Watershed

Lillies

There's been a lot of water under the bridge this summer. Although the weatherman says that rainfall is actually a bit below average for August, cloudy and wet is the dominant theme, and we are all moldy. Only watered the vegetables once.

The garden is rank and florid, but the yield has been mixed. We are feasting on corn, spuds, and tomatoes, but beans have been slow and sparse, and (o wonder) there is nary a zucchini to be found. There's a glut of hay afield, but it's been so wet that getting it made has been dicey, and the second cutting has very little nutritive value. But the blueberry crop is fat and sassy. Maybe the best year ever for lowbush berries, and they're the size of highbush. Yum.

Corning up

And out

The rivers continue to run high, and I've been dipping a bucket in to test the water quality. The Friends of Merrymeeting Bay have joined a statewide effort to establish a water quality database, and I volunteered to be the tester for the lower Cathance. Once a month I've taken samples above the falls, before the water mixes with the tide, and at the town landing, where it's thoroughly stirred.

The kit I have tests temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity, so I have no readout on biological or inorganic toxins (E coli, pcbs, mercury, etc.), but the results suggest how generally healthy the river is. Very healthy, it seems. I'll be posting my test results on this site each month.

Black eyes

Cone Flowers

This river is a thick green/brown soup, so the test results are reassuring to me. The Cathance rises in a series of swamps in Bowdoin, and gets its color from essence of bogwater. It meanders through Topsham and Bowdoinham, draining a landscape of glacial outwash clay, and the river is full of fine sediment. Mix in a rich organic broth, and you have a turbid stream which coats everything with a slimy brown film. There are only two obvious pollution threats to the Cathance at the moment: Bisson's beef farm, and a trailer park, but Topsham is booming, and having a baseline measure of the water quality is not a minute too soon.

On our yarting excursions we encountered a seining crew from DMR, and got to peek in their bucket. Lots of little alewives, which explains the abundance of osprey and gulls. While the eagles are hatching and rearing, they pretty much have the bay and rivers to themselves. But by late July there are scads of young osprey taking osprey lessons: hovering and diving over the bay shallows, and they are now thick as thieves. We watched a young eagle steal a fish from one of them on high, the other day. Snatching dropped breakfast out of the air.

Seining

We usually see a lot of herons on the river, but the ponds and marshes have been so high they've ignored the Cathance until recently, but are now you jump them every hundred yards. Contrarily, the kingfishers have been in evidence all summer, instead of showing up in August. And the sturgeon have been doing their Polaris act out by the Sands. There was even a pod of seals hauled out on the freshwater ledges above Lines Island, just below Chops, last week. There must be a plague of them downcountry.

What's plaguing us up here, this week, is the kid next door with a four-wheeler. There's nothing like your first real ride: the power and independence. But roaring that thing around from sun to sun just ain't neighborly. Especially if it's unmuffled, and you swamp out new roads across other people's turf. I'm thinking land mines and punji sticks.

Different Kid (Same disease)

Evidence

It's a tricky business, this neighbor thing. I know how much fun he's having tearing up his mother's lawn, pulling his buddies around on a sled, or careening around in Ester's woods. But he's a god damned nuisance, and if talking to him doesn't work, it's either midnight mechanics or a call to the sheriff. I've already run him off my patch (he cut a road through within feet of my shop with that fourwheeled fire hazard), and other neighbors are muttering louder, but he's being an oblivious bonehead, and his mother would rather appease him than confront. This, of course, is why 5 acre parcels are all the rage.

Or you can go sailing. We continue to go yarting, doing our 14th cruise this week. Thursday we took the press along, and got them to roll their pants up and kick back. You can see some of our efforts on the latest yarting pages. Tracing and retracing the same waterways merges your consciousness with this confluence, and your head gets filled with spaciousness and light. If only I could catch it in images.

