“I love my job” – a week in Puerto Rico

I wonder how many times Chad said this over the course of the week - it certainly beats sitting on the 9th floor of an office tower all day. We went down to Puerto Rico to scout a trip for Apogee Adventures, the company Chad now helps run, which takes junior high and high school students on cycling, hiking, and service trips around the US. Interested in expanding the service aspect of the trips, Chad concocted the idea of a trip to Puerto Rico and we got to be the lucky ones to scout it. On the day we left, it snowed in Boston, which made our Caribbean sojourn all the more sweet. We went from 30F to 30C in a matter of four hours.

I love how modern transportation can speed you forward or backward through the seasons - perhaps this is the secret to controlling time. Immediately upon stepping out into the soft, Caribbean air, we realized that we’d packed the wrong clothes, not believing that it could possibly be so warm. We drove past the crashing surf of Ocean Park to our guest house, “Coqui del Mar,” named after the state animal, the tree frog, whose enchantingly gentle chirps we heard out the gloriously fully rolled down windows of our rental car. After recently having watched an episode of Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” set in Puerto Rico, we were curious to try the local staple, “mofongo,” mashed plantains mixed with crispy bits of fried pork served in a heaping scoop. While we found the sought-after mofongo, it turned out to be quite dry and was served with “chicharones,” essentially just fried chicken. Later, when I had the leftovers from this quite heavy meal, I discovered that it was much improved with a squeeze of fresh orange juice. But, it seemed to be customary to serve dishes with no sauces and certainly nothing fresh, much to our dismay. We bought the oranges at a local grocery store to compensate for this.

For breakfast the next morning, we tried the traditional “mallorca.” a swirl of doughy bread covered in powdered sugar. After ordering ours plain, we looked around and realized we should have taken a lesson from the locals and had it toasted with ham and cheese. We did, however, greatly enjoy the espresso con leche, which was strong and sweet and revved us p for our long drive to the El Yunque Rainforest. Puerto Rico is a funny place where you feel almost like you’re in the US - the highway signs are all shaped the same and there are loads of American fast food chains lining the roads (more Burger Kings per mile than I’ve ever seen, and also an odd assortment of chains that have largely gone out of business in the continental US and seemed temporally out of place). But, everything is in Spanish. Spanish is just similar enough to Italian to get us into trouble but not similar enough to really be helpful, at least in speaking (understanding and reading, in particular, were actually easier for the similarities). We drove up into El Yunque through a viney, wet forest with wonderful chirping and tweeting sounds echoing through the trees, and had a fantastic meeting with the rangers, one of whom has a daughter who lives in Lincoln, Maine, of all places. They are very excited to have the Apogee students volunteer with them and were incredibly helpful in sketching out the details of a project for them. Eager to explore the rainforest, we headed off for a short hike to La Mina waterfall. Along the way, we saw delicately perched lizards, giant snails, and wild pink impatiens on the forest floor, before descending to the dramatic falls, the pool at the bottom of which was filled with gleeful swimmers. On the way out, we stopped at the visitor’s center, where we were surprised to find out that the park had been protected since the Spanish rule, for over 200 years, before becoming a national US park in the 1970s. It is now the only rainforest in the US National Park system.

