Auntie duty

I took this picture with my phone last evening on the cliffs near Thunder Hole. The surf was pretty spectacular as high tide approached, and the crowd was pretty good about obeying rangers' warnings to stay off the rocks where the waves were crashing. Last year a little girl and her father were swept off the rocks and into the sea while they were watching the waves after a hurricane. Emergency personnel were able to rescue the father, but the little girl perished. We found out later that the crowd on that day did not heed rangers' warnings, surging back out onto the rocks after officials repeatedly asked them to move back. The story of that day traveled up and down the crowd of people at the path's edge yesterday, and when rangers said to move back, the people did.

I am providing ... I'm not sure what - recreational opportunity? educational adventure? weekend away from UN-cool parents? A couple of days' respite for the 15-year-old daughter of a friend. Kid came out as bi a couple years ago and mom is doing her best to make sure her daughter has all of the role models/resources/non-parental supports a queer kid could want or need growing up. Somehow, the kid likes me, and I seem to get along pretty well with her, so she's here. Why this all is, I have no idea. She's a geeky semi-goth girl in skinny jeans with long hair and a decidedly feminine style. What I might have to offer her is a mystery to me, but she was excited to come for a visit, so here we are.

I taught her how to make sushi rolls Friday night (her request) and Saturday we had planned a day of adventure at the Blue Hill Fair, but when we awoke to a torrential downpour, I nixed that idea in favor of a drive around Acadia to see the surf and the stupid people who want to go stand in it.

After noon, the rain stopped and the sun came out and we had a marvelous day puttering around the island. The summit of Cadillac was mobbed with three motor coaches filled with Japanese tourists, but we were able to walk the paths around the summit area and see the white surf pounding the windward sides of EVERYTHING as far as the eye could see. We had lunch at a table in the sunshine on the lawn at the the Jordan Pond House and then toured some of the shops in downtown Bar Harbor before going back to Thunder Hole for the incoming tide (high tide was at approximately 8 pm) as it was pretty but not magnificent when we visited the first time at around noon.

We returned home tired and dusted with salt from the spray, and I made some seafood newburg with eggs from some hens kept by friends. Hand-raised, corn-fed chickens produce the YELLOWEST yolks of any eggs I have ever seen in my life. The newburg was like something from a box of crayons. It was YELLOW. Like school bus yellow. Yikes. My young charge had never had newburg before, so she was unaware of the nature of its alarming appearance and just ate it and liked it. I am still disturbed by the color of the stuff now stored in plastic tubs in my refrigerator.

This morning our plan is to attend church where a friend is preaching and then go to the fair in Blue Hill. The women's frying pan toss is at 4 pm and is the highlight of the afternoon's offerings. No, really. The grandstand is packed well in advance of the first pitch and the crowd cheers heartily for each woman in all of the age groups. The occasional wild toss (straight in the air, landing behind the thrower, or careening near the grandstand) will bring howls of alarm and delight from the crowd. It is a good time for everyone. While we are at the fair, her mother will meet up with us, we shall watch my young friend and her sister go on some of the rides, and she will travel home with her family. I expect to come home and collapse.

I have a new respect for parents, particularly single parents. This kid is pretty much self-contained and self-propelled. She has her own laptop, her own cell phone and her own money. She looks to me only for "this is ok, right?" kind of approval, not "may I please have an ice cream cone?" kind. I cannot imagine the work involved with supervising little ones. Holy crap.

This morning I got up and made banana nut bread with chocolate chips. It is still baking and the house is beginning to smell heavenly. I just woke the kid so she could see four huge, full-grown turkeys that were in the yard, gobbling and poking among the tall grass looking for their breakfast. Now we are up and each on our computers in companionable silence, me at the kitchen table with my coffee, she sitting cross-legged on the fold-out couch, flanked by a small dog and a large cat.

I think it's been a pretty good couple of days. I am exhausted, but she seems to have limitless energy. I am looking forward to the fair this afternoon, although not so much church this morning. This is the church that I used to attend and that I quit back in June. The internal dysfunction and drama were too much, they managed to run the minister out and that really pissed me off, and well, right now, I need a minister. I need to go to a church that has a minister, even a long-term sub while they find a regular one. So I plan to attend at a church about 45 minutes from here. But this morning, because my friend is preaching, I will go back into the church building I left. I will sit in the sanctuary and I will participate in the service, and when it is over, I will leave and probably be sad. I'll ride that out when I get there.

