2/26/98.. Openings.

Then it's over. Hard winter, the good ice, the blahs.. or so it seems. El Nino shook the dice and rolled us an early April. Unless we get fooled. Sure is foolishly mild right now.

We've had alternating spells of mixed precip.. some heavy rain, followed by a hard freeze.. until the last deluge, which went off warm, if sullen. Mud season in Bowdoinham. If you ever wondered why Bean boots have rubba bottoms, just dabble in a Maine Spring.

In the woods, with frost still in the ground and a layer of snow, it's been passable skiing through much of this ambiguity. FAST skiing. But I opted for snowshoes during the first wave of downpours, and it was comical. We'd had six-eight inches of snow before it turned to mush, and shoeing was like wading in soup. Sidesliding downslope felt like surfing, and it was shindeep water in the gully bottoms. Rainwater, percolating through granular snow, was running downhill on top of the ground ice, filling the guzzles. The sound of rushing creeks under snowbanks. A white mist rising off the congealing snow.

I've been in a fog for a spell, in the workshop, too. Trying to find a way to cross over to higher ground. All the necessities are ready to hand, except a compass. A sense of direction.

You can't reason your way out of a creative fog, unfortunately. Just keep mushing. I've churned the drawings and the carving, to keep from sinking over my head. But the pieces don't seem to fit together. Sure, I know that all my work coheres, is united, in a common style. Even these new landscapes have a playful line which echoes the carvings. I know that ultimately the real work of art is your life, so everything you do is of a piece. But that's after the fact. I hunger for a cohesive vision, upfront. So I can get up every morning and sense how today's work fits into a pattern. A sense of purpose.

Back in the woods, I got headed off my intended circuit by the high waters and ended up slogging uphill across the airfield, with a couple inches of running water burbling over my rackets. The dogs were slipping and falling on the bare ice. I was soaked to the bone. In sodden disgust I plunged at random into the puckerbrush, and jabbed a spiked branch into my eye. Perfect. Now I'm really blinded, I figure. Head down, palm in my eye, I thrash through the briars and onto the road. Stagger home. It looks awful, what I can see in the mirror. Have you flogged yourself enough about "a vision", Bryce?

Then the hinges of coincidence begin to squeak. The random pieces start to make patterns. Synchronistic conspiracies of meaningful connection. A glimpse of daylight through the dripping trees.

So my father uncovers the fact that his mother's people, the Georges, actually arrived on these shores in 1701.. from Norwich. Where I spent seven months trying to dowse the ley lines underlying St. George's Way. The medieval processional route of the city's patron saint. Trying to intuit a geomantic mythos. So that English aside merges into personal myth. So the books I tumble on in the library answer questions I'm still trying to formulate, and web searches turn up random clues which constellate whole patterns. Don't you just love it when the juju is working? So I find a pair of wraparound safety goggles in the junkbowl on the counter. Ain't that a poke in the eye?

Then it froze up tight again, and the skating was spectacular. Another week of perfect ice. We'd maybe lost a couple of inches, but the reknitting meltwater was smooth as silk. I encountered Richard on the lower Cathance one afternoon, and we jawed about iceboating. He raced iceboats as a young man in the Midwest, and said he had "a skate-sail" he was thinking of breaking out. I egged him on. We went and found it in his loft.

Turns out it's an 8X10 foot diamond-shaped kite, stretched on aluminum poles. There was a good stiff breeze downriver. WHOOWEE. I try and tack with it, but only manage to fly off the wind, trying to steer at racing speeds. EEEYAH. Tripping, crashing and laughing like an hyena. After I turned it over to him, the last I saw of Richard he was still trying to tack home upriver.

Next day I lure Theo and Mr. Mann out skating, and we explore the bay ice all the way to Center's Point. A lone skater joins us on the bay, and he's wearing these newfangled safety spikes they're selling. Another technofix to obscure our self-responsibility. They consist of a pair of inch long steel spikes fixed into plastic handles, which are connected by a spiral cord you wear round your neck. You're supposed to grab and stab them into the ice when you fall through.. drag yourself to safety. A nasty orange necklace. Safety orange. When we ask about them, he says he had a friend drown on a pond this year, so now he wears them. "Of course he was wearing them, too," he remarks.

Everyone encourages me to get a set. I do push the limits, I suppose, and I'm generally alone on the river. Quite mad. And isn't that the point? Aren't we supposed to skate out along the edge where you're totally alert? Where intent meets luck? Isn't it our nature to push the envelope? Course you do fall in occasionally.

Or the dogs do. Upriver there are a couple spots where there's open water right across the channel, or just a thin skin of black ice. I get going so fast that the dogs can't keep up, especially if they stop for a sniff break. I generally circle round and back, keeping them in sight, but the hot rhythm of blood and sweat in the frigid air is intoxicating, and I'm sometimes way beyond their ken. Gliding out in that detached state where your senses and body are in tune, and nobody's at the helm. One morning, about a mile above the second middleground, I leave the dogs way behind as I zigzag through a series of rifts, racing toward Topsham. When I finally circle back for the beasts, only CC shows up. Either the old man is nosedeep in ecstasy, or... Definitely or. He decided to cut straight across the thin ice to catch up, and is floundering in a deephole with his forepaws clinging. Poor old dog to have such a master.

I inch out on the solid ice digging my skates in as I go, grab his paws, then his ruff, and haul him aboard. He shakes and dances like a pup, and is at my heels every inch of the way home. No loitering for an ice-coated dog.

