My Prayer

Keep bright before me the moments of my highest resolve.

Peak Bagger's Delight

The "trail" leading down from Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park.    Peak Bagger's Delight winds its way up, down and over four summits-- Bald, Parkman, Gilmore and Sargent.  It is only a four mile hike but strenuous and for me difficult.  It took us nearly five hours to complete-- a time probably lengthened by rain and wet rocks.  It is particularly "delightful" because the four peaks are in close proximity to each other and can all be seen one from the other.  There is a great deal of hiking above treeline and lots of granite-- my favorite things.  As I lagged behind John and our friend Rick Fitzsimmons I spent some time channeling Otzi, the "Ice Man" found in the Italian Alps-- plodding along feeling weary and anxious for a bit of rest-- finding a slightly sheltered niche between the rocks and falling asleep, never to wake.  I, on the other hand, plodded along and reached a rocky summit where I could rest and carry on with renewed energy.

Here you see John and Rick at the summit of Sargent-- we had fog at times but the wind often swept it quickly away giving us the typically superb views of mountain and ocean that one gets in Acadia.  After Sargent there is a beautiful walk along the open ridge before dropping down into the woods and a very difficult trail back to the parking lot.

An uneventful trip home, a pleasant glass of wine with Liz and Rick on Kaler Road, a very satisfying alfredo with onion pizza from Belfast Variety (the Greek Salad not so great-- iceberg lettuce, too much feta), an hour with the three nannies from "Berkeley Square" and so to bed.

Catching Up by Photo- yet again

When I named this my "everyday" blog, I meant not that I would post everyday but that it would be about ordinary, daily life-- just saying!  What I find, however, is that we did a couple of extra-ordinary things in late August and September and that left a big blogless space.

Departing from routine, John and I drove on the 27th of August up to Caribou, Maine and embarked the next morning on a loop bicycle ride from Caribou to St. Agatha, to Van Buren and back to Caribou.  We were accompanied on this jaunt by Liz and Rick Fitzsimmons.  It was the first time I had ridden a bicycle with panniers and I had some trepidation about it but in the end didn't notice much difference.  We carried very little-- just one set of bike clothes, one set of apres bicyclette and one set for sleeping.  I didn't even take a book-- something that I regretted.  The weather wasn't fabulous but we escaped a heavy downpour while touring one of the catchall museums seemingly typical of the area and it was great that we were never hot.  If anyone tells you that "the County" is flat, they are wrong-- my idea that we would be passing through great swaths of potato fields was a fantasy-- even where the area was heavily agricultural, the hills were not gentle.  But as John reminded me, it takes hills and valleys to make scenic beauty and much of what we saw on the trip was quite lovely.  Our first night, at the Long Lake Motor Inn in "Sain Agatte", was especially nice.  There was a welcoming bar to reward us for riding forty miles against the wind and the hotel staff arranged to drive us up to an excellent restaurant and had the restaurant staff return us to the hotel!

Liz and Dereka:  Photo by Rick

The highlight of the next day came when noon approached with no sign of any possible place to eat--  then, like a mirage out of the potato fields, appeared the "Misty Meadows Organic Farm" in Grand Isle.  Much more than a farm, the family owned enterprise includes a superb organic restaurant where they were very gracious about providing a gluten free meal for Liz and where I had possibly the best fried fish ever.  John had the daily special, beef stew with all the ployes he could eat and there were even cats to pat.  Although we knew it to be the case before we went, we all found it surprising that people who have lived their whole lives in Maine speak French in preference to English (although totally bilingual) but I was further surprised to learn that Gloria (?) at the Long Lake Inn speaks French first but cannot neither read nor write it.  She told us that reading and writing in French was forbidden in the Maine public schools.

We rushed back in time to liberate Darby from the Canine "Country Club" and to prepare for the next day arrival of Margaret, Andrew, Andrew's dad, Ron Richter, Eliza and baby William.  It was a jolly crowd at dinner, made strangely hilarious by the news that four days after FINALLY getting a job, Margaret discovered that she was enceinte.  That makes two daughters expecting at the same time-- something that gives them both a lot to talk about and me another grandchild to adore.  Here are the three of us, back at our old favorite game of Acquire.  Eliza won as always.  Ron and Andrew went off to hike and camp while the rest of us had a nice lazy weekend.

On Tuesday the 4th of September, John and I tooted off to an AMC facility in the North Maine Woods called Little Lyford Pond Camp.  It was an annual "over 50" outing and once again we were accompanied by Liz and Rick.  The camp was lovely (but surpassed by the nearby Gorham Chairback facility that is six miles away and that we visited after our second day hike).  An old "sporting" camp, it was purchased and rehabilitated by the AMC.  It poured the first night and into the morning and I was secretly hoping for an entire day of knitting and reading but it cleared enough for us to take a four miles walk around the two ponds.

