Sagadahoc Stories #86:

I've been reading a pop geology of Maine, and the earthy history of these parts sounds much like recent times. Waves of invaders slamming up against the old rocks, bending the settled shape of things, and retreating. In this case plates of proto-Europe and proto-Africa crunching us. Submerging remnants of the alien assault roil beneath the surface, send up hot plutons which turn to stubborn granite in the Maine air. The succession of events runs roughly parallel to the coast, so the farther upcountry you go, the earlier the tortured features and more stubborn the record. Just like natives retreating before coastal in-migrants.

Later proto-Africa slammed into us, shifting the plates along the fault as it thrust up mountains in the Alleghanian orogeny. The movement of the Avalonian remnants along the fault has brought in highly metamorphosed rocks from farther west. These coastal migrants were created by the injection of hot magma in the Sebago pluton, and the incursion of these less easily eroded rocks alongside the softer rock (Cushing formation) on the west side of the fault turned the path of later river building onto the fault line. At least I think that's what it said.

As hot magma intrudes, it metamorphoses old bedrock and congeals into different geologic species. In places where the cooling goes very slowly, rare elements which don't easily combine into smaller crystals tend to concentrate. When this odd soup does chill out there may be dikes and sills of pegmatite, a coarse-grained granite containing large crystals of mica, feldspar, and gem stones like tourmaline. Just such intrusions outcrop down in Topsham where the Cathance rises.

In latter days, geologically, ice ages buried the landscape, like economic depressions, scouring the surface and sinking the bedrock, only to melt away leaving a rawboned environment. The ice retreats, dumping its scrapings into gravel pits and clay deltas. The land recoils, then subsides as the seas rise, leaving a drowned coast and a town full of outwash clay. You can see the clear demarcation between the alluvial landscape and the bold granites as you sail from Bowdoinham across to chops. Small wonder the early settlers, coming upriver from that hard coast, rushed to plant farms along the Abby shores, in the fat soil.

Peggy has spinach, lettuce, beets and chard planted in our clay already, dreaming about salads. The sheltered beds facing South are apoke with sproutings and buds. We've been cleaning the gardens and raking away dog winter. CC has found the deck by the Eagles a great place to loll in the sun, and snoozed away while a hen pheasant came striding past one afternoon. Woodcocks are peeenting in the woods, and woodpeckers rattling. One pair was alternately drumming on a hollow willow by the river and a telephone pole. It sounded more like a ritual conversation than a bug hunt. When I echoed the beat they both stopped and looked at me. The worms are rising into thawed ground, and mixed flocks of blackbirds, robins, and grackles are sucking up the annelids

Monday morning Eric the sawyer jingled me, asking if I wanted that pine planking. He had another customer interested, but wanted me to have first dibs. Ebba is still napping, so I jumped on the bike to pedal over to Bowdoin. Seemed like a good idea, but I hadn't counted on the wind. A dead muzzler and starting to puff up. Half way out the Millay Road I was in low-low gear and pumping hard to make headway. By the time I got to 201 I was a panting puppy. Eric actually set out looking for the dead body, but had gone round the other way, and we arrived at his drive together.

We flipped rough-sawn five-quarter, as I picked out the best wide boards. I'd calculated that 450 square feet would give me enough and to spare for this frigate, but it took us three tries to get the numbers right, passing stock back and forth into his building. I warned him that doing the arith with me would fog anyone's brain.

Then he took the side cutters off his antique Wood's Mfg. Inc. planer, set the blades for one and an eighth, connected the tractor PTO, and fired the beast up. The wind plumed wood chips over the yard while the planer sang. We had to make two passes to plane both sides down to one inch, and I tailed on and loaded Eric's truck with the finished stock. We pitched the bike on top and took it all home. I racked it up on top of Sharpie. Now I'm committed to new boat. Mmm. The smell of fresh milled pine rising in the sunshine.

Planing

It was full moon on the first, and I wondered what kind of mayhem would confuse me on my favorite holiday. It didn't take long to find out. Morse's lumber truck back-beeped up the drive with my oak around 8 AM. Lovely long chine pieces and sheer clamps, keelson stock, thwarts, framing materials. Then there was the piece I'd ordered for the skeg. What on earth had I been thinking? Here's this massive baulk of white oak, nine inches by four inches by eighteen feet long!

The driver gives me a quizzical look as he asks,"What are you building?" Good question. With that thing I could be constructing Noah's arc. I hadn't really focused on hefting it onto a saw, let alone cutting it. We rolled it off the truck using a short section of well-casing, grunted it onto some sleepers, and I paid the bill. The driver was still shaking his head when he drove off. I can barely hump this monster around the yard, and haven't a clue how I'm going to deal with it. The joke's on me.

But I'm seriously started. Took me all one day to set up my strongback. Parallel six-by-sixes leveled and squared and cross tied. Six feet apart and 24 feet long. Stations marked off and a baseline strung from centers. Most of the futzing was with figures. It should be simple enough to convert measurements from a 42 footer to 24. Just multiply everything by 24 and divide by 42. Which leaves you with decimal fractions, however, and by the time you're down to inches and 8ths, you don't know which digit is up. Then I'm using at least three bulkheads (or partial ones) in lieu of molds, and figuring their placement, where the remaining molds should be stationed, and allowing for the supporting lumber had me tearing hair by mid-afternoon. It wasn't until the sun was setting that I got the last index marks on the strongback. Geez it looks like a big boat.

Between playful weather and the wood jokes you'd think Coyote had had enough fun for Fool's Day. But he had me playing foot-in-mouth on the web, too. Turns out my idle clucking about town affairs has reached more local ears than I suspected, and the chickens are coming home. Some of my dispatches have been run off and circulated in Samizdat to various town officials, who, in turn have approached people I've mentioned over the months, asking pointed questions.

OOOPS

"Did you know Bryce talked about blowing up your duck's ass?" Jimmy was queried. And so forth. Word came back that not everyone was amused. The issue of personal web publication and violations of privacy rose their uglies again. Where does an artist's journal leave off and local politics begin? Where's the thin line between public utterance and private discourse? It doesn't help that I tend to colored adjectives and irony. What you might call a smart mouth. Some ears are tingling, including mine.

All of which may be a cyclone in a coffee clatch, but it reveals how new this medium is, and how unknown its effects. Peggy sees this episode as part of the dynamic of local gossip as analyzed by anthropologists. Talking trash as moral recycling, and politics of place.