Sagadahoc Story #70: 12/13/98.
Waiting for a sign.
One large day after another. Hard frost at night fragments the
crust on clay, and the midday sun turns it into sliperage. You
shuck off layers all day, but.. pause a moment.. and a wild chill
comes out of the high country, driving the birds before it.
Up to my snoot in sawdust and mind wandering, I was cutting out
cockpit seats for a 18 inch sloop on the trusty bandsaw, fine
mahogany scent rising, when I shoved my thumb into the blade.
Damn. Pinched it tight. Wrapped it in tape. Shut down everything,
and pulled the door behind me. Time to flail around in the air,
and beat the dust off. Refocus.
| Dragged out the bike, whistled up the dog, and rolled down the
drive. Pumped up to the powerline, then set off along the access
road. So called. A trio of pickup tracks across a pasture then
a braided way of ruts through the puckerbrush, with megawatts
throbbing overhead. |
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Bowdoinham International
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The old and new powerlines from Wiscasset cut across the Cathance
bend out back here. The big double array marches up from Bud's
camp, alongside the airfield, across 24, takes a hard left at
Frank's woods, and goes straight shot for the narrows above Farmhouse
turn. The old line jumps the river below Mr. Mann's house and
aims cross lots for the same spot. I can ride hill and gully out
one corridor and back the other to the road, then home. It always
seems like such a good idea. |
Sprinting for the bloodrush, I'm on my face in the first hundred
yards. Rutted into a tumble. CC sniffs me, circles through the
sweetfern and juniper, while I catch air, and recompose my dignity.
More cautiously, I shift down and waddle along the ridges between
tire tracks. Trials riding. Put your foot down it sinks in. Picks
up a glob of clay. Dodging gumbo and wheeler ruts, sweat rises,
and the speed quickens.
| This year the impact of four-wheelers is more visible. The rec
vehicle of choice, these ATVs don't care what the conditions.
With snow and ice so iffy, it's more sure fun to hotrod offroad
on knuckly balloon tires than wait for snowmobile weather. They
can churn right through the soggy. And they're great on the snow,
too. So the back trails are grooved by 4-wheeling. My neighbors'
kids and grandkids have scoured out a raceway in Wally's woods
behind our house. Here in CMP country it looks like an 18th century
byway. Tangled skeins of mired ruts. Eroded into running sores.
I'm slipsliding the course, muttering imprecations. |
Airfield
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Where the access road cuts through clay banks and dives into the
gullies it's collapsed into a slippery chute, and the wheeler
tracks ride up and around, through the bracken, tip up, and letter
rip eehawing down to the guzzles. CC has to paddle her feet in
the boggy stream beds. I carry over, and we scrabble up the greasy
slopes together. Bike covered with mud. I'm starting to laugh.
Feel a light breeze licking my neck.
|
My eyes are opening. Twisting sprays of sallowgreen groundcover
pattern the slopes. Explosions of bright red winterberries. Walls
of evergreen.The solemn parade of public utility, draped in triads
to the diminishing distance. A flock of robins. The birds are
bunched together in expectation, but it's a long slippery slope
to Winter this year. Careening along a serpentine path I dodge
a running cross drain and jam wheel catapult ass over bike over
slam. Entangled in my own foolishness. So much for getting away. |
Saw your thumb. Crash your bike.Wrench your neck. Maybe time to
step back and contemplate where this trajectory is headed. Something
cold pressing up behind you? A winter beast out stalking? I peddled
the rest of the way more circumspectly, CC cantering alongside,
thinking about bear sign.
| Earlier this year I was inspired to carve a polar bear out of
a figured ash crotch, rays shivering in the grain. I knew him
to be one of the shaman dancers. Another gateway to the American
mythos. I see cultural streams converging in a dance of symbolic
figures. One stream crosses Beringia, where the white bear is
totem. I can imagine fur-clad hunters on an icy journey, swinging
bullroarers. Wielding atlatles. Stalking and stalked by a great
white bear. So this crouching beast was a promise of dancers to
come, and a threat to be faced. Guardian of the North gate. |
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This Fall a piece of cypress emerged into a fat seal, rolling
at ease on her side, laughing at the sky. A holder. One of the
rubbing creatures. For luck. Peggy has been putting them so the
bear is just kissing the seal's ear. Chilling. A kiss of mortality?
If there's magic in the carvings, you best pay attention to what
it signals. And conjure emblems leading to joy and light. Peggy
says it's OK so long as the seal is laughing. Just a kiss. |
| If you believe there's synchronicity between the symbolism you
encounter and the inner life, you should heed a pricking of your
thumb. And spinal insults always warn me of fundamental confrontations,
times to change my thinking. A pain in the neck is a wakeup call.
Two calls is a sign the spirit is rising, and meanings lie just
below the surface. You might reveal them with a sander, or a file..
with a little luck. |
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Dancers
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Luckily I'm grinding away at the wood pile. Composing an animated
double portrait for a Christmas deadline. I haven't figured the
whole message in this one, yet. I know what it's supposed to say
on the surface, though, and that's enough to go on. That's usually
the way with commissioned pieces: the inner symbolism only becomes
apparent after the outer message takes shape. Trying to figure
out the hidden signs in the work at hand keeps me alert to the
magic, or befuddled, depending on the day. It's been a week full
of messages. |
| After the show last weekend we came home with a trio of bagheaded
dancers wearing antlers (I traded Susy a raven with a rose in
its mouth for them), a quartet of Arlene's mythic drawings (including
a Purification of Ravens), and a headful of visions. Today I'm
seeing dancers in a cold time. Ravens with bows and arrows to
pierce the dark things. A caribou antler sled to carry life across
the ice. A great white bear devouring a spreading evil. A child
of light in the belly of an angel. A laughing Lady of the Seals. |
Raven Purification
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No ice for seals here yet, though. And a lucky thing for the sloop
"Transition." She's the only boat left in the river, now that
David has hauled the BethAlison. A deepwater craft, hidden upriver
in a divorce dispute, with the owner's new girlfriend a non-sailor,
she's now suffering from neglect. Delano tried to get Transition
out on the expensive new trailer that was fabricated for her,
but the screw jacks were placed wrong, and she rock and rolled
like a bronco when they started up the ramp. She's back on a mooring
now, batteries dead, diesel pooched, tides too small, river rats
amused. Be fun to skate around her. |
| The boys are ready. Bill has mended the ramps to Little Fish.
Jimmy has a new plow truck. Bert and Andy bought a string of spare
camps from an outfit shutting down. Dr. Bob is rigging skids for
his new shanty. The town sandpile is mounded high on the cleared
pad at the old mill. Woodsheds are full. We're ready to face the
bear. |
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