Barred Owls

My sister-in-law Peggy had what Harry Potter fans (and she was one) would call a Patronus: a kindred spirit from the animal world that visited her in times of uncertainty or distress, providing comfort, reassurance, or guidance.

“Peggy was always sure that the presence or call of a barred owl told her that all would be well,” my brother Steve commented on a Facebook post I made last August, a photo of a barred owl that had flown across our camp road in front of my car and perched nearby.

The night before my niece Sara and her husband, Michael, got married, in August of 1999, they left their dog, Kismet, in Steve and Peggy’s care at the Red House. When Peggy let Kismet out before bed, she uncharacteristically wandered off in the dark (Kismet, not Peggy!) and couldn’t be found. No amount of searching and calling brought her back, and finally, worried and hoarse, Steve and Peggy went to bed and slept fitfully, fearing the worst—that Kismet would not return, and Sara’s wedding day would be ruined.

The next morning, Peggy awoke to the call of a barred owl. She knew then, she said, that “everything was going to be all right.” Sure enough, when she hurried downstairs and opened the back door, Kismet was there, asleep on the porch and none the worse for her night of adventure.

It wasn’t the first time a barred owl had appeared and provided Peggy with solace and reassurance. Several years earlier, on an icy winter day, her car had slid off the road on her way home. It happened on the notoriously slippery and slanted stretch of the Sunday River Road in an area known to locals as “the Alps,” which each winter sent at least a few vehicles slithering into the ditch. (That section of road has since been rebuilt to accommodate the heavy and hasty ski traffic; I don’t think it claims many victims these days, and I doubt anyone even calls it the Alps anymore, but IYKYK.)

“When Dad and I went down to get her, there was a barred owl on a branch right above her car,” Sara says.

For the rest of her life, Peggy was often visited by a barred owl at times when she most needed reassurance that things were going to work out all right.

Charlotte Kirsten, a trauma psychotherapist and astrologer, believes that “owls are true messengers of the spiritual realm.” Just as Peggy discovered, they can appear as a guide during challenging times. “Unlike any other animal symbol, they relay truth, understanding, patience, and wisdom to us when we need it most. This is especially true during or after times of upheaval and distress.”

I have always loved barred owls, and counted myself lucky whenever I saw or heard one, which wasn’t all that often, until last summer, our first summer without Peggy. We moved to camp in May, and suddenly, barred owls were everywhere.

A couple of times I saw them in the daytime, gliding soundlessly from tree to tree along a trail I was hiking, but mostly they visited me after dark. Nearly every night, all summer long, they were outside my window, conversing with their usual “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” call, but also sometimes performing what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology aptly describes as “a riotous duet of cackles, hoots, caws, and gurgles.”

One night, after falling asleep to the calls of the owls, I dreamed I had a tattoo of a barred owl with Peggy’s name, in her own handwriting, below it. When I woke up, I looked at my arm, half expecting to see it there.

I am not a tattoo person. In fact, I have never, ever thought I’d get one myself. So many people have them nowadays, including two of my own kids, that I no longer roll my eyes when I see them and wonder what possesses someone to think permanently marking their body is a good idea, but it’s not something I ever intended to do myself.

But the oddly specific nature of my dream, and then a similar, less detailed dream I had a few weeks later, made me unable to stop thinking about it.

The barred owls hung around all summer; I think they must have nested nearby, because on some nights I heard what sounded like a whole family calling, chuckling, and caterwauling in the trees around the camp.

Peggy’s birthday was November 7th. In September, the day after we moved home from camp, I made an

appointment with a local tattoo artist, and last Tuesday, the day that Peggy would have turned 81, I got the tattoo from my dream: a detailed black and gray barred owl, with her signature, including the “xxoo” with which she always signed notes to family and friends.

I got tattooed on my right inner forearm. That was where the tattoo from my dream was located, and I never considered putting it anywhere else. But it wasn’t until after it was done that I realized why: when I cross my arm across my chest, I can hold my owl close to my heart.

The same place where I will always hold Peggy.

Close to perfect: Saying goodbye to the Best Big Sister Ever

Close to perfect: Saying goodbye to the Best Big Sister Ever

Peggy_Amy

These are the words I wrote last week to read at the memorial service for my beloved sister-in-law Peggy. There is so much more I could have said. Peggy was warm and welcoming, conscientious and kind, never critical or dismissive. She gave so much to so many, and among the greatest gifts that she gave us were her smile, her full attention, and her complete, nonjudgmental support of all of our endeavors. To those of us who knew and loved her, she really was “close to perfect,” and our world will never be quite the same…but we will always know that we were so, so lucky.

Just in case anyone here doesn’t already know, I’m Amy. I’m the baby of the Wight family. And even though I may be counting the months until I’m eligible for Medicare, that is not a position I ever intend to relinquish.

As I told Steve last week, I’ve been so, so lucky. All of my life, I’ve been surrounded by competent, loving, responsible adults, so I’ve managed to never really have to grow up and become responsible myself, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Many of you know that I love words—reading them, writing them, and, often, using way too many of them to tell a story. But this week, as I’ve tried about a hundred times to write the words to say what Peggy means to me, words have repeatedly failed me.

My brother Andy suggested that I start with this prompt: “Peggy was an only child. We were a gang of 5.”

So: Peggy was an only child. We were a gang of 5. I was 3 years old the first time Steve brought Peggy to camp to meet the family. Our camp on North Pond, like Steve and Peggy’s camp just down the road, has always been the place where family and friends gathered, so I’m sure that on that first visit, it must have been filled to the rafters with noise—with laughter and arguments and Red Sox games on the crackly old radio, with Steve’s adolescent brothers and little sisters, with our mom in the kitchen, probably roasting a turkey or making a casserole or baking cookies.

I’m also pretty sure that Peggy, the only child, was completely unfazed by the chaotic family she was about to join. I’m sure she gathered me onto her lap and read to me, made an ally of 12-year-old Leslie, put on an apron and washed the dishes. I know that all of us loved her right from the start.

Because I was so young, I don’t remember a time before Peggy was a part of my life. I was 6 years old when she and Steve got married, and 8 when they made me an aunt.

I was 10 the year Steve was deployed to Vietnam, the year that Peggy and the boys lived with us in Connecticut. My best friend Donna and I took on the role of “mother’s helpers”—which mostly meant learning to change diapers, watching a lot of Sesame Street, which was brand new that year, and baking cookies for our charges.

That was also the year that Donna and I circulated a petition among our classmates and won the right for girls, for the first time, to wear pants—but not blue jeans—to school. For my birthday that year, Peggy sewed me a mix-and-match set of school-appropriate clothes: a blouse, a long vest with tan and turquoise stripes and gold buttons, and two pairs of pants, one tan, one turquoise. I wish I had a photo so you could all see how cool I was!

By the time Steve and Peggy bought the Sunday River Inn and moved to Maine in 1971, I was 12 years old. Having vowed, long about third grade, that I would be moving to Maine myself just as soon as I could, I had already been scheming for years for a way to get here for more than just a couple of months in the summer.