In great need of both lunch and our first swim, we stopped at Loquillo Beach. Here, we had heard about the “chioscos,” a row of stalls on the beach which sell an array of local snack foods. We settled on one of the few open stands (as it was a Monday and most of them open only on the weekends) where I had a “bacalaito,” a fried salt cod fritter (though I struggled to find the fish among the batter), and Chad had a long, skinny taquito stuffed with shrimp. The highlight by far was the “coco frijo,” fresh, cold coconut, cut open right in front of us. We slurped it down, parched from the heat, and quickly ordered another. All told, we couldn’t complain – lunch was a mere $7 for the both of us, a welcome relief after last night’s dinner of overpriced fried chicken. And we were happy to have something fresh and local. We found out, to our surprise that coconuts were just about it. Not much is grown on the island so that 90% of the food consumed there is imported, which seems strange for a place where you would expect fruit to be dangling deliciously from every tree and for sale at every corner. And then . . . we submerged in the deliciously warm sea, gently easing into the water through a continuum of temperature that is rare and delicious in striking contrast to the frenetic, gutsy plunge into Maine’s waters, which are crisp even at their warmest point. The water was soft and salty, even a little cloudy in its viscous jade green color. We finally tore ourselves away from the beach in order to return to San Juan in time for a personal tour of the city by a friend of a friend, who we had fortunately been put in touch with before coming down. It’s amazing what a local can show you that make a place come alive and which you wouldn’t find on your own. We drove to a small stretch of beach called “Pinones” up the coast where palm-thatched beach shacks housed simple waterfront bars with small tables and stools set out under the shade of their porch where we sampled the cool, refreshing local beer, Medalles. Then, we took a drive through new San Juan into the fortressed city of Viejo San Juan, home of the oldest settlement in the US (founded by Juan Ponce de León in 1508, and now a UNESCO world heritage site), with its impressive 4-foot thick ramparts. After zipping along the cobble-stoned streets, which were fairly quiet as there were no cruise ships in town that night, our gracious tour guide asked us if we were in the mood for some good, simple Puerto Rican food. We certainly were, not having eaten much we’d enjoyed since our arrival. He took us to a place called “Bebo’s,” something akin to the “Denny’s” of Puerto Rico - a little short on atmosphere, but with a great array of local specialties. We started out with pig stomach soup (mondongo) which was actually very good, and brought back memories of eating pig stomach in Sardinia). Chad then had stewed goat, which was also delicious, and I took another stab at salt cod, this time sautéed, not fried, and served with scrambled egg and vegetables. It was delicious. Over dinner, we got the lowdown on the troubles within the island’s government and the high rate of poverty and unemployment, particularly since the economic collapse.

The next day, Chad was off to Cabo Rojo, on the southwest coast, to meet with the staff at the Wildlife Refuge there, in hopes of organizing another volunteer project. I stayed behind to catch up on some work done. Though I often gripe about the challenges and obligations of constant communication, this is one of the most magnificent benefits. My courtyard “office” was just fine and my lunch break walk to the beach wasn’t bad either. I finished up in time for an afternoon walk, or trek, as it turned out, from Ocean Park to Old San Juan. I walked from the new part of the city, peppered with high rise hotels, Chinese restaurants, and convenience stores, along a stretch of beach where surfers rode on sunset-colored waves into the fortress of the old city. Guarding the entrance to the city’s harbor is the Fort San Felipe del Morro which, by the time I got there, was illuminated under a starry sky. Finally, I reached the Plaza Colon, where I slaked my parched throat with a local cane soda while I waited for Chad to join me for dinner at the Café Puerto Rico. It’s amazing how the slower pace of walking allows you to notice things that are otherwise a blur out a car window such as the one I looked out of last night on our tour. We’d finally hit our stride with food after the first few flops of meals – Chad had an eggplant relleno stuffed with chicken, and I had shrimp simmered in garlic sauce accompanied by plantain fries (not to be confused with the sweeter, crisper fried plantains), which made us appreciate fries made from potatoes. And, we sampled the local rum in a mojito and a spiced rum punch. Puerto Rico is one of the major rum producers in the world. In fact, much of the island was once covered in sugar cane plantations. Now, the major producer is the Bacardi Distillery, which you can take tours of right from the cruise ship terminal.

