Читать книгу Maine Metaphor: The Green and Blue House - S. Dorman - Страница 10

Am reminded again today, by a newcomer named Della, that our move to Maine has been a challenge to my faith in Life.

It’s one of those hot days, in a row of hot days, when sweat is earned just sitting on the kitchen bar stool over books. Sticky moisture beads just above my lips, or trickles down the armpits as I turn from manuscript to notes to thesaurus and back again, sweating for the heat and a good word.

When I’ve had enough I hop on the bike, roll down our hill and seek one of the ponds along the Town Road. Its a heavenly, ride-by-water-plants kind of road, full of green beauty and living creatures, like herons and loons. The herons are long-necked, blue and gray, the loons black-and-white checked.

The loons provoked a brief happy feeling in me that first Maine spring when we lived on a pond and heard them call. One hidden among water weeds yielded up a tremolo, reminding me of a sister left behind in a Midwestern city. It is her laughter I sometimes here in this call. As a stranger here I was comforted. Since then development has been on the increase, bringing more strangers—the seasonal kind, for whom this place is Vacationland. Building around ponds has circumscribed, impinged upon the breeding territory of loons.

Alongside the heavenly road is a shimmery swimming hole in the pond. The cool feel of water in this heat refreshes me, relaxes, releases contemplation. Gratitude lies like water, cooling hot places in my soul. After my swim I stop up at the owners’ new house across the road to thank them. This is the first season I’ve seen a sign up, asking that people take their trash with them and don’t park after dark. Private property, it verbally suggests. I had not known this was waterfront property, and, in fact, the town owns twenty-five feet on either side from the centerline of the road. I note with a certain wryness that the measurement reaches into the water.

I am from away myself and think it inappropriate to feel a tug of resentment over this sign, but I do. Local people have long used the site, possibly for generations, because it has a sandy bottom and is beside the road. To the moment, the town has been shortsighted in not securing a beach for itself.

I remember watching the place go up—a couple years ago? Didn’t they do some of the work themselves? The camp has much reflecting glass and a deck. It sits high, but I don’t climb the stairs. Instead I call up. A friendly voice answers from within.

The door opens; one of the owners comes down, introduces herself. Della is slender with a mop of curly reddish hair crowning her head—a few gray strands. She is, perhaps, too friendly. An open, welcoming and informative woman. In a further effort to communicate, she reaches out frequently during conversation to touch my shoulder.

I comment on the loon-warning sign posted near the road below the driveway. She says they got it from the Lakes Association after watching two loons being chased by speed boaters. One great bird was drowned.

Was there any trouble after the private property signs went up, I ask. She answers that they were posted after she found disposable diapers and a used tampon on the roadside. They had been picking up trash continually since moving here. As for the no parking after dark, noisy young men had been drinking there. The first sign they erected was stolen. After they put up another, the first was quietly returned.

She talks about the Lakes Association. Anyone can join, not just property owners. (A hint?) It was formed to preserve area ponds. Last week Della and the woman who lives in the cove were shown, by someone from Fish and Game, how to monitor the pond for clarity. They will monitor once a week to determine algae growth. She explains that when pollutants, such as phosphates in soap and fertilizer, enter the pond in increasing amounts, algae form. Oxygen in deep places decreases, to the detriment of pond life. Guiltily, I recall clandestine baths taken here when our well was empty.

At once Della startles me by asking sympathetically if the move to Maine has been a hard one. My gaze slides away, I murmur affirmatively. I bring the conversation to end and fly off on my bike.

Riding back along the town road, I think of these newcomers as behaving like stewards, caretakers of the ponds. From generations of users can there be any resentment against it?

Drawing near the narrows two miles down the road—I’m startled by a great spread and raising of wings but a few feet off. My approach has disturbed a great blue heron from its leggy stand among flowering purple pickerel-weed. The great bird, its long face, neck and legs extended, flies off like a living letter M to the opposite shore. Fly, yes fly, to the further shore.