So Steve and Peggy’s purchase of the Inn was a dream come true for me. My mother and I started spending every school vacation, and occasional long weekends, in Maine, and it was heaven. Mom would help out with the cooking and the laundry at the Inn during the busy vacation weeks, and I would keep Keith and Eric out of the way and entertained at Steve and Peggy’s house next door during the often frantic hours between 4 and 6 p.m.—that mainly meant many hours of Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and The Electric Company, and many, many boxes of Nabisco snack crackers.

A lot of you knew and loved my mother, and you might be surprised to hear this, but for several years of my adolescence, my mom absolutely, positively did not understand me. I mean, she didn’t understand one single thing about what it was like to be a teenage girl.

But, lucky for me, Peggy always did.

I was about 15 when I decided it would be a good idea for me to move to Maine and live with Steve and Peggy—or, more accurately, I planned to live in the backyard of the Inn, in their new 8×10 garden shed. This was well before the tiny-house movement really got going, so I was ahead of my time.

Steve, champion of crazy notions and outlandish adventures, enthusiastically agreed, and Peggy never once voiced the slightest objection, even though my plan included the vague idea that I would be relying on her for food, transportation, and bathroom facilities.

It was my mother, with her oft-repeated mantra, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” who soundly rejected my scheme (I told you she didn’t understand me) and in the end, I had to wait two more years to get here.

Within a couple of months of starting college (in Maine, of course), I had declared my legal residency with Steve and Peggy and changed my driver’s license to Maine. When I turned 18, I registered to vote for the first time in Newry.

I came home to Steve and Peggy’s for vacations, worked in the ski shop, and slept on the floor of Sara’s room.

I celebrated my first wedding at the Inn, and it was Peggy I ran crying to when that marriage ended.

Just as I had, my kids grew up on the cross-country ski trails, and playing pool and ping-pong in the basement. Cait got her first lawn-mowing and landscaping experience there, and even though she would probably tell you it was mostly limited to picking up rocks—so many rocks!—she would also probably tell you that it started her on a path in that line of work that has lasted 25 years and counting.

From summer gatherings that spill over between the two Wight family camps on North Pond, to the countless family celebrations they’ve hosted, first at the Inn, and then, for the past quarter of a century, at their beloved Red House, Steve and Peggy have provided not just me, but the whole big, crazy Wight family with a home base for more than half a century.

When our mom died, almost 19 years ago, it was Peggy who helped each of us, in different ways, to navigate our grief. It was Peggy who sorted through our mom’s boxes of mixed-up photos and created special albums for each of us.

And it was Peggy who filled the role of matriarch. We called her our “BBSE”—the Best Big Sister Ever. She was our sister, our mother, our friend, our confidante.

For two nights in a row this week, I dreamed the same dream—Peggy came into my kitchen to return a pie plate, staying for only the briefest second. When she left, I turned to someone beside me and said, “Peggy is as close to perfect as any human being I have ever known.”

And all of us who knew her, and loved her, and shared the incredible light and love and spirit that she embodied—we all know how true that is.

And we are all so, so lucky.

 

A Little Bit Extra

Cait birthday photo This kid. What can I say? Ever since she was born, shortly after a Red Sox win on Opening Day of the 1985 baseball season, my daughter Cait has been positively careening through life.

She is loud. She rarely sits still for more than two minutes. Her emotions are never far from the surface. She is impulsive, rambunctious, and unfailingly fun to be around. (And then you need a nap.)

She started preschool at age two (because she needed a LOT more social interaction than I was able to provide), was the only girl in a class with nine boys, and was more than able to hold her own.

“Cait is the one who leads the class in pounding on the table and chanting, ‘We want our snack!’” her preschool teacher, the long-suffering Mrs. Brown, told me, a bit wearily, at the end of her first week.

She is, well…A Little Bit Extra.

“When you’re so extra and it’s St. Patrick’s Day,” Cait posted last month, with a video that showed her stirring green food coloring into her coffee cup while listening to Irish jigs at 6:45 a.m. Because (despite my aspirations) I was never the Cool Mom, I had to look up the meaning of “extra” in that particular context.Extra

An online urban slang dictionary informed me that “extra” means “over the top, excessive, maybe a little dramatic. Doing more than what the situation calls for. Often a little inappropriate.”

It was an “Aha!” moment.

Cait has been A Little Bit Extra since the day she was born, weighing 9 pounds and 14 ounces, in the middle of a spring snowstorm—feisty, quirky, exuberant, and determined.

We didn’t always find this quality—this Extraness—endearing. There was, for instance, that time when she was in middle school and couldn’t resist adding her own spin to her role in a class play.

It involved making a mildly obscene gesture onstage, after being unequivocally told, during rehearsals, that she was NOT TO DO THAT. It might have been done on a dare. She might not have believed there would actually be consequences. She might have been simply unable to resist playing for laughs.

Whatever the reason, it resulted in a three-day school suspension, a prohibition from participating in the end-of-the-year class trip, and a lot of tears.

“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

It was nearly two decades before Mitch McConnell uttered those words about Elizabeth Warren, but we could have said the same thing about Cait…probably a few thousand times.

I have a theory that it’s the quirkiest, feistiest, most exuberant kids—the ones who ask the most questions, laugh and cry and scream and howl the loudest, and wear their parents down to a frazzle—who often turn into the most interesting, engaging, confident, and self-actualized adults.

Cait has more friends, and more fun, than anyone else I know. She channels her limitless vitality into working hard, and playing harder. She runs her own business, as well as works at physically demanding jobs, and still finds plenty of time and energy to hike, bike, run, or ski several times a week, usually with a like-minded posse.

Seven years ago, she piled all of her belongings into and onto her car and moved to Colorado, where she knew no one, with little more than the sketchy promise of a landscaping job and an apartment she’d found on Craig’s List. A couple of weeks later, on a call home, she mentioned that she was going to a wedding that weekend.

“How can you be invited to a wedding? You don’t even know anyone out there!” I said.

“Well, I do now,” she said. (Duh.)

Cait is A Little Bit Extra, and I’m so glad we never tried (well, not very hard, anyway) to squelch her spirit.

She is the best possible illustration that the parenting style with which I’ve always said I raised both my kids and my dogs—“hands off and hope for the best”—really can work out.

Cait celebrates every win, every holiday, every milestone, every success—both her own and her friends’—with boundless energy, unlimited generosity, and—always—the perfect outfit. She is honest, outspoken, passionate, and compassionate. She is loving and well-loved.

Happy birthday, Cait! You’ve always been A Little Bit Extra Just Exactly Enough.

Cait collage

Why is it so damn hard to be a “real Mainer,” anyway?

Why is it so damn hard to be a “real Mainer,” anyway?

Maine5

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be “from Maine.” This has been prompted, in part, by some arguments (so many arguments!) on a local Facebook page, in which the most frequent response to people with ideas that seem new or different, or opinions that differ from those of the original poster, or (the biggest tipoff) political leanings that are anywhere left of center is…“Are you even from around here?”

