to make at least a start on visiting the Eastern Uplands, so long a goal of my hungry creativity. It’s also the day of our first long flight together after an interval of almost two years. That he keep licensed, keep in practice, Allen and I are flying. We’ll fly to an airstrip at Deblois, on the great blueberry barrens in Washington County, at the opposite and eastern end of the state from these Western Mountains. The winds of finance have moderated to allow a writer’s junket and chance to brush up on flying skills. Thus, we are now lifting off the runway of Oxford County Airport, and I am feeling the smoothness of takeoff in the rental, a light little Cessna 150. Silently rejoicing.
The green ground drops away. I’m grateful it’s easy to ascend and so joyous an act. Yesterday’s brief foray in sky was all turbulence and banking and sickening slam-bams. I don’t even want to recall it. Timing is all in avoiding turbulence, and yesterday ours was way off. In the a.m. Allen did his three takeoffs and landings (required) and then I hopped in. We flew over Thompson Lake and then turned to intersect the Augusta VOR, a navigational aid. This, while winds of convection played lift-and-slam with the plane. It was only moderate turbulence—so he said. Thus I learned that moderate turbulence is enough to crack me to the core and wither my wits away.
Only a brief flight—up and around and back in no time—but completely deranging while it endured. Depending on currents, the human psyche can be sound one moment and shattered to bits the next. All that was left to me was gratitude that the turbulence had not been “severe” or “extreme.”
Consider my paraphrased definition of Plane and Pilot magazine’s diagram of disturbance rated light through extreme. “Light” may have roll disturbance less than 5°, where control corrections are instantaneous. “Moderate” throws the craft banking up to 30°, moving things about in the cockpit—maybe a passenger’s stomach?—and control time will lag. With “severe” you get unresponsive controls with attempted corrections, angles of 50°—you’re on your side—and airspeed can shear 25 knots. “Extreme” is rare but you’ve already lost control when you’re rolling past vertical.
Allen has said that under certain conditions it’s best not to fight it. Best to let go the controls and allow the plane to right itself.
But I need not think of yesterday’s turbulence, for here we are, rising smoothly, quickly, the white farmhouses sinking and diminishing beneath the technical marvel of this craft. We lift above Streakéd Mountain, are banking over firred and rocky ledge . . . now away into the east, into ascending sun. Long shadows stretch across the rich green lawn of Oxford and Androscoggin counties. Looking back, I see our remote tiny shadow trailing over the ground. Lush and golden is this new day, and convection turbulence in early morning atmosphere is nonexistent. If we are fortunate we’ll arrive smoothly at the barrens one hundred and ten miles away and depart again before the earth’s warming truly begins. With that warming would come devilish convection currents.
Allen touches back on the throttle. The plane slows its ascent. I look down to see green patterns in fields, occasional delicate bogs dotted with trees, dark winding ribbons of streams; and lakes lakes lakes. The ocean, to my right, is but a dim blue guess upon the southern horizon. We cross the dark Andy River, the Belgrade Lakes, this lakey land. A reflection of sun shoots a blinding beam up from shimmering waters, as far as I can see. There’s a pool of pure light across the midriff of Cobbosseecontee.
Augusta traffic this is 23 Juliet approximately 5 mi. west of the Airport at 2200 ft.
There’s the airport, artificially elevated at one end above the white tenuous highway. I look over my shoulder at the green oxidized dome of the Capitol, at that dark band, the Kennebec River, below our wheel. There’s the toy traffic moving on avenues of commerce and policy. That’s where decisions are made concerning the fate of our water and air, the body of earth. There stewardship over creation in Maine is executed. Back out over the countryside now—the artwork of the pit laborer with his tiny machine. Sculpture in sand and gravel, an archaeological dig for dolls. The works of humans are visible from the air because our machines make it possible to carve out large areas, erect large forms within the body and being of creation. My own being inside this mechanical marvel is large, exaggerated, significant in comparison with the minutiae below. And you, there in the distance beneath us, are little, scarcely noticed, of scant consideration.
We approach Penobscot Bay, the bumpy contour of Camden Hills to our right. A smokestack of the Bucksport paper mill—thin and white—the large green island of Verona, jewel in the throat of the great river. The small white side of Fort Knox comes into view as we pass Mt. Tuck.
Guidance from Augusta’s VOR plays out. We still have the compass and begin looking for specific lakes—landmarks—to guide us. I stare at outlines upon the chart, look down out the window. So many lakes pass, pass away. One after the other beneath our stationary black wheel—and I lose track. How easy to be lost flying in air, to lose any airstrip upon the unfamiliar various beautiful land. And without that airstrip. . . where would we be? Will Deblois be lost?
Allen’s voice tickles in my ear, in my earphones, startling me from reverie. Pretty good wind drift right here. See how the plane goes off? He gestures southward.
The wind!
Yet, even now at this tilting reminder I fail to grasp its significance for this flight, for me.
Bogs are appearing regularly below, bright green and oval, tapering. A dark river curls through green green bog. Now there are wide plains crisscrossed with beige lines—The blueberry barrens.
Then Allen sees it: the Deblois airstrip. He banks, descending to pattern altitude, but finds he must correct for the wind and do a straight approach. Sinking, I peer out on colorful moving specks and scattered piles of red upon the vast green. There are neat barracks-style blue camps in rows—now abandoned by law. Pickers are bused or drive out to the fields in their beat-up old cars over reams of rutty roads. There’s a warehouse of the same blue hue and a company name, visible from the air.
A thump of turbulence. That old sinking feeling, this prickling thrill. The strip enlarges significantly as we descend. Jouncing.
And mockery moves in my mind as I recall my earlier desire to learn flight, to someday fly and land a plane. The field of tarmac expands like a balloon blown up in my face. I feel the rapid rate of descent and a stiff crosswind. The landing. It’s certain: I will never land a plane, never land an airplane. I will never land a machine that flies through the air.
For all Allen’s care, the landing is off-center. The light little 150 craft is routed by the crosswind. I have that old relief and dissipation of tremendous tension: We are down.
Pouring on prop power, Allen turns the plane and we begin back-taxiing toward 330. At the end of runway 330 is a dirt road through the green field, leading to pickers—and the blue outhouse, for my searching gaze. The Deblois airstrip, the blueberry corporation’s own, is in the midst of a vast blueberry field.
Allen turns off the engine and we sit momently in sudden silence. It nudges the craft. It whistles under the wings. Wind. It speeds across the barrens with lonesome desolate force.
. . . Uh-oh. . . .
I’m numb from the long ride aloft in a vibrating machine. I reach, and manage to flip the latch, swing the door open. Out I climb, stiff. Together we start down the dirt path toward workers . . . and the privy. Allen stops to scoop a handful of blueberries. I keep walking toward the workers, toward the outhouse nearby them. Lining the path are those piles of red I saw from the air: plastic berry boxes.
Writing for the Bangor Daily News, Clayton Beal told of fluctuating and uncertain raker rates. Box prices vary year-to-year and are often not revealed until the workers are in the field. In 1986 the rate dropped 35 cents a box because they had picked an outstanding crop the year before. This is the reward of the diligent seasonal worker?
According to the Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies, harvests are accomplished by crews of 40 to 45 rakers who work for a leaseholder. Crews are Canadian and US Native Americans, and Mainers, local descendents of settlers. The latter eke out the livings of teachers, fisherman, clammers and loggers. Of the former, Micmacs, Malecites and