In the later afternoon John and I took the l.5 mile nature trail-- walking very leisurely and paying close attention to the interpretative signs-- a lovely interlude for the two of us.

Each of the cabins had a private outhouse!

On the second day we hiked up the Third Mountain Trail to the Appalachian Trail and Monument Cliffs-- a totally gorgeous hike of the kind I love most-- pine trees, rocky, steep and difficult climbing but much preferable to a steep dirt trail through hardwoods--

Our days have been saddened only by the loss of Robin Richenaker.  While I knew Robin myself it was mostly because she was an especially close friend to Joan Herrick.  Their camps on Pitcher Pond are adjacent and for eleven years Robin and Joan walked their dogs together.  Robin has battled depression for many years and on the 31st of August choose to end the battle by suicide.  R.I.P Robin.

Again on Bald Mountain

Ellie, Hannah, Margaret and Mark on Bald in Camden

Margaret has been looking for a job for so long and so fruitlessly, that I avoid the subject entirely when I talk to her.  Eliza said last week that Margaret had a "prospect" and I was hoping she would have good news for us when we met for the hike.  Her "kids" scooped her announcement, by giving us the news while she was out in the woods answering a call of nature.  She has a job, only an ed tech, but full-time and in the South Portland School District-- her top choice and an easy commute for her.  John and I were gratified to know that the contacts she made while substitute teaching were helpful in the interview process-- we had often assured her that this would be the case EVENTUALLY! but she was dubious.  She is in a special ed resource room and mandatory training starts on Monday.  

The kids were great and enjoyed the hike with virtually no whining.  They apparently found it very strange that I put small pieces of sweet gherkins in both the tuna and egg salad sandwiches but tolerated the oddity very well and made short work of the chocolate wafer cookies that we had for dessert.  They came up to our house after the hike and had ice cream before heading back to Yarmouth.  

The kids and Margaret on the trail-- a lot of work has been done to make a stony staircase.

I started listening to In One Person by John Irving but I HATED it and for the first time took advantage of Audible's offer to exchange titles.  The book was like an unpleasant return to John Wheelwright's family in A Prayer for Owen Meany:  the fatherless boy, the pretty mother, the strident aunt, the private prep school, the theme of amateur theatricals, the obsession with breasts, the great stepfather and in one case a good grandmother (PFOM) and in the other a good grandfather (IOP) but there was so much masturbation and transgender stuff that I found myself repelled by the whole thing.  So now I have Pillars of the Earth instead.  I read it years ago but since I liked Giants of the Earth so well, I am looking forward to the audio experience of POTE.  In the meantime I am enthralled with the audio version of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom.    I have read that in bound book form as well but we are doing it for the book club in September and I really couldn't remember much about it.

Volunteer Squash

Volunteer Squash 21 Verona Street

This is an acorn squash that came up from compost.  By chance it is in a reasonably good location although John's desire to have a perfect lawn gene is frustrated by not being able to mow.  Since much of the lawn is now brown and weedy, however, the squash is the least of it.  Behind it are two very nice volunteer tomatoes and there are more volunteers in the actual garden.  This is the first year that we have had a bountiful tomato crop-- I often say that I haven't had a decent tomato since my father died but this year we are approaching decent.  Nothing will ever be better than a tomato my father sliced for me with the same jackknife he had just used to take a sliver out of my foot. Marshall was a gentle expert at sliver extraction using a pocket knife and I was always brave about it.  This memorable tomato experience must have taken place when I was older than four because it was in the South Hill Jamaica house.  

On Monday I drove Chip Curry as he went knocking on doors.  I am not a devoted political volunteer but since I absolutely refuse to make phone calls (and do not think they are useful), I volunteer to drive when campaigns get underway.  Two years ago I drove for John Piotti and for Erin Herbig and it seemed like a good way to give more than lip service to my support.

Yesterday I finished listening to Gone Girl and finished reading Susan Hill's Pure of Heart.  Gone Girl seemed just brilliant to me-- witty and creatively plotted.  Some reviewers have felt it was uneven-- the first part better than the second (and just as many feeling that the book only picked up in the second part) but since I was listening to it, I never lost momentum.  Listening to a book is so very different from reading.  Because one is usually doing something else simultaneously-- in my case, sewing, gardening or cleaning-- my attention does not lag and if the action or writing slows down, I don't seem to notice it.  Pure of Heart is the second of five Simon Serailleur mysteries and because I discovered them through the donated books I read the fourth one first, third one second, fifth one third, etc.  So now I have started reading the first of the series and feel I need to reread all the rest.