Maine1(Because, obviously, if you aren’t, then nothing you have to say is worth listening to, right?)

I’ve watched as members of our community are derided as “flatlanders,” “transplants,” or worse. I’ve seenMaine4 suggestions that they should “go back to Massachusetts,” “try harder to fit in,” or simply “STFU.”

But what does it mean, exactly, to be “from around here”?

Well, for one thing, of course, you need to have been born here. That goes without saying. In fact, both of your parents really need to have been born here if you’re going to claim true “from around here” status—since, as they say, “A cat can have kittens in the oven, but that don’t make ’em biscuits!”

And let’s go ahead and admit it, you aren’t really going to be as accepted as truly “from around here” unless, at minimum, three of your four grandparents were also born here.

If your parents were both Mainers, but they left the state after college because they heard the siren song of better jobs and better economic opportunities, and were misguided enough to settle in southern New England and have their first four children in Connecticut, those children are not, and can never be, “real Mainers.”

Even worse, if those same parents then moved, briefly, to New Jersey in pursuit of a better job, and their fifth and last child was born there—even if that child was brought to Maine for the first time—to this exact part of Maine, her father’s ancestral home—at the age of three and a half months (riding all the way in a death-defying “infant car bed” wedged into the backseat of the family car)—that child, obviously, can never be a “real Mainer.”

(Of course, that child, who never lived in New Jersey again—because at the end of that first summer the family returned to Connecticut, where she lived from the time she was six months old until she was 17—can’t really be from Connecticut, either, because she had the misfortune to have been born Outside of New England. Nope, nope…no “Nutmegger” status for her.)

My father’s family roots are pretty solidly entrenched in western Maine, going back several generations here, but my mother was born in Searsport and her family roots are from “down east.”

While there’s no question that she was a “real Mainer,” I’m pretty sure my mother’s coastal background made her credibility somewhat suspect here in western Maine. Because not only is it important, around here, to be a “real Mainer,” using the criteria previously described, but also, particularly if you’re going to be taken seriously when arguing on the local Facebook pages, you need to be “from around here.”

And the circle on the map that takes in “from around here” seems, sometimes, to be vanishingly small.

Maine roots aside, there’s a lot of skepticism about people from other parts of the state, particularly parts of the state that (it may be suspected) regard themselves as more cultivated, more sophisticated, more open-minded, etc.

Things could have been worse for me, I suppose; my mother could have been from Portland, epicenter of that “other Maine,” with its designer coffee, rampant liberal politics, and overpriced restaurants.

Maine7My husband, who looks and sounds for all the world like a “real Mainer,” who was born here in Oxford County—and who, for Chrissakes, has been an actual real live Maine logger for well over half a century—can’t really claim the title, because his mother was imported from Maryland. All the buffalo plaid, chainsaw grease, and wood chips in the world can’t make up for that glaring imperfection (although I was unaware of it when we started dating, and was pretty sure that marrying him would be one sure way to raise my own “real Mainer” credibility).

All of my children were born in Maine, but only one of their parents and between one quarter and three quarters of their grandparents (we’re a blended family, so it’s complicated) were born here, so I don’t think they can accurately claim the title, either…even the ones whose fifth great-grandfather, the Reverend Eliphaz Chapman, was responsible for naming the town of Bethel. (Seriously. You could look it up.)

As for me, well, I am my parents’ fifth child, the one unfortunate enough to have been born in New Jersey, of all places. I don’t know a soul in New Jersey, and never did. During my first 17 years, I spent about 20% of my time in Maine and the other 80% in Connecticut, trying to figure out how to get back to Maine as soon as I possibly could.

When I was in the fourth grade, I decided I’d change my middle name to Oxford, in honor of the county where I planned to live, just as soon as I could get here. (I had already changed my first name to Beth, after the tragic sister in Little Women, and since my original middle name was Elizabeth, I obviously needed a new one.) I signed my school papers “Beth Oxford Wight” for a couple of years. (My teachers were very patient with me.)

I’ve been telling people for about as long as I can remember that I’d be happy if I never had to leave Oxford County again (and the past couple of years have done a darn good job of testing that assertion, establishing it to be pretty much true).

It seems like that should count for something, right? And yet I know plenty of so-called “real Mainers”—who have met all the criteria and have never had to fight for the title—who pick up and leave the state at the drop of a hat, trotting off to vacation wherever they please, flitting across oceans, even spending half the year “somewhere warmer.”

Then they come back and settle back in, and not one person has the gall to suggest that they’re “not from around here.”

I mean, really. If you can confess to being anything less than thrilled with our annual five months or so of winter, bookended by Goddamned November (the longest and most tedious 30-day month in the calendar, if you’re not someone who gets irrationally excited about chasing deer with a gun, and especially if you’re someone who would prefer to be in the woods hiking and not getting shot at) and Goddamned Mud Season (which is followed closely by Goddamned Blackfly Season)…if you can actually confess to that, are you even a “real Mainer”? Really?Maine8

Where am I from? I have no idea. I will tell you, however, that when I got a job at Bob’s Corner Store at the age of 19, and people started asking me if I had graduated from Telstar, and if I had gone to school with their kids, I thought I had finally made it. I could pass.

Maine6

It’s all about the heart: Living with intention

I was asked to give a five-minute talk about “living with intention” as part of today’s service at the UU church I attend in West Paris. I recorded it, transcribed it, and boom—easiest blog post I’ve ever written.

momanddad

I was supposed to give this talk a couple of weeks ago, when we didn’t have church because it snowed, but this is a way better time, because my talk is, pretty much, about hearts. February is American Heart Month, and today is the day before Valentine’s Day.

Also, today would be my mom’s 102nd birthday. My mom suffered through a lopsided, heart-shaped birthday cake pretty much every year of my life until she passed away; we always thought of our mom as our Valentine.

My mom used to go out every February when I was a little kid and collect for the American Heart Association. She would get this kit in the mail, and every February she would walk around the neighborhood collecting money for the American Heart Association, and sometimes she would take me with her. I never really knew why she did it; I never thought about why she did it; she just did it.

I knew that my dad had passed away suddenly, eight months before I was born, so I had never had the opportunity to know him, but everyone would say about my dad, “Oh, everyone loved your father! He was so good-hearted! He was the most good-hearted, the most generous man!”

Well, come to find out, my dad was really good-hearted…but he didn’t have a good heart. And six days before his 46th birthday, when they had four kids, and my mom, unbeknownst to her, was pregnant with me, he had a heart attack, and he died.

For my mom, I think the American Heart Association was her way of trying to give back, to help keep that from happening to other people.

So I grew up knowing, eventually, that my dad, as good-hearted as he was, had a bad heart. I like to think that I inherited his good-heartedness, but I might have also inherited his bad heart.

But I didn’t pay too much attention to that, because when you’re young, you think you’re going to live forever.

