6/23/98.. NO MORE PENCILS NO MORE BOOKS.

Sultry days. Foggy mornings, after the deluge, and the river still runs high. Sun burns through by noon, tearing the stratus into big cumulus, and the whole world gets hot and muggy. The midday neighborhood is full of kids. It's officially Summer. Thunder bumbles around in the late afternoon.

Peggy is rudderless, and fun to watch. Weeding, planting, reading, lolling, bumping into herself on the curves. I'm scuttling from one project to another. Looking up Marilyn's skirts. Fledging the big eagle. Sketching. Drawing. Painting. Maine goes into high rev in June.

Peas have climbed the fence, but bugs et the sprouted squash and cukes. We're kneedeep in salad greens. Swallows and buttercups. Garlic is curling, and the irises have gone by.

There's a moment when Maine revels in the long mild days. Uncoils from hunching indoors. Then the summer people arrive. That' s probably why folks on the coast are so crotchety. Having earned the glorious sunshine, they have to endure the inundation of snowbirds, who get it for free. A couple weeks of fog cheers the locals no end.

Upcountry in Bowdoinham we don't have many seasonal migrants, except the Jamaicans, who do all the farm stoopwork, and not as much fog. Even with the fancy new improvements at the landing, we are still a blue-collar resort. We only have to endure the jetskis and bayliners on weekends. If then. It's astonishing how many people actually plan their recreation after watching the weather channel. A threat of thunderstorms in the afternoon will keep the trailer crowd away. As if you can't smell a thumper coming and scoot for shore. As for a small craft advisory: that promises WIND. As long as recreational boaters are scared of a little air and thunder, we'll have the bay to ourselves on sultry days.

Peggy and I cruised the high water on Saturday, in the morning stillness. Poking into the creeks and guzzles. Islands and far shores looming shadows in the mist. Deadheads and uprooted grasses littering the tidestream. It was mildly disorienting to motor along shorelines where it's usually too shoal . Up under the eagle's nest on Bluff Head, to meet eyes with a nesting pair. Under overhanging trees by the Abby, where blue plastic barrels have come to rest. Not another soul on the water, except Bruce tending his eel traps. He had a big grin on back at the float, and a barrelful of the wrigglers.

We came ashore calmed and untangled. I find it hard to appreciate the impulse to crank it up and letterip on the water, but a week in an institutional cage might make me want to fire my jets. Guess I'm self-revved enough to want a quiet time on the bay. Good luck, sailor.

Today was a busy weekday, with every road crew in the county making up for lost raindays. I took a jaunt up to the new house Brent is building, and was stopped twice by flagmen guarding heavy equipment. Brent and Darryl have left off mudding our front room, now the sun is shining and the trusses for the house have arrived. I was hoping to get some shots of a boomtruck setting trusses, but it hadn't arrived. Brent and Darryl and Guy had muscled the first gable end into place.

Big house, and I appreciated just how big when I helped them manhandle the next truss onto the headers. They needed another gorilla on the site today, not a skinny toymaker. Of course Guy puts us all in the shade. He's a large animal. Guy describes his descent on an elvering spot as like the arrival of an Alpha male in a Dianne Fosse film: all the smaller apes scatter.

Guy runs on special fuel, too. And when a warden came up behind him during the elver run, Guy had a pipe in his mouth.

"I'm going to have to write you up, and take that," the warden said.

"Aw. Don't do that. I'll have to get another one," Guy said.

"There'll be plenty of craft fairs this summer," the warden replied.

"How do you plead," the judge asked.

"Guilty, Your Honor."

"That'll be $100."

"Thank you, Your Honor. I don't suppose I could have my pipe back?"

The courtroom laughs. The Judge shakes his head. It's hard to see this amiable gorilla as a culprit. The usual justice.

When the boys went on snack break I snuck off, a bit disenheartened by the knowledge that I can't hump materials and pound nails like a young buck. Or even like an old dog.

I went around by the Millay Road to avoid the county crews and ended up behind Doug, scooping cobblestones out of a dumper with his CAT, and lining the ditch with them. I got out of the Owl and shot a dozen candids of the process. It was a treat to watch him spreading bucketloads of stone with a sweep of the wrist, and tamp them down with the backside of the bucket. When I finally got home, I was glad to get back to cutting primaries for this eagle's wing.

It's coming together rapidly now. All the design decisions have been made, and it's just a matter of construction. I've found a name for this genre: Barnboard Marquetry. That doesn't quite catch the flavor of imaging with warped and twisted old lumber, but it has the sort of whimsical juxtaposition that enlivens the work.

This is very much an outer time, filled with doings, and not much introspection. In the Hopi cosmos the kachinas go back into the earth for the outer season. After we run between the Beltane fires, us Celtic types are too busy to contemplate much until the doors open again at Halloween. It's the Apollonian side of the coin, when we pretend we are rational beings in a sensible world. A good time to be making a solar eagle.

Even in a rational state, I'm beginning to see levels of meaning in the imagery, which is extra spice in a restaurant commission. This eagle has now spread his wings over 16 feet, and is easily the biggest thing I've ever concocted, short of a boat, or a building. I tend to sneer at monumentalism as a cheap trick. Blow it up and call it art. But the jolt of scale sure is fun, even if it's a jive. When it's combined with a bit of symbol play, even I might like it.

So I'll accept this busy and productive time, and enjoy the sun when it shines. I'm a bit uneasy that it all seems a scosh superficial, and rational. Pop icons and the national bird. But, what the hell, it's almost the Glorious 4th.