Meet the Press

Bonsai Island

Going on the bay in a gaff-rigged scow puts you out of time, if not out of sync. Beating hard against the chops tide in an afternoon southwester is an eager exercise in standing still. A meditation in flow. Which makes the urge for recreational internal combustion seem absurd. The jetskis snarl by in deafened haste, and are gone, like the Twentieth Century.

Just seeing these old vessels on the water eases the pace. David has upped the ante with the Beth Alison, making two grocery runs each week to the Golden Isles. With the new Sagadahoc Bridge open, and the Carelton's lift up, sailboats can come and go through Bath without hassle. David is using East Bowdoinham as his homeport more frequently. To focus on the marketing, David has gone into virtual chicken farming. His butcher is now raising the birds as well, and delivers fresh cut fowl to the dock at Robinhood in time for the boat run. Angie has been baking pies for the market boat, and David peddles them offshore. Last month a visitor sailed upriver to Jeanine's, and invited her family aboard for a feed. Served Angie one of her own pies.

Bonsai Two

The contemporary changes are pie in the face to some old ways, however. Eeling is way off. Jimmy's right out of the business, and Bruce is just eking by. The river rats are turning to recreation management instead of extractive industry. Quit fishing and go guiding. Kayak Mike's rental operation has cluttered the Cathance with paddlers most fine days, and he and Jimmy are scheming adventure camping and other wealth transfer initiatives. I suppose yarting in a replica scow, instead of hauling manure, follows the same scent.

But don't breath too deep. The pollen crop is magnificent, and I've been snuffling all month. Never seen such glorious Queen Anne's lace. Goldenrod and the other rags are in full publication. As are the marsh grasses, so the migrant birds are out there gorging. We saw the first skeins of ducks up by Brown's Point yesterday, and wheeling flocks of lesser travelers glitter and dissolve in the sunlight. The water surface is a pattern of streaming pollen and seeds.

Queen Anne Reigns

It commences

Our son, Seth, is about to cast himself to the winds. We flew out to Colorado this month to watch him graduate from CU, and spent a few days in the mountains with him and Hilde. Hurrah for a job well done, and a hug for young love. They are headed to Peru in October.

For a graduation gift, I took a small travel guitar and painted a Bowdoinham collage on top. Acryllic on plywood, the curators might say. Not a happy medium for me, but using fragments of the landscape to tell a tale whets my appetite. So far my scenic meditations have been more about looking into the view, and reporting the moment. Recomposing them to tell a tale is a grand notion. Hopefully this one'll tell Seth about home.

Home Tunes

Colorado

I got to make some tunes with the lad and his lady up in the high country, and it was sweet. Seth far outran my talents some years back, and I've been hardpressed to dialog with his guitar. But blowing with Bob and the Buzzards has gotten me up to speed, and it was a treat to jump in and whistle figures around his licks. Some of that Rocky Mountain High.

I'm feeling more confident on stage and in the company of old masters, too. But playing flute has transformed both my sense of music, and my voice. Until now I've mostly thought of music as tunes supporting lyrics. My verbal consciousness has ruled. Even jazz has been a monologue of sequential voices, for me. Where more than one instrument is playing at once, it's all been a single voice in my ear. One rap.

Mountain Marmot

Playing out

Playing in a group makes the hegemonous voice vanish. I no longer hear the lyrics as words, and I'm listening for the negative space in a tune. I'm whistling in a geometry of voices, and the vibe is in the dynamic tension. I rarely blow lead in a blues tune, which is ironic, because the flute is naturally lyrical and I've been such a mouthpiece. But I'm much more comfortable playing the harp part, dialoguing with the lead guitars, punctuating the rhythm, embellishing around the tale. When David or Earl hands me the lead, I'm often nonplused.. can't even remember what the basis lyric is.

This is a new sensation. I've always had a rap. In fact the telling is what made the package. Now I'm playing with paper and string. Between the sailing, the drawing, and the blues, I'm beginning to fall mute. You might have noticed. I may have to start sending out MP3s.

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