By the time I was the age that my dad was when he passed away—and my four older siblings had long since outlived that age—by the time I was about to turn 46, I was, oh, I’d say, about 50 pounds overweight and I’d been on a statin for high cholesterol for a few years. Things probably weren’t going in a good direction.

By the time I was about 50, or a little older than that, I was 70 pounds overweight. I was working for Community Concepts, and they decided to do a workplace health challenge, an exercise challenge. I realized they were just doing it because if a certain percentage of their employees participated, their insurance rates would probably go down, but on April 6, 2012, which happened to be my parents’ 70th anniversary, they passed out these calendars.

The information with the calendars said, “Try to get 30 minutes of exercise on each day for the next six weeks. If you just do it five days a week, that’s good enough. Thirty minutes, that’s good enough. It can be anything—it can be walking, it can be swimming, it can be yoga; you can do whatever you want.”

And I looked at that, and I thought, I think I’m gonna try to do it every single day for six weeks.

Now, this is someone who’s spent half a century avoiding exercise, at all costs. I was the last kid picked in gym class for my entire school career. My best friend and I discovered how to hide in the outfield and not have to come in between innings when we were playing baseball and softball, because we weren’t into exercise.

But I started this thing on April 7, 2012, the day after my parents’ 70th anniversary, and I got 30 minutes of exercise, one way or another, every day of the six-week challenge.

So that was good. I got a pat on the back for that. And I said, “I think I’ll keep this going, because I’m starting to feelBefore and after a little better.”

So, long story short, when I get to my parents’ anniversary this year, it will be their 80th anniversary, and, fingers crossed, I will have completed ten years without missing a day of getting at least 30 minutes of exercise, and most days I get 50 minutes or more.

I like hiking the best, but the thing that keeps me on track is knowing that I can do anything. I haven’t really been sick in ten years, but if I were sick, I could probably get through 30 minutes of yoga, and if I’m feeling good, I can get through a five-mile hike.

I wear this pendant, which is either the sun rising, or the sun setting, over the mountains, which my kids gave me a couple of years ago, to remind me that you just have to keep climbing. And you can change your life.

Thank you.

Pendant

2021 in Adversity and Adventures: Keeping it “low and local”—and conserving special places

 

Bucks sunset

Happy New Year! Last year at about this time, I blogged about the dumpster fire from hell that was 2020 and wrapped up my hiking year in the post, “2020, Oxford County, and hiking ‘low and local’.”

2021 started off with lots of hope—vaccinations were nearly within reach for most of us, the prospect of gathering again with friends and family was real and exciting, and we actually dared to imagine an end to the scourge that is COVID-19.

I got to hug my granddaughter, my siblings, my college friends; I went to Connecticut with my best friend to visit her parents for Mother’s Day; I went to the movies and ate in a restaurant or two—all in the first half of the year, before things went seriously off-track again, before variants started popping up like a game of Whack-a-Mole, before we put our masks back on and went back to Zoom meetings and FaceTime family gatherings.

If 2021 was an improvement over 2020—and I guess that’s a matter of personal opinion—it was in part because we were more accustomed to our new reality, less blind-sided by the adjustments we had to make to stay safe, and perhaps more adapted to solitary pursuits and small-group activities, far enough removed from large parties and indoor concerts and crowded festivals to miss them less. (I’m speaking here for those who actually enjoy those things; as a confirmed introvert, my own adjustment to solitude was, from the beginning, pretty swift and painless.)

One way in which 2021 was a measurably better year, for me, is that I did 128 hikes, besting my 2020 total by one. Whoo-hoo!

A deep dive into my obsessively-tracked data for the year reveals that I hiked about 28 miles further than the year before (457.8) and my average hike was a bit longer (3.58 miles in 2021 vs. 3.4 miles in 2020).

Although my total mileage for the year (hiking, walking, running, and snowshoeing combined) was 1,235.1, which was about 38 miles less than in 2020, I’m giving myself a pass for that, because in addition to some kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding, and yoga (none of which give me mileage credit), I’m pretty sure I swam more often last year than the year before, and I definitely increased the length of my summer morning swims.

By combining all of these forms of exercise, I managed not to break my Obsessive Exercise Streak (consecutive days with at least 30 minutes of exercise), which—if my good luck in avoiding illness and injury continues—will reach a ten-year milestone on April 6, 2022.

Not too bad for a perpetual last-kid-picked-in-gym-class who spent most of my first half-century avoiding exercise whenever possible.

As in the past few years, Eli the Wonder Pup was my most reliable hiking partner, accompanying me on more thanEli and me on Bucks 80 of my hikes in 2021. He’s the only one I ever invite to hike with me who is never too busy, too tired, or just not in the mood.

Eli brought Will along on 47 of our hikes. Will is exactly half my age as of right now, and I consider myself very fortunate that he doesn’t mind being slowed down by his aging mom, especially on the downhill stretches, where his built-in shock absorbers let him charge full-speed down the steepest slopes, while I pick my way along with my trusty hiking poles and wonder how long it’s going to be before I need to consider knee replacement.

Once again, I stayed close to home for nearly all of my hikes last year. In fact, by pure coincidence, the exact same number—124—were within Oxford County in 2021 as in 2020. (The other four were in New Hampshire.)

Not only that, but 101 out of 128 hikes were either right here in Greenwood, my hometown—46 hikes, on ten different trails—or in neighboring Woodstock (my second hometown), where I hiked by far the most often, 55 times—yes, you read that right—on the remarkable trail system in the proposed Buck’s Ledge Community Forest.

Me on MoodyWhy on earth would I choose to hike the same trails over and over, when there are so many trails to choose from?

For one thing, in the summertime when we’re at camp on North Pond in Woodstock, Buck’s Ledge is quite literally right in my own backyard, so a morning hike before work entails simply walking out the back door and heading uphill.

The trail to Buck’s Ledge from our camp is very short (about six tenths of a mile) and very steep, perfect for a quick workout when I don’t have time to drive to a more distant trail. I don’t think there’s been a summer of my life when I haven’t been up there at least once, although I expect I probably made my first few trips on the shoulders of one of my three big brothers.

The view from Buck’s Ledge is inarguably one of the best “bang-for-the-buck” views in western Maine. It overlooks North Pond, faces Mt. Abram, and provides stunning sunsets from the west-facing ledges. On a clear winter day, you can see beyond the Carter-Moriah Range in the White Mountain National Forest, all the way to the Presidentials—Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison are all visible, especially when capped with snow.

Buck’s Ledge (1,180’) is just one of three scenic peaks of Moody Mountain, which is relatively low (1,424’ at its highest point) but sprawling, with a wide footprint and a nearly mile-long ridge between Buck’s Ledge and the true summit. The third peak is Lapham Ledge (1,180’), which faces southeast and offers sunrises that rival Buck’s sunsets.

Until recently, there were just a couple of miles of trails, plus a logging road/snowmobile trail, on the 634-acre parcel that the Woodstock Conservation Commission, in partnership with the Mahoosuc Land Trust, hopes to purchase and conserve in perpetuity as a community forest.

