill stretch, I play the game with which I sometimes provoke Allen, while hiking: “If nothing interesting or encouraging turns up—at the next curve we’ll turn back.” I could lead Allen on like that for hours if he’d let me. This stretch will be the turning point of the adventure. Because I’m alone. If the path does not at least level out upon my reaching that patch of lighted grass (snuggled under trees in the curve), I . . . will . . . turn . . . back.

      Hurrying on I reach the spot, find a level if curving path. Still slightly bemused I haste onward. Now the trail begins to climb through a high wood of maple scattered here and there with gleaming birches. I find a feeling of spaciousness, unlike the closeted, brushy feel of the woods just traversed. The saw has been absent here many years. Through tall trunks I sense light—I feel light ahead. Sure light of bright clear sky. (Later, while studying the peaks from the city street, I will learn the cause of the dip in my hike: that depression between the two heads of the Pluton.)