The next morning, we headed to the town of Fajardo, on the east coast of the island, to head out for the island of Vieques, best known as a former bombing range for the US Navy. Since the Navy stopped their exercises there in 2003, most of the island has been designated as a nature preserve and the Navy is slowly disarming the area for recreational use. But, currently much of it is off-limits. On the boat trip out to Vieques, we passed several grounded boats which looked like they’d been there for quite awhile and weren’t going anywhere soon. In fact, many things on the island were that way and reminded us of places in Mexico where there were an amazing number of unfinished buildings that now housed trees and lizards. On the water, we watched diving pelicans and brightly colored frigate birds - and even a sea turtle, which poked its head up alongside the ferry. We passed Culebra, which has the only Marine Protected Area in Puerto Rico – surprising for the extent of the coral reef and the tourism there. On the other side of the island, there are apparently several large experimental aquaculture pens, which I knew about from my nerdy ocean science geek research, but we didn’t see these on our trip.

Upon arrival, we packed into a taxi from the town of Isabel II, where we landed, to Esperanza, on the opposite side of the island, accompanied by half a dozen other people in a stuffy van with no air conditioning. We drove past the Malecon, the beachside drag, up to the Alta Vista, a slightly shabby hotel run by one of the town’s many ex-pats. Once checked in there, we walked down to town for a quick sandwich at Bellybuttons café, decorated with innumerable pictures of the bellybuttons of previous clientele, before heading to Sun Bay for a swim, wanting to finally get in the Caribbean Sea (having been on the Atlantic side until now) and to check out a potential camping spot for Apogee. We returned for an afternoon meeting at the Historic Conservation Trust, where we hoped to arrange another volunteer project. The facility there is a magical place with a small museum and aquarium filled with myriad natural and cultural objects from the island. I could have stayed awhile looking at all the collections, but we wanted to get in an evening snorkel before it got dark. We swam out along the pier, getting a preview of the marvelous Caribbean creatures that lived there. Later, for dinner, we ventured down the road a ways to try to find the “Mexi-Rican” restaurant we’d heard about, but were soon in the pitch black with no likely candidate in sight, and decided instead to return to town to Duffy’s, just about the only game in town. Chad tried the conch chowder and an avocado salad, and I sampled crab cakes – both accompanied by more tropical punches (mine made from Passoa, a passion fruit liquor), and a lime, coconut drink for desert. While at the bar, we met Abe, the owner of one of the companies on the island who gave tours of the biolumiscent bay. He looked like a true pirate with a black beard, beady eyes, and a bandana tied around his hair. When we mentioned we were looking for a company to take a dozen students to the bay, he offered us a free tour the next night – another perk of scouting.

The next morning, we enjoyed breakfast on the roof of our hotel, looking out over the island, which had a decidedly more country feel than the mainland and seemed more authentically Caribbean. Eager to get into the water and to do some exploring, we rented a kayak, yet again using our scouting skills to garner a good rate for the day. We paddled out from the Malecon past what the locals called “the island,” edged with rugged cliffs which plunge down into the warm waters, to Mezza Luna Bay for some snorkeling and a picnic on the beach. Anticipating that the reef might be sorry shape, I was surprised to see such healthy corals, polyps waving in the water next to purple and yellow sea fans and vase sponges with a spectacular array of fish from tiny bright blue spotted fish to elegant yellow pipe fish hovering next to spiral Christmas tree worms. Spiny lobsters hid out under brain corals and glass shrimp took cover in soft, iridescent anemones, neighbored by giant, spiky black sea urchins. Over an hour later, finally made aware of the time by growing hunger, we headed in to the beach. The temperature was heavenly. We stopped two more times to snorkel on the way back, passing by another turtle periscoping its neck above the surface, which was scattered by silvery jumping fish, and herons flying overhead.
Many hours later, we returned to the Alta Vista for cocktails on the roof deck at sunset- rum and Coke we’d bought from the local store and key limes I’d sneakily acquired from a tree in one of the yards along the road. Then, we were off for our tour of Bio Bay. The beginning of the tour was literally a little rough, bumping down a rugged road in the dark in the back of a truck we weren’t sure was ever going to arrive to pick us up in the first place. But, once out there, it was one of the coolest sights we’ve ever seen. I had seen bioluminescence before – in Maine and even in Australia, but this was a different deal. The bay here has one of the highest concentrations of the dinoflagellates in the world. These are the tiny plankton that flash their lights when disturbed. The bay here is exceptionally salty and is surrounded by a barrier of mangroves, which provide nutrients for the plankton and make the water rich and silty. We paddled out into the center of the bay and then hopped out of our boats for a snorkel. It was like swimming through a star tunnel – like you were Superman flying through space, sparkles streaming along your body as you slowly swam through the water. Quick repeated movements created cloudy blue flashes of light. We had mixed feelings about being able to so intimately experience this, as we were one of close to a hundred swimmers in the bay that night alone. At the end of the day, we calculated we’d been under the water for over four hours and paddled at least as many – the mark of a good day. For this reason, we have few pictures from Vieques.