BL trail signOver the past couple of years, volunteer trailbuilder and Woodstock neighbor Jurgen Marks has located, flagged, and cut, first, a new trail from Buck’s Ledge to the Moody summit, then a steep connector up to the summit from the logging road, then a trail from the summit of Lapham Ledge down to the logging road, and, finally, a trail leading from the Lapham trail to the Woodstock Elementary School.

As a result, WES students have direct access to the trail system, and hikers now have about six miles of trails on a wide variety of terrain to explore year-round.

Last year, I watched the sun set from Buck’s Ledge four times, and I watched the sun rise from Lapham Ledge 17 times. I hiked to the summit of Moody Mountain 22 times; on 12 of those hikes, including ones on the very first and very last days of 2021, I made a 4.5-mile loop, hitting all three peaks.Lapham Sunrise with Eli 3_16_21

Every single one of these hikes was different. Even when I retraced my steps at the same time of day, two or three days in a row, there was something new to see each time. Was the horizon more pink, or tangerine, on this morning? Had a quick change in temperature left intricate ice sculptures for me to find along the trail? Would I catch a glimpse of the deer who had been bedding down in the plentiful oak leaves behind Buck’s Ledge?

And despite the hundreds of hikes over six decades that I’ve taken on these trails, becoming part of the effort to ensure that they will be kept open and available for future generations has made me see them in a whole new way.

At the beginning of the year, the idea of purchasing the 634-acre Buck’s Ledge parcel to conserve it forever as a community forest was just beginning to take shape, and as the year ended, the project was well on its way to achieving its local fundraising goal of $175,000, with the balance of the $850,000 cost expected to be met through state grants and foundations.

Next year at this time, when I reflect on the events of the past year, I hope I’ll able to say that the pandemic is truly behind us, and that life is finally “back to normal,” whatever that looks like to both the extroverts and introverts among us.

And I hope that I’ll be able to report that the dream of creating the Buck’s Ledge Community Forest has become a reality.

Here’s how you can help: A volunteer Planning Committee meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 5 PM at the Woodstock Town Office, and all are welcome. Donations can be made at www.mahoosuc.org/bucks-ledge or by mail to the Town of Woodstock, PO Box 317, Bryant Pond, ME 04219. Thank you!

BLCF trail map

“The salt of the earth”: Happy 50th Anniversary!

50th Les & Bob 1971
Today is my sister and brother-in-law’s 50th wedding anniversary!

Les and Bob are the kind of people I would describe, without hesitation, as “the salt of the earth”—a phrase that pops into my head when I think of people who are sincere, honest, hard-working, and kind.

They met at the University of Maine. It was the late 1960s, and the country was caught up in social and political movements—pro-civil rights, anti-war, pro-feminism, anti-establishment—but Les and Bob were not hippies or protesters or, as far as I know, even affected much by “The Sixties.”

They were both pretty busy pursuing practical degrees (him: electrical engineering; her: elementary education) and preparing for practical career paths.

I was about ten years old the first time Les brought Bob home to meet the family.

Like the rest of us siblings, Les was a wannabe Mainer, born and raised in exile in Connecticut, but identifying far more closely with our parents’ state of birth than our own.

Bob, on the other hand, was a Maine native, having grown up in Waterville, and this fact gave him automatic prestige in my eyes.

I don’t know how long they had been dating at the time, but they weren’t yet engaged. I also don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to conduct a sort of hazing ritual, or why I thought an actual, real Maine native would be alarmed to find the taxidermied head of a black bear on the pillow of the bed he had been assigned in the bedroom my three brothers had shared when they all lived at home.

(Don’t ask me why we even had the taxidermied head of a black bear around the house. It seemed perfectly normal to me when I was growing up, and the only thing I remember being told about it was that it was all that was left of a bearskin rug that had been destroyed by moths. I had no idea of the original rug’s provenance and probably assumed most families had that sort of thing hanging around in their storage closets.)

Bob liked to ice skate, and he was a really good sport about taking his girlfriend’s little sister and a friend or two to a small skating pond in the nearby woods. I’m not sure why we thought it would be a good idea to steal and hide his boots once he had changed into his skates, but I remember that we did. I also remember that he was completely unperturbed about it. (We did eventually return them.)

Bob also didn’t bat an eye (or turn and run) when my mother declared that it would certainly be nice to have an electrician in the family (although she probably added that a plumber would have been even better) and started making a list of small electrical projects around the house and camp with which he could occupy his time whenever they came to visit.

I was twelve years old when Les and Bob got married in the chapel on the UMaine Orono campus on June 19, 1971, and I was a junior bridesmaid. What I remember most about the day was that it was very hot, and there was some sort of mix-up about the time with the organist, and she didn’t show up, so we all processed in silence. She was supposed to have played the song “If,” and I always think of that song when I remember their wedding day.

Despite the nearly ten-year difference in our ages, Les and I fought a lot when I was growing up. With the wise perspective of age, I can now state unequivocally that every single one of those fights (even the one on the train to Arizona in the summer of 1967 that caused her to dig her fingernails into my wrist so hard they left little red crescent marks that took weeks to fade) was my fault.

My sister is not, in any way, difficult or demanding, annoying or argumentative, and I doubt that she has ever, in her whole life, had so much as a mild spat, let alone an actual fight, with anyone else. I, on the other hand, am all of those things, so I know without a doubt that I was the instigator in all of our fights.

When she was in high school, I whined and annoyed her at every possible opportunity, went into her room without permission (and occasionally broke things, then denied it), and teased her unmercifully about a couple of geeky boys who had unrequited crushes on her. I’m pretty sure she was relieved to go off to college, knowing she’d probably never have to share a home with me again.

But Les and Bob had barely returned from their honeymoon to New Orleans and settled into Bob’s family camp on Parker Pond for the summer when my mother, who was taking graduate courses during the early part of that summer, drove me to Maine and deposited me in their care for, I think, three weeks.

My sister, who is pretty much a saint, never complained. In fact, the first day I was there, she suggested that the two of us make a serious effort at détente.

“How about if we try not to fight for the whole time you’re here, and then when Mom comes to get you, we can tell her we didn’t have one single fight?” she suggested.

I agreed, a bit doubtfully.

As it turned out, it was easy, and I remember those weeks as one of the best times of my childhood, filled with swimming, walking, talking, baking, and playing games together. Not only that, but, now, fifty years later, as far as I can recall, Les and I have never again had so much as a mild tiff between us.

Les and Bob spent the first decade of their marriage living fairly conventional lives, first in Massachusetts, then in Connecticut, where Bob worked for Stone & Webster and Les taught school. Then, forty years ago, they made the momentous decision to buy a cute little country store in a small town in Maine.

With their two sons in tow, they landed in Mt. Vernon, where they have made their living and their lives ever since.