For now, I am going to drink my coffee, have a slice of banana nut bread with chocolate chips while the chips are still all ooey-gooey melty and wonderful, then a shower and we'll see what the day brings.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes, Nature's a real mother...

Photo by Glenn Tucker
A crew of rescue workers aboard a U.S. Coast Guard boat rescue a man from the ocean about 1/8th of a mile from where he was swept in near Thunder Hole as seen from Ocean Drive in Acadia National Park. Officials say a large wave in Maine's Acadia National Park swept people into the sea.

Bangor Daily News photo by Bill Trotter

Bryan Daigle of the Acadia National Park Fire Department uses a telescope Sunday to keep an eye on the turbulent water off Thunder Hole for anyone who might be in the water. A powerful wave from the storm surge created by Hurricane Bill crashed onto sightseers around noon Sunday, dragging at least three people into the water and injuring nearly a dozen others.

Lots of news in our neck of the woods lately. Hurricane Bill went by our coast and whipped the ocean here into a frenzy. We're just coming off a new moon, which means higher tides than normal, and then Bill brought some pretty rough winds and hugely high seas. The roads in some areas of Mount Desert Island were closed to traffic, and a group of people got smacked pretty hard by a rogue wave. Three were swept into the ocean, and one of them, a little girl from New York, died. It was a rough day for my ranger friends in Acadia National Park. Even three hours later, the road near Thunder Hole was still closed. Thunder Hole is about a mile and a half from our home.

Normally I have a pretty harsh opinion about people who get too close to nature and become her victims. Darwin in action, I say. But from what I can gather, this crowd was not where it shouldn't be - instead, one big-ass rogue wave crashed up onto the shore and soaked them, knocking many down and into the very solid rocks and smashing their bones. And a little girl died. That can't have been her fault. My heart goes out to her family and friends.

Nature here can be beautiful and brutal, and that was certainly the case Sunday. Those waves were spectacular, which is why thousands of people went to check them out. Only sometimes nature is unpredictable and tragedies happen. Nature can indeed be a real mother.

Here is the Portland Press Herald story on the weather.
Here is the Bangor Daily News story on the Acadia tragedy.
Here is the CNN link to the story.
Even the Boston Globe ran a story, and with some canned video of Thunder Hole and live shots of the surf near Portland (about 150 miles from here).

Today didn't so much dawn as it just became light. Rain fell all night and it is still pretty cloudy and damp and drizzly out there. And humid. Lawns are beautiful and green with this weather, but wooden structures are rotting where they stand. Jeez. Some days it seems you can't win for losing.

life all at once

Why is it that life seems to happen all at once? For two weeks I have not been able to get out of my own way. I had nothing to do and too much time to do it. It was rainy and crappy and nasty and depressing.

Then this week, the sun came out, the air warmed up, the peepers have started and I've got enough work to make it impossible for me to go fishing. Ain't that just a kick in the head.

I began my day by crawling under a seasonal cabin to look at the copper pipes there. I did not quite fit, and it was wet and cold and filled with soggy leaves and half-eaten acorns stashed by some hyperactive squirrel from the previous season. The cabins are built on posts and have lattice skirting to prevent things from getting too soggy under there, but in the third full week of April after a particularly wet winter, it was still plenty damp down there for me. I was able to make progress as the day went along, but it seemed like some kind of ritual getting dirty thing that I needed to do to get it over with so I didn't spend the rest of my day trying not to make a mess. Sort of like eating a toad first thing every day. After that, the day's got to get better. First thing to do on the job, crawl through the mud and get leaves into your underwear. After that, ripping up the floor and building a wall was a walk in the park.

Speaking of the park...

I took a beautiful ride through part of Acadia tonight on my way home. The picture here is taken from the place where Cromwell Harbor Brook flows out of the Great Meadow and under the Park Loop Road, right at the end of Ledgelawn Avenue. As I walked around trying to find the best shot, I was struck by the quiet, and then my something else. There was something beyond the silence, something at first just out of my ear's perception. Then it hit me. I was hearing a high-pitched whine, almost, a loud chirping by so many voices as to become one single endless note of song. The peepers were out. Spring is here. This weekend I will MAKE time to go fishing.