On our last day in Puerto Rico, we woke up early to get in one more snorkel around the pier, this time in daylight. There were dozens of silver needle fish shining in the morning sun and arrays of jacks mixed with tiny colorful fish hanging out in the trash reefs underneath the pier. Once back on the mainland, we heard about a giant oil tank fire just outside of San Juan and immediately saw this along our drive. It was quite dramatic, the black plume rising above the city. Then, after an impressive line-up of a taxi, a boat, a car, a plane and a bus, we arrived back in New Castle just after midnight, limp from a long day of travel. Just to properly welcome us back from the tropics, the weather gods sent along a fall thunderstorm. Though it was chilly, the rain slicked the newly-turned leaves and blackened the tree trunks, making the colors brightly shine against the gray sky.

Several weeks later now, the fall season is beginning to give way to more wintry weather, with most of the leaves having dropped (many into our yard, much to the pain of Chad’s now-aching limbs) and the potted impatiens on our deck, cousins of the wild variety that grow on the rainforest floor in El Yunque, are now but shriveled stalks. While we had a very successful scouting trip and are hoping to fill Apogee’s first Caribbean service trip this coming summer, there just might be a need to nail down critical details come February, when we’re buried in snow up here.

The Great Western Excursion - CO to CA

I am writing so far after this trip that I am now forced to rely on scrawled notes taken during and shortly thereafter, which tell a slightly different story, but an adventure worth recording nonetheless.

Sometime back in late August, we left a gorgeous summer in Maine after the annual Little/Royce family visit and headed West for two weddings tied together by a week of travel. We started out in Denver and had a couple of days to play with before I had to report for bridesmaidsly duties and a college reunion of sorts at the Powderhorn Resort, near Grand Junction, for wedding number one - Meredith and Brett. Leaving the airport, we sang loudly to “Rocky Mountain High” as we sped onwards towards Breckenridge, our first night’s destination. Breckenridge is a charming ski town which Chad remembered from childhood ski trips, but it was my first visit. The town was filled with brightly colored flowers against the crisp blue sky and chilly mountain air. We stayed at a small B&B on the river, which was housed in an old barn and retained some of the rustic details – we stayed in “stall” number 4. After dinner, and a soak in the riverside hot tub, we stumbled our way to bed, feeling the effects of the reduced oxygen at 9,000 feet.

In the morning, we headed to Vail to visit Chad’s cousin and her boyfriend. I was curious to finally see the infamous mountain where my sister had broken her leg in her early post-collegiate days. We had a beautiful walk along the stream through town, though we were struck by the number of dead pine trees along the way, which had recently been devastated by the pine bark beetle. After a few hours’ drive, we descended into a faded, speckled landscape to the Powerderhorn ski resort. We met up with old friends and had a quick rehearsal in the hot afternoon sun before heading to the rehearsal dinner at a house in the nearby hills. The expansive sunset views from there were fantastic, as was the barbeque and the chance to catch up with old friends.