Their friends and neighbors who know them don’t need to be reminded of all the ways in which Les and Bob have immersed themselves in their community, but, for anyone who doesn’t know, here are just a few of their contributions:

They ran Mt. Vernon Country Store and a second store, Flying Pond Variety, for nearly 30 years, always with an acute awareness of their central role in the community. It was never “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it”…it was always “Sure, we can get that for you!”

Les put her kindness, dedication, and patience to work as a reading specialist at Mt. Vernon Elementary School, while working a second (often full-time) job at the stores.

Bob serves as the town’s cemetery sexton, which has included taking classes to learn to clean and repair gravestones and painstakingly restoring hundreds of the town’s ancient stones.50th cemetery

Les has been a mainstay of Mt. Vernon Rescue for decades; because she was almost always in town—teaching, tending the store, or working in her huge garden—she was virtually always on call, and still is.

There’s so much more that they’ve done—coaching, babysitting, serving as town treasurer, caring for elderly residents (and feeding their cats). Bob has received the Spirit of America Award for outstanding service to the town, and they were both honored by the Vernon Valley Masons as Citizens of the Year.

Several years ago, Bob—a confirmed “truck guy”—bought himself an early birthday present: a Mazda Miata. I think my practical sister was a bit aghast, but today, they left their responsibilities behind for a few hours, and headed off in the convertible for an anniversary day trip to the coast.

Nobody deserves it more.

Happy 50th, you guys…love you!
50th Les & Bob 2021

10 Reasons I Can’t Sell You Our Camp

For perhaps the third time in the past few months, I received a letter in today’s mail from a young family hoping to buy a lakefront property in Oxford County. They are, they explained, “seeking more solitude and quality family time,” a place to make memories. They are “well qualified and may be able to do a quick cash closing.”

I know, from speaking with local realtors, as well as from the dizzying speed with which two of our kids recently sold their homes here, that real estate in rural Maine has become an extremely hot commodity during the pandemic. Whether it’s a year-round home or a vacation condo, nothing stays on the market for long these days, and I can only imagine how hard it is to find waterfront property. Prospective buyers have taken matters into their own hands, obtaining the names and addresses of camp-owners from local town offices and mailing out a barrage of hopeful letters.

Thanks to the foresight, careful planning, and hard work of our parents, our family has owned just such a property on North Pond in Woodstock for more than 65 years, but if you know anything about me at all, you already know that. You probably also know that our family camp is the center of my universe, and it is emphatically not for sale. So I won’t be replying to any of these inquiries, but, if I were to respond, I might say something like this.

Dear Hopeful Young Family:

Thank you for your letter. You certainly sound enthusiastic and wholesome, and I hope you are able to find the perfect lakeside camp for your family to enjoy, but I’m afraid it won’t be ours.

Here, in no particular order, are ten of the many reasons I won’t be selling our camp to you, or anyone else:

  1. Constancy: I was brought to camp for the first time at the age of three and a half months, and while I don’t claim to remember anything about that first summer, when my mother placed me on a blanket in the center of the old oak dining table so that I could lift my head and look out at the lake, I am certain that it shaped me. All of my 62 summers have been spent at camp, and whether I have ten, or twenty, or forty summers left, camp is where I plan to spend them.
  1. Memories: Camp is the repository for memorabilia that ranges from my dad’s old suede jacket (last worn by Greg_with_wagon_wheel_Feb1967him in 1958) to Twinkles, the shabby stuffed dog I was given for my third birthday; from my great-grandparents’ wicker chairs to the antique hand-crank party line telephone (in use until 1983). My parents’ University of Maine yearbooks are there, and the volumes of poetry my mother used to read to me, and the wagon-wheel lamp my brother Greg made for her when he was in his early twenties. But more important than any of those things are the memories our family and friends have made there over more than 65 years—early-morning fishing expeditions; hot, lazy afternoons in the lake; evenings of popcorn and Scrabble, with the crackly radio pulling in the Red Sox game from some far-away AM station.
  1. Grandchildren: My mother loved nothing more than having every seat at the table and every bed in the loft Camp Lilafilled with grandchildren. She loved watching them reenact the adventures of their parents—motorboat trips to the store for penny candy; picnics on Rock Island; learning to row the old wooden boat, safely attached by a length of clothesline to a tree on the shore. I have one grandchild, and I want her summer days to be filled with the magic of camp, from rising early to pick blueberries for pancakes from the bush at the water’s edge, to long afternoons in the water, to bedtime stories after sunset.
  1. Sunsets: A picture really is worth a thousand words. I’m sure you understand why I won’t be giving this up.CAMP 2016 2016-07-23 005
  1. Friendship: Just as my mom watched three generations of her own offspring experience the joy of being at Wights&Baxters at campcamp, she also reveled in seeing their friends experience it for the first time. When our kids’ friends bring their own kids for a day at the lake, I bake cookies and pies and put out an inordinate amount of sandwich fixings and think about how much she would love to be there with us. And, in a way, she is. Some of my mom’s favorite times at camp were when one of her close friends would visit, when she would have the rare pleasure of long afternoons of adult conversation. My own lifelong best friend years ago ceased to be a guest during her stays at camp—every other weekend, all summer—and is as much a part of the family as another sibling.
  1. Magic: High up on the unfinished pine wall of one of the tiny bedrooms of our camp, there is the print of aCamp footprint boot. It is there from a time, in 1955 or 1956, when the camp was still being built, when someone stepped, with a muddy—or maybe greasy—work boot, onto a pile of pine boards that would later be used to panel the bedroom. I am certain the footprint is my father’s. When I wake up in the morning and see it in the dim light, I imagine my mother awakening alone in that same room for 45 summers, looking up and seeing that same footprint, and I imagine I know what she thought and felt.
  1. Promises: On the night that my father died—suddenly, leaving my mother a young widow with four children, not even yet aware that there would soon be a fifth—my three brothers sat with her at the kitchen table after the stunned neighbors had left, after my sister had been put to bed. My oldest brother, who at fourteen had just been told (by their well-meaning pastor) that he was now the man of the family, said shakily, “I guess now we’ll have to sell the camp.” My mother spread her hands on the table and looked at each of the boys in turn and said, “We are never selling the camp.”
  1. Proximity: When I was growing up in exile in suburban Connecticut for ten months of the year, I longed constantly for camp. Very early on, I vowed that I would never live anywhere but Oxford County, Maine, and I’ve been right here for nearly 45 years now. Best of all, for the past 32 years, I’ve lived just three miles from camp, close enough to walk or bike, close enough to go there in all seasons. “Some year,” my mother would say, as we were packing to leave camp on Labor Day weekend, “I’m going to sit right here in the fall and watch the leaves turn color.” Later on in life, she did, and now I do, too.
  1. Wonder: Once, when I was in about the middle of my sullen adolescence, my mother climbed the stairs to the loft and woke me in the middle of the night and said, “Come see the Northern Lights.” We made our way to the beach, climbed into our old canoe, and pushed it off the sand, out into the still, dark water. We paddled until we had a clear view of the northwest sky. For a long time I had forgotten what it meant to experience such a pure sense of wonder, and that night, the feeling was restored to me. Decades later, I remembered everything, and wrote a poem:

    One night you woke me late
    And said, Come see
    The Northern Lights. I feigned sleep;
    I was so snug—
    and smug. But then I thought,
    Why not? And I came barefoot
    Down the narrow stairs.
    We pushed the canoe off—
    Skritch—over the sand.
    The hem of my nightgown brushed the water
    As I climbed in the bow.
    (You were in charge:
    You took the stern.)
    The lake was black.
    The trees were black.
    The sky was black,
    Pricked with stars—
    No moon.
    Our paddles dipped, and dripped,
    Not silent as the Indians’, but hushed
    Enough to hear the bats
    And the crackle of someone’s campfire
    Down the lake.
    And they were there, in the northwest sky—
    Green, yellow, and red
    (Just like Robert Service said).

