first thing noticed in the shallows was an absence of marginal water plants. Winter had cleared last year’s plants to make plain wet expanse. Down in the water I saw the deep brown debris of old weeds, faintly tinged with gold reflecting surface light. Forest green and white were also present, the reflection of tree and sky. I rode along on my bike, looking for signs of spring.
Hearing song above, I looked up and saw a small wedge of birds cross my path overhead. Orange terminal buds were sprouting on trees. The new heat—anomalous heat—was doing wonders.
Even now in the early a.m. I felt heat rising from asphalt. Across the water, bones of the old hills showed their structure in granite.
The heat and my exertions were raising a sweat. But coming into the curve, I peddled under the shade of Bleak Mountain and felt its cold refreshing breath tumble down-flank upon me. Peddling on . . . came to the barren town beach, a flat curve of sand, a spit between two feeder brooks. Winter had pummeled and stripped it of life.
Beside the biggest rock I pulled off onto the shoulder of the road—stood above looking down into clean flowing water, searching for running smelts. But the waters were empty. Smelts are nocturnal runners.
I walked along sandy edges of the spit, looking for signs of anything. The shoreline was rusty, littered with dead smelts, fly-spotted. Among last year’s lifeless brush stood a bunch of yellow flowers, rich yellow discs collared with paler petals. The stems were short and fuzzed. Then I saw pools of scummed lifeless water, oily and rusty in the sand. I had noticed this peculiar water here last year. A mystery to me. I determined to stalk its cause and course.
Allen has no fish on his line, no job prospect. We are weathering, but will rust follow? Only if work eludes him.
The second day of May and the cold wind cuts through my sweater as I roll downhill on the bike. The strangely placed heat of last week is gone. I cross the bridge and see blue-black water glittering in the wind. The yard behind the restaurant, sloping toward water, has greened up from yesterday’s drizzle. On Pond Road—a stop to count turtles on a half-submerged log. Across the cove a clump of tall thin pines waves in the wind, as though a field of grass. Later in another distant cove I see waves, driven, whipped into whitecaps on their way to shore. The metaphor of spring and human life is clothed in beauty.
Peddling past the curve beneath Bleak Mountain I spy four trees, in various stages of ruin, leaning out over the water. Look closely, noticing a fifth leaning upon the fourth, last in the series. The two are both alive above the water, just beginning to bloom, redly. The most fruitful tree of the series, the one with the greatest number and largest blossoms, appears most broken and lifeless when bereft of leaves in winter. It is split and shivered at its base. There dead riven wood sticks out—broken hardwood, the natural support of the tree.
It’s weathered gray, showing that it was broken long ago. Branches spread imploringly down into the water; the broken tree appears to drink. Its large blooms are furry with yellow anthers. These blooms, with pollination, will translate into the fruit of this tree, ripening to seed encased in the soon-swollen ovary. The seeds will fall, be carried upon water, then landing. Landing they will die and yield a new tree. Meanwhile this old tree, riven and coated with lichen forests, continues a life of its own. Life apparently—but not truly—decrepit.
Pedaling toward Town Beach, my gaze becomes snared, fascinated by waters of the open pond laid with large glittery patches full of cross currents, buffeted by cold wind. Coming up—seeing the contour of the beach in its seasonal lack of obscuring vegetation. The sandy spit is made out of Bleak Mountain. The beach is entirely the gift of deposition. With water for transport, the mountain builds the spit out of itself. The river of sand grains, flakes of mineral, flow down in water from those old heights above, year upon year upon year.
What would I say if I were a grain of some mineral, riven from my home rock by the relentless action of frost? What if molecules of water had frozen and enlarged around me, split me from my surroundings and, melting, sent me down slope to join the flood? What if billions upon billions of water molecules landed me, along with other misplaced bits of mountain upon a shore of fragments? Having raised me, what would my stone mother think? And would I be mad?
As I pull to a halt and lean my bike against a tree, I’m aware that the beach is in a continual state of geologic flux. Its building creates, at this terminus, a channel for the brook. Curving away, it travels further in order to deposit sand on the leading edge of its spit. Which came first, the flanking channel or the spit? The answer is both, symbiotically.
There’s a worn place, a crease in the sand, where people will walk to the shore. Alongside is a rusty crease with its familiar oily puddle. Walk out to shore; someone has built a sand castle, with seven towers, within a semicircular wall. A trough from it leads into the water. This is the castle of human life.
Now, walking back toward the puddle, I follow the rusty crease: iridescent, oily-coated puddle, surrounded by wide veins of rusty sand and gravel: I squat to dig into the stuff with a stick. Sand underneath is beige-colored; almost white in comparison. I lift an oak leaf out of the water and scrape off some of the rust. Then stand and go rinse the stuff from my fingers in the cold pond.
Peddling with difficulty into the wind: my route back. The fierce cold North wind, riddling my sweater. It’s in my face; I hardly breathe and push the pedals. Small inclines seem big and to go on forever, dragging at my strength. Even the level, on that last stretch of Pond Road, is like a hill to me.
Stopping to rest at the railroad tracks I look down their length and see snow still on top of some old rounded mountains.
Unemployment Compensation
The young guys next-door have been laid off their seasonal resort jobs. They’re getting by, till the next job, on scant unemployment compensation and assorted fish. These fish come mostly from the smelt pond in the next town.
This afternoon the quiet tall fisherman brought over an eel—headless, skinned, gutted, curled back on itself—and asked if I wanted a taste. The eel had turned itself sideways when hooked. At first he thought he’d snagged a branch. It had to be dragged, fighting sideways, through water. I peered down at it lying coldly on the plate. Sans head, it was twenty two inches long and about two inches in diameter, steel-blue and lined with a series of thin ridges. Eels seem like prehistoric precursors to other species (but not enough to convince me that they have themselves actually evolved from anything in particular).
Undaunted by my silent trepidation, he proceeded to cut it into thirds. The flesh inside was pinkish off-white. I thought the coloring owed to its having been caught the night before instead of the minute before. The fisherman said nightcrawler was the bait.
He took each piece, dredged them in cornmeal and flour, and gently grilled them in my iron skillet. As they cooked, he rummaged around in the refrigerator and, coming up with mayo, mustard, pepper and pickle, concocted a sauce for the eel.
The eel tasted light, kind of like catfish. The flesh was slightly mushy, but the crispy coating counterbalanced. I asked what the creature had looked like before it was skinned.
“Grayish-green; light-colored along the underside.” And there had been fins, top and bottom, from midpoint to tail. Its bones had peeled right out in cleaning. Eels can be caught, as well, in Indian Pond. This is according to my friendly neighborhood fisherman.
I went upstairs to my desk and left him to clean up. Just before he left, I yelled my thanks down the stairs. Not bad, I thought. You’ll live.
The Overgrown Road
We were hiking up to visit friends who lived on a height of granite—called Hippie Hill by town locals. Having recently lapsed, the town is now an Unorganized Township. Twenty-five Maine towns have ceased to exist as political entities and are technically overseen by the State. Property taxes here are paid to state government and, because of this, the resident teenager, daughter of our friends, may go tuition free to any school or academy to which her parents are willing to cart her. Studious and accomplished, she has chosen the prestigious prep school in the next town.