The next day, the girls were busy with wedding preparations, so the boys went off on a Frisbee golf adventure, which took them all through the mountains around the resort. Alice and I managed to get in an early morning hike up the mountain before the events began, and returned to watch marmots playing on the lawn as we breakfasted on the deck. We spent the rest of the day learning to make bouquets (on-the-job training) and teasing Meredith as we tried out various contraptions in her hair. The boys returned just in time to help decorate the hillside for the ceremony. It was a beautiful sight of Mer and all went smoothly, including the incorporation of a few other critters - Bonnie, the dog, as ring-bearer and a pesky chipmunk that was determined to be in our pictures. Afterwards, we feasted, gave and listened to wonderful toasts, and danced up a storm until the wee hours. It was a grand party!

In the morning, we rounded up the crew and headed up to Grand Mesa for a hike amidst the many crystal clear lakes. The contrast with the dusty landscape below was astounding. After a cozy lunch at a lakeside lodge, which looked strangely familiar, we were off to Grand Junction to drop Rob off at the airport. I remembered arriving there 16 years ago for my Outward Bound trip in the San Juan mountains and I also realized that the lodge where we had lunch on the Mesa seemed familiar because I had visited it with my parents after my trip. From there, we headed to Fruita to stay with Mer and Brett for a few days, arriving just in time to accompany them on an evening walk in the McInnis Canyons with their crew of dogs. Along the way, we spotted a brightly colored collared lizard as well as a jack rabbit, much to the dogs’ delight.

We left Mer and Brett early the next morning with Alice to venture to Arches National Park. This was one of the strangest landscapes I’ve encountered – whimsical formations and colors like intense sunsets. Unfortunately, the contrast of colors was somewhat obscured due to recent wildfires, so we missed the stark reds against blues for our photographs. I read a brochure about the park in an attempt to understand the geology of how these arches were formed, coming away with a story that included an ancient ocean, wind, and lots of erosion over a long, long time. This is why I studied biology and not geology. I wondered whether Maine’s lush coastal ‘scape would someday look like this and if humans would be around to see it. We hiked the Devil’s Garden loop, passing by an array of arches along the way - Sand Dune , Broken, Skyline , Pine Tree, Tunnel, Private, Navajo, Partition, Landscape, and Double OArches, cluminating with Dark Angel monument at the end of the loop - and returned to meet up with Heather and Brenden for a picnic lunch. Due to lack of a better place and there being no shade in sight anywhere, we spread out our lunch on the sidewalk, and then walked out to the famous Delicate Arch, where Brenden practiced his echoing skills off the canyon walls. We returned to Fruita for our last night with Mer and Brett before they headed off for their honeymoon birding extravaganza in Australia.

We had not yet visited the Colorado National Monument, which was just about out Mer and Brett’s backyard, so we spent out last morning there exploring there with Alice before she had to fly home. The ridge we chose for our hike supposedly had expansive views all the way out to the San Juans, but we felt more like we were in the Smokey Mountains than in Colorado, due to the bluish haze that covered everything and obscured our views. After many miles of hiking, we emerged back on the park road, where we had the best views of the day. By then, though, we were a little weary of walking, so I tried my hand at hitchhiking and made friends with a very nice couple who drove me back to the visitor’s center to retrieve our car.

We said goodbye to Alice and were off on the next leg, heading across Highway 40 towards Steamboat Springs. We had chosen a scenic set of roads, which neither of us had been on before, and it was absolutely worth the extra time. Both the natural and cultural scenery were fascinating – driving through coal country past rickety old mines and miners’ shacks and new power plants, and then spotting an array of sheep, cows, llama, white-tail deer, elk, magpies, and antelope along the roadside. We noticed, in the small towns we passed through, that the common art form was sculpture - mostly twisted, angular metal pieces, which matched the strength and carved nature of the land in much the same way that watercolor seems to be the perfect medium for the gentle landscape of a place like Door County, Wisconsin, where I visited this summer with my family.