  1. Sweat equity vs. instant gratification: I realize that this may be a tough one, but if you really want to make memories with your family, the thing to do is to find yourself a little piece of land and set to work clearing brush, pulling stumps, and leveling a building spot. From the photos you included in your letter, I can see that your boys are hearty-looking; they clearly like being outdoors and will probably enjoy sleeping in a tent for a few summers while you get your camp built. At six and eight, they’re old enough to learn to swing a hammer, and in a year or two, they should be able to use a Skil saw with some supervision. Your camp will always have a few quirky characteristics that come from being built by a family with no real idea of what they were doing, but, trust me, it will feel more like yours that way.

I wish you the best of luck with your search!

Mither_reading_at_camp

What’s YOUR flying squirrel story?

It seems that almost everyone has a flying squirrel story. Here’s mine, along with a few of the dozens of comments, stories, and dire warnings I received when I posted my photo on the Maine Wildlife Facebook page.

When I got up a few mornings ago and found several balls and skeins of yarn knocked to the floor from the cubbies in the spare bedroom where I store my fairly extensive yarn stash (every knitter has one), I naturally blamed the cats. After all, when plastic bags end up strewn around the house, or when pens, paper clips, TV remotes, and cell phones mysteriously disappear and turn up under the couch, they’re the usual culprits.

FS 2I had just started picking up the yarn and stuffing it back into the cubby with the rest of the stash when there was a frantic scrabbling from behind the skeins, and I suddenly found myself face to face with a flying squirrel.

 

FS yarn (2)

It’s rather startling to come unexpectedly face to face with a wild animalFS 13 in your yarn cubby, even if that wild animal is all eyes and ears, small and furry, and very, very cute.

I’m not sure which of us was more alarmed. I may have jumped and shrieked a bit; he didn’t. In fact, he froze in place for long enough for me to get my phone and take several photos (because, you know, Facebook-or-it-didn’t-happen, right?).FS 12

He even stayed frozen long enough for me to go to the basement stairway and locate the old fishnet that came with the house when Tony bought it 35 years ago. (Although the previous owners had never specifically mentioned sharing their home with assorted wildlife, it probably should have been a sign when he discovered that they had kept a net conveniently close by.)

FS 5Although it hasn’t workedFS 6 for mice, red squirrels, or the ermine that found its way inside one winter, we’ve successfully used this net to remove errant bats on a number of occasions. When netted, bats usually fall obligingly into the narrow pouch at the bottom of the net and stay there until they can be released outside.

FS netIt turns out that flying squirrels, when netted, do not fall obligingly into the bottom of the net. Instead, they clingFS 10 desperately to the mesh with the teeny, tiny claws on their teeny, tiny fingers and toes, refuse to be shaken down, and leap out at the first opportunity, sometimes straight at the face of the person holding the handle of the net.

This is disconcerting, to say the least, when one is that person.

FS 7Getting this furry invader into the net, at least at first, wasn’t the problem, but keeping him in the net turned out to be impossible. By the time he had escaped and been recaptured a couple of times, all three cats had come tearing upstairs and were following the proceedings with opportunistic interest, and I was just about equally afraid of having a flying squirrel attach itself to my face or having to watch the violent demise of my inarguably adorable new friend at the hands (and claws, and teeth) of the three vicious killers with whom I willingly share my home.FS cats

FS 1Although I had the idea that I could grab a nearby towel, throw it over the net, and carry it downstairs to the door, I would have needed at least one more hand, or a couple less cats underfoot, to accomplish this.FS 18

I should mention that this is not my first flying squirrel rodeo. Every year, from late fall until early spring, the cats and I occasionally hear something running around in the walls and attic, and every time I hear it I think, gee, that sounds too big to be a mouse.

But since I never have to go into our attic (which is an unheated crawl FS 14space filled with nothing but insulation and, I guess we can assume, rodent nesting material and probably more rodent poop than I care to contemplate), when I’m not actually confronted by a flying squirrel in my living space, I can maintain a blissful state of denial. (It’s even easier for Tony,FS 3 who is too hard of hearing to notice the scrabbling noises. And as for the cats, as long as the invaders stay out of sight, the mystery of “What the Heck Is in the Wall?” just adds a little excitement to their dull indoor lives.)

The first time I actually saw one was two years ago. I was sitting in the living room, reading, when it emerged from who-knows-where to eat a bit of leftover cat food at the foot of the stairs. The cats didn’t happen to be in the room, and the squirrel and I both chose to pretend we hadn’t seen one another.

Since then, I’ve come upstairs more than once to find one or more cats stationed outside our bedroom closet, leading to me to believe our house guests have a secret pathway somewhere in there that lets them go back and forth from the attic, although I’ve looked for it to no avail.FS 4

After a few failed attempts with the net, the squirrel ran into our bedroom and disappeared under the bed. By the time I had pulled everything out from under the bed, it had relocated to under the dresser, in a space too small for the cats to squeeze into, which is where I left it, since I had to get to work.

FS 16When I got home, there was no sign of a living squirrel and, I was glad to see, no sign that the cats had caught up with him while I was gone. In fact, everything seemed back to normal, so I concluded that our furry friend had found his way safely outside or, more likely, back to the attic.

The next morning, however, I came downstairs to find all three cats staring intently up at Tony’s jacket, which he had hung over the top of the open door to his office. Then I noticed that the jacket was moving, ever so slightly, as if swaying in a breeze. Our house is old and drafty, but not that drafty, so I had a pretty good idea what was going on.FS text

I thought maybe I could reach up, gather up the jacket, yank open the outside door, and toss the jacket, squirrel and all, out onto the doorstep.

With one hand on the doorknob, I cautiously lifted the jacket, only to find the panic-stricken rodent clinging to the edge of the door. He took one look at me and, clearly remembering the net episode of the day before, launched himself off the door and into Tony’s office, with the cats in hot pursuit.

FS 15He made a couple of laps around the room before jumping into an empty cardboard box, which I quickly upended, but not before he had shot out from underneath it and headed down the basement stairs with Roman close behind him.