Babs Whitaker: 19 August 1927 - 12 May 2012

Babs hated to have her picture taken-- this time she was caught unaware.  It is a beautiful picture of her in the living room in West Whately.  Babs was almost exactly twenty years older than I am and I met her when she was 43 years old.  Marshall brought her to see me where I was working at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Mental Health Center.  I had coffee with them in the cafeteria on the ground floor.  She moved to West Whately in the fall of 1973, shortly after I moved down from Hanover.  I had been reluctant to leave my widowed father on his own, so left my job at Dartmouth and took one at Hampshire College.  As it turned out, I needn't have worried but it was all for the best that I left the Upper Valley for the Pioneer Valley.  My romantic entanglements had no possible good ending so moving allowed things to taper off slowly.

Babs was one of the greatest cooks I have known.  Nearly forty years later I remember the first meal I had at her farmhouse up in Charlemont.  It was her pot roast with onions cooked in beer, mashed potatoes, peas and salad.  She loved to cook and entertain and it was only when she became nearly incapacitated in her final illness that she reluctantly gave up cooking for us when we visited.  Babs was a wonderful stepmother, a wonderful grandmother and a wonderful friend.  She was an over-indulgent mother, whose children did not benefit from that approach.   Babs and Marshall had a passionate relationship in their early years.  They were both enthusiastic travelers and did a great deal of gadding about, both in the U.S. and internationally.  Their marriage, after eleven years together, suggests that they had achieved an amicable and mostly stable companionship that lasted until he died in 1993.  Us "Smiths" were always grateful to her for loving Marshall-- he was not a man to live alone and none of us resented her in any way (although I think she sometimes thought we did!)

I knew Babs much longer than I knew my own mother.  I loved her and believe she loved me in return.

Finally! A long lovely rainy day.

My sister Tamar was here for a few days last week and we pulled out a box of memorabilia about my father.  I have been thinking about him since and because our latest genealogy group meeting was about scanning old pictures, I remembered the one below and pulled it out.

This is the observatory staff on Mt. Washington, circa 1946.  My father, Marshall Smith,  is second from the left, holding the cat.  I don't think he was ever without a cat in his adult life, except perhaps when he was working as a sailor in the merchant marine.  Vince Schaefer is in this picture as well.  Marshall made several trips to Central America on the S.S. Mayari, a United Fruit Company "banana boat".

S.S. Mayari

These trips sometimes ended in Boston and the sailors rapidly made their way to the nearest bar.  In the bar, after what turned out to be his last trip, Marshall met a man who said he had been working at the weather station on Mt. Washington, was on his leave days, and didn't intend to return.  He thought that if Marshall presented himself there, they might give him the job.  This is exactly what did happen.  Money that he earned up there enabled him to buy the farm in Pikes Falls where I was born.

Marshall told us two stories about his time on the mountain-- home of the "worst weather in the world".  In one case he was descending one of the Ravine's in winter-- perhaps Tuckermans.  He slipped and began sliding downhill over icy crusted snow.  He managed to turn himself onto his back and use his hands to guide himself between obstacles.  While he eventually was able to stop, his clothes were shredded and his leather gloves worn to nothing.  The other story made it into Nicholas Howe's book Not Without Peril.  This occurred on February 19, 1946.  Marshall descended to meet a new scientist who was climbing up.  Although the weather had been "exceptionally" fine, a sudden cold front came in and Marshall and Vernon Humphrey retreated a half mile to the 6 Mile Refuge.   The emergency food with which the refuge had been stocked was gone but there was a heater and a phone.  They contacted the summit and set up an hourly phone schedule of contact.  They were finally rescued about noon on the third day-- that is about 68 hours later.  Marshall told me that one of them had to be awake to make the hourly phone call for the entire time-- Nicholas Howe says "two men from the observatory arrived with hot tea and soup, then they escorted Vernon and Marshall the rest of the way to the summit and set a meal before them that was entirely adequate to their great need".

After days, no weeks, of little rain we have been rewarded  with a nice soaking one today.  Our Friendship Sampler "picnic" was held at a member's lakeside home in Palermo and everyone felt  blessed by the rainfall.  The number of people in the group was just perfect to fit in her large open kitchen, and we had a wonderful time drawing crayons for a "crayon challenge" and doing our usual show and tell.  After we broke for food (lots and lots of food!) (note to self:  buy that self hypnosis CD  for weight loss) we ended the day with a "UFO" swap and gales of  laughter.  Talk about making lemonade-- the fact that we couldn't spread out on the deck, the shore and in the water, made for togetherness and a day that we will remember with smiles.