In Steamboat Springs, we stayed at a small inn at the edge of town. In the morning, the owners cooked up a delicious breakfast in their country kitchen and told us about the construction of their inn from lodgepole pines, which had been killed by the bark beetle. They pointed out the blue streaks in the wood, which were the result of a blue fungus that grows in the tiny tubes that the pine beetles bore inside the tree trunks. Apparently, there is a nearby peak called Mount Baldy, which is no longer bald, but must have been denuded by the beetle many years ago when it took its name. Who knows what the forests around here will look like 20 years from now. They also told us about the fantastic hot springs, but we tried not to listen too closely, as we didn’t have enough time to visit them before heading to our next destination, Rocky Mountain National Park, a first for both of us. Along the road, hawks and eagles soared overhead and we passed pelicans floating on Grand Lake, another reminder of an ancient inland sea. Once in the park, we climbed up and up though Aspens turning from green to gold, to reach the Alpine meadow, where bull elk and big horn sheep dotted the rugged slope and lakes lay nestled beneath jagged peaks. A little way down the trail we had chosen for our day’s hike, we smelled smoke and noticed a nearby controlled burn. We thought we’d finally gotten away from the fires, but here we were, in them again. We passed the firemen keeping watch, leaning against a log with their bright orange water packs at their feet, the spicey scents of the fire burning our nostrils. At the top of the trail, we had a lovely view down over a valley with a small winding, silvery stream, and big magpies picturesquely sitting in a dead tree, watching with us. To complete the natural experience, we came upon a mule deer on our way out, who was so unphased by our presence that we questioned whether he was put their by the park service for the tourists .

Next destination - Boulder, Colorado. This is where Chad got his collegiate start and where I had never been. We stayed at the Colorado Chatauqua, which is a kind of community education center that was founded in 1898 as a summer retreat for training Sunday school teachers and which evolved to include other summer educational, cultural, and recreational programs. There were many of these centers around the coutnry, but only a few survive now, including this one. The complext contains a cluster of cabins with a main dining lodge and function hall for gatherings, and it is now open to the public, though some of the cottages are privately owned. We had a fantastic dinner that night on the porch of the restaurant (a memorable burger for me, which is saying a lot), and followed it with a moonlit walk beneath the iconic Flatiron mountains - flashes of light from nearby thunderstorms illuminating their faces.

In the morning, we hiked up the hillside to the amphitheater, a rocky outcropping used by climbers, which was a little steeper than we’d anticipated, given our sore legs from the many miles hiked in the previous days. And, in the afternoon, we toured the UC Boulder campus, walking past Chad’s freshman dorm, and picnicking by the apartment where he lived David one summer. Then, we were off to Denver to return our trusty, now dusty, rental car to the airport and to conclude the Colorado segment of our trip.

Part two – San Francisco, California
We flew into San Francisco over a strange brightly colored quilt of oranges, reds and greens just outside the bay. We later found out that these are salt ponds, which are part of a large estuarine restoration project. That evening, we made our way into the city and enjoyed a delicious dinner at La Mediterrinee, just down the hill from Jan’s house, followed by a stop at a neighborhood favorite, BiRite Creamery, for ice cream.

The next day was a work day for Jan, so we set out on our own to explore the city. We took the trolley to the beach along Judah, past the house where I stayed one summer in college, walked past the edge of Golden Gate Park, where I had interned at the California Academy of Sciences, by the Cliff House, and out to Lands End along the coastal trail. There were beautiful flowers and wild fennel and mulberries along the way. At the precipice at Point Lobos, we found one of the most amazing picnic spots we’ve ever been to - complete with dolphins and sea lions playing, pelicans diving and striking views of the Golden Gate bridge . We actually walked right up to the base of the bridge, where we tried waiting for a bus, but eventually gave up and continued on foot. We kept walking and walking, all in pursuit of a Ghiradelli’s chocolate soda. When we finally arrived, our legs about to give out and our throats parched, it was all worth it. Then, we took a bus all the way back and watched the fog roll in and the sunset colors filter through it after a remarkably clear day. The evening concluded with a great dinner party at Jan’s house.