I ran down after them in time to see the squirrel make it safely through the chicken-wire wall that separates the cat-friendly zone of the basement from the cat-free zone.

Convinced he was safe for the moment, and already late (for the second morning in a row), I left for work, afterFS 11 filling Tony in on the latest developments.

A couple of hours later, he called to say that the squirrel had come back up from the basement and led him and theFS 9 cats on yet another chase. He was finally able to trap it by cornering it in the bathroom and upending Eli’s food dish over it, then sliding a piece of cardboard underneath. He escorted it out the door, and reported that it was last seen racing away over the snow.

I’m sure it was back inside by the time I got home from work.

FS jacket

 

 

2020, Oxford County, and hiking “low and local”

So long, 2020. In the words of the Sanford-Townsend Band (a one-hit wonder from the 1970s—a mostly confusing time in history that I call “my era” and one that Tony professes not to remember), don’t let the screen door hit you on your way out.

Or, to paraphrase the Grateful Dead, what a long strange year it’s been.2020 dumpster fire

I don’t think I really need 1970s rock bands to remind anyone that 2020 was, in general, a Very Bad Year.

People couldn’t hug their friends, visit their grandchildren, go to live performances, sing in church, or eat in restaurants.

Everything was canceled.

Worst of all, millions of people got sick with COVID-19, and, in the U.S. alone, hundreds of thousands died.

In so many ways, it was a Very Bad Year.

But, at least here in my little world, not every single thing about 2020 was terrible. In fact, I can think of a few actual benefits I derived from a year in which, due to circumstances completely beyond my control, I was forced to do what I’ve been telling people for years was one of my life goals: to never leave Oxford County.

When I was growing up in Connecticut, tortured by the knowledge that I was, at heart and soul, a displaced Mainer, I was so enamored of the idea of moving to Oxford County to live that I announced I was changing my middle name to Oxford. (I was also enamored of Little Women, declaring at the same time that I was changing my first name to Beth, and I spent most of fourth and fifth grade signing all of my school papers, correspondence, and such, “Beth Oxford Wight.”)

Yes, of course I’m very glad we made that trip to North Carolina to play with our granddaughter in February before Raleigh NC with Lilathe pandemic hit! And I enjoyed my visit to Cumberland County for a birthday celebration in early March with three dear college friends, an evening on which we talked about life and love, politics and our past, retirement and remodeling—everything except the one subject that would, within a week, become almost the sole topic of conversation at every gathering (if we could have actually had gatherings).

But since my birthday I’ve left Oxford County exactly three times, and I’m pretty much okay with that, because it turns out that Oxford County really does have everything I need.

It has my home, which has always been my refuge. Although I know many people will say they have suffered greatly from “cabin fever” during the pandemic, that hasn’t been the case for me. I get outside for a walk or hike nearly every day, I’m fortunate to still be able to go to work, but I’m always very happy to return home to my sanctuary.

Just three miles away from home, Oxford County has our family camp, the place I call the center of my universe, because it is.Camp at night

Thanks to a lack of “Things To Do” last summer—no weekend festivals, no public events at work, no out-of-town shopping, and, best of all, no pesky in-person meetings, I got to spend more time at camp than I have in years. Although we missed our usual camp visits with my siblings and other friends and family, we added Donna to our COVID pod and she drove up from Portsmouth every other weekend from Memorial Day until mid-September to isolate at camp, do projects with me, and enjoy our very favorite “activity”—doing absolutely nothing on the deck or dock.

A couple of decades ago, I used to think a trip to Lewiston/Auburn, or even Portland, every week or two was a necessity in order to obtain groceries and other essentials. Then, for a number of years, a weekly 45-mile round-trip to the Oxford Hannaford and Walmart, which usually takes me at least four hours, seemed inevitable, as did the convenient fast-food lunch that often accompanied it. I had, long before the pandemic, reduced that to once or twice a month, but since the beginning of March, I’ve been to Walmart just once and Hannaford twice.

Everything I need in the way of food has come from our local grocery store (which probably does have an official name, but which is variously called “Bethel Shop’n’Save,” “The IGA,” or “The Foodliner,” depending on how long you’ve lived here), or from farmers’ markets, farm stands, and other local food vendors.

A trip to get groceries now takes me well under an hour. I’ve become addicted to perfect bagels from DiCocoa’s and delicious takeout from Le Mu Eats, and I just realized that I haven’t eaten fast food in over ten months. (Ice cream cones definitely don’t count.)

And Oxford County has endless opportunities to get outside and play, in all seasons. In 2020 I hiked, walked, ran, and snowshoed a total of 1,272.8 miles. On top of that, I swam, paddleboarded, canoed, kayaked, and biked. I Bucks in rain Christmasembraced the mantra “no bad weather, just bad gear” and I’m sure I breathed more fresh air in 2020 (a lot of it hot, cold, wet, or snowy) than I ever have before.

Now that I’ve wrapped up another year without breaking my insane streak of consecutive days of exercise (3,194, as of today) and spent several hours digging into the data I recorded in my mileage log, with my FitBit, and on Facebook, I’ve discovered that, of my 127 hikes in 2020, 124 of them were right here in good old Oxford County. (One was in Raleigh, NC, pre-pandemic, and two—one in Franconia, NH and one in Kennebec County—account for two-thirds of my trips outside the Peaked Mtn Amy and Elicounty since the beginning of March).

In fact, it turns out that 96 of my hikes—a full 75%—were in either Greenwood (where I live) or Woodstock (where our camp is). If I plotted them on a map, they’d probably fall within a five- or six-mile radius of where I sit right now.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that I’ve done 124 different hikes in Oxford County—I tend to return to my favorites again and again—but staying close to home, plus my recent discovery of the PeakBagger app for my phone (great maps!), did allow me to make some rewarding new discoveries (as well as some scratchy, buggy bushwhacks I don’t intend to repeat ever again in this lifetime) right here in my hometown(s).

I hiked Buck’s Ledge 30 times, Peaked Mountain in Maggie’s Nature Park 23 Bucks Ledge with Lilatimes, and Lapham Ledge 18 times. I also made my first-ever ascents of Elwell Mountain, Bald Bluff, Uncle Tom Mountain, Patch Mountain, Tibbetts Mountain, and Hedgehog Hill (all right here in Greenwood) as well as Square Dock Mountain in Albany, Blueberry Mountain in Stoneham, and Doten, Thompson, Hutchinson, and Irish Hills in Hartford.

Canada jay on Speck Although I did complete my first 4,000-foot peak in over 40 years (Old Speck) last fall, for the most part, I guess you could say that I enthusiastically embraced the AMC’s directive to “hike low and local” during the pandemic.

Will, who has spent some time studying lists of local mountains and hills on the PeakBagger app, tells me that there are at least 500 named peaks in Oxford County. I think that should be enough to keep me hiking close to home for a good long time. Peabody with fam

Hartford cairn amazement

Giant mystery cairn on Hutchinson Hill in Hartford, Maine.