8/26... Tying the knot.

Just a year ago we went down to Popham Beach for a ceremonial dip in the eastern waters to commence a sabbatical year. And what a grand year. Sunday we found ourselves back at the mouth of the Kennebec, watching Atlantic rollers crisscrossing in the tide. Back to beginnings.

Journeys never bring you back to the same place, though. Maybe that’s why we parked at the old fort, where you jockey for a free spot, rather than in the pay-for parking lot at the State Park, where we started the year. The beach was crowded (for Maine), surfcasters competing with sandcastlers for turf. It was Sunday of the last weekend before school, and the sun had come out dazzling after the lowry drip of a northeaster. Eloquent blossoming cumulus competed with crazed swirls of alto cirrus for pride of place on high.

We were overdressed, having anticipated the wind to be more chilling, the sun less insistent, and I was lugging my constant burden these days, an art kit for all possibilities.. including my old Olympus to catch the fleeting summer scene. That’s one result of a year on the road: I’m now a compulsive sketch artist. Still trying to do one colored drawing a day of the passing parade, and snatching pen-and-inks in the pauses. This road ritual has turned into a way of life, and (this IS America) another source of income.

One of my local views graced the editorial page of the MAINE TIMES this week, and the editor wants to run them weekly as editorial cartoons. Which I guess they are. Local viewpoints. I’ve been trying to capture all the telling angles of small town Maine. The view from Bowdoinham. Sunday morning I caught the image of our elementary school from the middle of the graveyard across the road. A back-to-school scene, of sorts.

So touring Historic America opened our eyes to the storied manscape around home. The quest to find one image that captures the story of a strange place has taught us how to see the tales in familiar views. And the natives are looking over my shoulder, telling tales and pointing out new sights to record. If you think artists are unwelcome deviants, go out and draw on a streetcorner. People love to see handmade views of the local scene, are eloquent (or at least voluble) about what you’re doing, get engaged in the process, cheer you on. I feel like I’m making a public record of some kind. Starting a new career after a sabbatical.

Plovers and pipers were skittering between the bathers and striper fishermen. A pod of oversized lads in cutoffs and toos were popping Buds as their lines went untended. I asked what they were catching. “A good buzz,” they chorused. Looking back at Fort Popham, its squat and massive masonry like a rotten molar in the river mouth, another fisher-person was silhouetted. She was a squat and massive structure, too, torso jutted out over spindly legs. Wearing a huge straw sunhat, she was leaning backwards against the forces of gravity, and winding in her lure with gusto.

We ambled along the glittering beach, the heat reflecting in waves, past the old life-saving station, now a private cottage, and the rows of bungalows behind the dunegrass. One porch was crowded with party-goers face-to-facing with their arms cocked in the drink-holding mode, and the gabble of smalltalk spilled onto the beach, rising and falling between the cresting waves. Probably a bunch of teachers pouring liquids on the end-of-summer, I thought.

Peggy is remarkable enthusiastic about getting back to school, and has been exhorting her colleagues to be of good cheer. All it takes is a year off. But she isn’t about to plunge in over her head, she says. A full night’s sleep, good exercise, simpler diet, and rigorous triage over petty incidentals are her ambitions. The compulsive busyness, over-commitment, and reflex anguish of the conventional workplace look unhealthy from the heights of Sabbaticalia. Can the forces of the ed factory be resisted? We’ll see.

Meanwhile Peggy is stirring gathered ingredients into the curricular stew, and smacking over the taste. It’s been years since I’ve seen her eagerly reading a scholarly text, or pouring over source materials without sighing. Peggy has also been organizing a cadre of interested participants for an 150th anniversary event, commemorating the first woman’s convention in Seneca Falls (for next summer). Here again I’m impressed at how she is orchestrating without trying to play all the instruments. Maintaining distance while catalyzing the process.

Maybe that’s the prime lesson of a sabbatical. That you can stand back from the daily turmoil, see new patterns, sort out the essentials, find new roads through the old woods. Or a new course along the beach.

The waters off Popham can be a nasty bit of goods. A falling tide against a southwest wind churns this spot into a staggering nightmare. I once had a thorough heart massage here in a small sailboat. The wind had flunked out in a peasoup fog, and we were pitch-polling and tossing like a wild thing. The owner was hiked out over the stern trying to keep the auxiliary outboard immersed, while I was trying to steer and navigate on my knees in the cockpit, which was awash. We’d forgotten that there is a radical magnetic anomaly here, too, and I sailed us on a compass course right up to the ledges of Pond Island before we got our bearings. That old boat leaked like a sieve, and we pumped all the way to Haraseekit once we found our way offshore.

On Sunday the visibility was unlimited, and the lighthouses on the islands were etched against dramatic cloudscapes. Where the tide met the wind, waves beat against each other in woven herringbones, and a lone jetskier buzzed down the river to play in the slop. You could almost hear the compulsive cringing of the old guard. But the crashing surf was louder than the motornoise, and the young yahoo astride his waterhorse was having a ball. Jumping the crests, racing down the troughs, wheeling into the surf, leaping straight up into the air, and around again. Geez it looks like fun. Of course I wouldn’t admit that in mixed company. Eeyow.. splush!

Standing back from the local issues for a year makes you wicked wishy-washy. I just can’t get incensed about the local brouhahas of the day. Needled by the stupidities, perhaps, still willing to pontificate (what’s a long beard for?), but I can’t seem to bring it to a boil. Yet. Maine just looks too good after Memphis, or Miami. I’ve got to sink in deeper before I can start thrashing.

After a long pause on the outer point, leaning up against a sea-smoothed baulk of timber, we arm-in-armed back toward the fort. Just shy of the point a little girl in a black T-shirt was digging happily in the sand, almost all by herself. There was a family group nearby, and the woman of the party seemed to be watching the child, from a distance. I was sorry to be out of film. Something about the girl’s intentness, the almost sunburned pink of her skin, her pure individuality tugged at me. But we ambled on, storing images in the mind’s eye.

Way down the beach, as we approached the fort, a distraught woman hurried up to us. Had we seen a small child in a black shirt? Her daughter had disappeared from where they were eating at a restaurant, and the mother was half-crazed with worry. We said we HAD seen a child in black, but it was a long way down the beach, and she had seemed to be with a family. We watched as the mother zigzagged along the water’s edge, questioning people, but she turned back in despair before she rounded the curve of beach beyond which we saw the child. At that point a waitress from the restaurant hurried up, looking for the mother. The sheriff had arrived. We told her that the mother hadn’t gone far enough to check on the girl we saw. As we watched they both went round the bend out of sight. We climbed up onto the ledges near the fort to watch. A few minutes later the mother in pink and the girl in black could be seen hand-in-hand, tiny figures at the edge of seeing, inching back along the beach.

We wandered off last year, too, in all innocence.. and dug in the sand. We discovered that people were good hearted wherever we went in America. People watched out for us.. didn’t poke into our business, but made sure we didn’t get hurt. We may get scared sometimes that the precious things may get lost, that there is no community ethos, no common humanity out there. It just ain’t so. The little girl in us can still get found.

We backed the Owl out of her slot and headed upriver for home, Still swiveling our necks at lawn ornaments. Still hooting at the follies. Popham Colony may have only lasted a year, like our sabbatical, but it made a toe-hold on this shore. We’re ready to find our way upcountry from here, too.