There are deepholes in the work, too. Where the enormity yawns in front of you. If some of the big surprise opens up for you, it shakes you. You may be lucky enough to remember a bit of it, but you're sensible to run all the way home.

When the tide rises under the shrinking ice this season it starts drumming. Stand still and you hear a liquid beat that sets the dogs barking. Try and move toward it, and it disappears. River drums. It's time to heed them.

I'm on thin ice in the shop, too. Trying to get across this late winter angst. Crying for a vision. One squint-eyed shop morning I catch a beat, and start slapping my hands in time. Rummaging the bins to a calling chant. Shuffling to a shaman tune. Way out on the inner ice. And I see it in the wood. A big white bear, dancing on the glaze. He sidles out of an ashwood crotch. Across the mythic bridge.

Along with this arctic emblem, this archaic totem, comes an avalanche of connecting synchronicities. Suddenly all the pieces fit. Here's a primal thread of the American myth shambling across the landbridge. A familiar guide. And the vague outline of a DANCE OF AMERICA swirls in my head. I can see amulets and woodcuts, carved processional figures and comic mechanisms, texts to research and sites to seek, toys and lawn ornaments and doggerel, American Studies and roadtrip logs, words and watercolors and web pages. A thread to string all my beads on. A vision with a bear in it.

None of the ideas are new. I set out in the Owl looking for mythic figures in the landscape. I've talked about an American Procession. All the processes are in the works. But after a dark time I've been granted an opening. An initiatory incantation for a grand ceremony, and the first new steps. What seemed like false trails and distractions all have a bearing on the theme. What seemed like chaos is part of a pattern. Whichever medium I lay hand to in the morning, now, I can see how it connects up. I'm going to navigate by that dancing bear. Ursa major.

The synchronicities keep coming. A few months back I read an article which suggested that the Knights Templar spoke of a star in the west they called "America", long before Vespucci. Last week I reconnected with Stephen Vincent Benet's visionary epic poem of the American Dream, WESTERN STAR, his opus on the westering spirit of European migration, another stream in the mythos. I see Capt. John Smith encountering Pocahontas.

And seeds germinate across the chronology. I've been chewing on Kaczynski as our generation's John Brown, and thinking about Brown as another of our archetypal culture heroes. Maybe the next in my animated series which includes Elvis, and Franklin, and Margaret Mead. Simultaneously Russell Banks brings out CLOUDSPLITTER (great book), and I'm reading Benet, JOHN BROWN'S BODY. Ossawatomi Brown, The Saturn in an American planetary cycle. Cosmic. Groovy.

Then it snowed again, followed by rain. Not enough to spoil the skiing, I hoped. I made a ski run up the shore ice to the powerlines, and it was superfast. Slushy in the dips, but just enough frozen mush and corn snow on the ridge crests for traction. Sticky enough over the height of land for cross-country climbing. I stopped at the Mann house and convinced the Mr. to join me for the second half of the circuit. He must have thought I was nuts. We slithered and fell down through his woods, and onto the ice. The lower Cathance was deep in slush. My feet were soaked instantly. But we shushed on along the heaves until we could get onto flats ice by Shorey's. By then we were resigned to aquaskiing, and were enjoying the glide.

Round the bend to Bernard's camps Andy and his crew were hauling off the last of their 55 camps. Tiptoeing with the tractor. There was NO ice under the shanties. Only the perimeter walls and the transverse poles had been holding them up. Big squares of open water where the heated camps had been. Spooky to see how little ice is left in the channel. We skied up to town, circumspectly. Jimmy's camps are all off, too, only Guy and a few boys upriver were on the ice. And Brent on the Abby.

When Peggy went to New York I promised to not be foolish.. or at least careful. I stopped in at Bean's and picked up a set of safety spikes. And it rained for two days. At dusk on Thursday I strapped on my rackets, put on the goggles, and struck out into the woods. Just a highland stroll to run the dogs. But all the ways led downhill, and I broke out on the shore by the Brigg's point. Well.. I had snowshoes on, and rubber boots, and my foul weather gear (it was still pouring rain).. so the river was safe enough, even with ankledeep water on top.. I figured. But I wanted to try on some new turf. I realized that I never cross over and explore the woods on the west bank, the piece the town is considering buying. I march smartly across the channel, come to the fractured rift zone, pick a likely crossing, and, without breaking stride... step on a tilting plate, and slide in. WOA. I throw myself forward onto the flats ice.. the gap is only a few feet across.. and crawl aboard, swinging my rackets up and out behind me. The dogs wisely refuse to follow me. Of course I had left the safety spikes home.

Stupid? Of course. Not that the spikes would have helped, but I might have read the ice more carefully (I sure did crossing back). That's probably true of my grand visions, too. Charging ahead, building airy schemes, not watching my feet. Talking too much about it before hand. Watch your step, lad. It's too easy to focus on the middle distance, and miss your step. And don't take yourself too seriously. This is still a clown act. We're talking about America as a unifying metaphor? You gotta laugh.

Our friends Willy and Liz came over from Vermont for the weekend, and we skied out to Center's Point (on high ground). Jumped a big mature eagle on the point. It was slick skiing, where there was snow, but even in the woods it's getting sparse. Thoroughly chastened by my immersion, and Peggy's furious scolding, I didn't propose a river jaunt.

On Sunday we went to walk the beach at Popham. The temperature was maybe forty, with a light breeze. When Willy skinned out of his winter clothes, galloped down, and plunged into the brine, I merely chased him with the camera. I'd been chastened. Maybe this is the beginning of wisdom? The end of hard winter for sure. Everyone is acting a little foolish.