The next morning, hoping for an equally sunny day, we drove out to Muir Beach with Jan and her boyfriend, Peter. Trail PIC Although we were socked in with fog, the hike was lovely and filled with an array of wildflowers, which Chad, the nature photographer, captured on film. Today, the ending point of our hike, rather than a chocolate soda, was a small English pub on the other side of the beach. We arrived chilled and quite hungry only to find a sign stating that they were closed for an event! But, Peter did some sleuthing and, it turned out, we were just early enough to sneak in before the party for some hot soup and cold beer. Part way back, we made a quick change in a roadside gas station to get spiffed up for the rehearsal dinner for wedding number two – Jake and Kate. A colorful garden, views of nearby Mt. Tamalpais, and copious margaritas accompanied the fiesta-themed gala that evening.

Sunday, we decided, was our day of rest, after serious walking every day of our trip thus far. We packed a picnic, a big blanket, books, and a Frisbee, and headed to Golden Gate Park, where we lazed in the grass in the sunshine for a few hours before cleaning up for the wedding. The festivities were at the Foreign Cinema in the Mission neighborhood – movies were shown on the wall in the outdoor courtyard where we dined on fantastic food and reunited with friends from Overland summers past, where we had met Jake.

That brings us to the last day of this excursion, which we spent in Point Reyes, where I hadn’t been since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. We hiked out to a cliff above the beachside lagoon and looked down upon sharks and stingrays swimming through the clear water, then followed the path back along a windy crest trail where hawks played above us in the stiff winds and elk ambled in the brush. That night, Jan and Peter introduced us to Burmese food for our last meal together, including a salad made of green tea leaves, beer flavored with ginger and lemon, and a “fresh young coconut” drink served in a whole shell.

And, then, after our epic journey filled with myriad friends and places, we flew all night back to the east coast, through DC, and on up to Portland, Maine. We arrived back at 5 Sheridan bleary eyed to the disarray of our half-moved house, trying to process all that we had experienced before moving on to moving to our new house in Brunswick. Now, over a month after returning, I have finally managed to get it all down. I often wish I could hit the pause button and just stop to absorb the wonderful nuggets of trips like these, but then again, the point of recording things is to reread and recreate pieces of the experience over and over, sapping a little more nutrition from them each time. And, more importantly, to share the experiences with other people, as they never seem complete without including the thoughts and insights that come from friends and family. On that note, we are officially moved in, finally purchased a guest bed and are open for visitors. So, we hope to see you soon.

One Year Later

We said we wouldn’t go more than a year without returning to Sardegna and we almost did it. We bought our tickets one year to the day, though we didn’t actually go back until a couple months later. It is strange to return as a tourist to a place where you once lived - things feel both familiar and foreign at the same time and, in a country where the language and culture are different, this is even more true. It is like seeing an old friend whom you haven’t seen for a long time: at first, you do a series of double-takes to assure yourself that what you are seeing is real, and things are a little slow to start. But, quickly enough everything is familiar again and the present picks up where the past left off. So it was with our visit to Sardegna – a little awkward at first until we shimmied our way into our old skins and the inert synapses reawoke and found their paths once again.

After a flight to Paris and then to Rome, we completed the last leg of our journey, flying over the sparkling Mediterranean to Sardegna. On our approach into Olbia, I noticed several aquaculture pens in the harbor, and the wheels in my head began to spin, already scheming ways to return under the guise of work, as aquaculture policy is one of my current projects. We arrived at the Olbia airport in the late afternoon and emerged into the moist, warm Sardegnan air, feeling our mussels and skin instantly relax. We sat at the airport bar and sipped our first Ichnusa and ate typical Italian panini of dry bread and meat. American panini, with delightful spreads, fresh greens and grilled bread, are one of those rare non-authentic versions that are better, in my opinion, than the real thing. Soon after lunch, we zipped off in our rented Fiat down the twisty road to Palau past familiar places and crazy drivers who pass you when you don’t think there could possibly be space or time for it to happen. Yet another sign that Italians know how to enjoy life – everything is a sort of game and there is always fun to be had, even if it means risking your life! We went straight to our landlord’s house in Palau, perched high above the town with a gorgeous vista on a perfectly sunny day, and were greeted warmly by Piera and her son, Chicco, who took us down to the apartment they’d arranged for us. It was right across the road from Faraglione, our old haunt, and had a little terrazzo above the gardens which provided a view out toward La Maddalena and the ferry gliding back and forth in between. Most importantly, the apartment, called l’Airone, which means “the heron,” was within easy ambling distance from our old favorite beach, where we immediately headed after dropping off our things. I cannot describe the magic of submerging myself in that water, (although, to be honest, it was pretty “fresca”).

We finally peeled ourselves off the beach and cleaned up a bit before heading up the hill to greet the whole Cannas family, members of which were arriving for Giovanna’s wedding. We managed small fragments of conversation, our words not yet flowing easily from lack of practice and the effects of being awake for over 24 hours, and then excused ourselves to get dinner in town before heading home for a much anticipated long, horizontal doze. On our walk into town along the waterfront path, which was finally finished after over a year of construction, we looked up to see a full moon rising over Santo Stefano. It was truly a “can you believe this?” kind of moment. At dinner, at La Uva Fragola (the strawberry grape, which really means Concord grape), we had wonderful cozze (mussels) and pizza and a little glass pitcher of vino della casa before strolling through the quiet streets of town. While it was Saturday night, tourist season had not yet begun (even the gelateria had closed up shop at 8pm).

And then, we had the sleep of dreams. This was followed by a morning only poorly imitated by Disney movies with dappled sunlight sparkling on the water, sweet scents of dewy mirto, rosemary, jasmine and honeysuckle from the gardens and sounds of birds and butterflies twittering along the terrace. Was it wrong that, on day one, I already was figuring out how to come back? There is a peacefulness in Sardegna that I haven’t been able to replicate back in Maine. I imagine that part of it has less to do with the place than with the lifestyle we had while living there as an expat where I couldn’t fully understand or participate in the complicated interworkings of the culture and society. But, there definitely is a way of life here where people appreciate a slower pace, even compared to Maine, the state whose motto is “the way life should be”. I’m hoping to export some of this sap-slow sweetness.

Sometime mid morning, around 930 or 10 when the shops first open for the day, we headed in to town to do some shopping and were amazed at how readily the shops’ proprietors recognized and greeted us. Those who had been less than ebulliently friendly while we lived there, lit up when we walked in, and asked us all about life in the US, often challenging our capacity to explain things in our rusty Italian. Later in the day, we headed out to Cala Trana on Punta Sardegna, one of our favorite places in the world, reached only by foot along a 30 minute walking path or by boat, and spent the afternoon there before returning to get cleaned up for Giovanna’s wedding. The walk there reminded me of just how much trash there is on the beaches there and of my scheme to return as a part of Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup. The guests gathered at the Cannas’s house for a pre-wedding reception and then headed down to the church (as it is the only church in Palau, it is truly “the church”). The guests gathered outside the church to await the arrival of the bride and groom, as did just about everyone else in town, some even peering out the windows of the adjacent bars. The ceremony was foreign in more than one way in that it was a full Catholic mass complete with communion and it was done in Italian. I was able to pick up bits and pieces including the Lord’s prayer, but mostly we followed the crowd in sitting down and standing up throughout. One of the neatest parts was the music - traditional Sardinian songs sung by a small musical group of adults and children, which always sounds a little like lowing farm animals, but is characteristic nonetheless of the wild countryside of the island. The only disappointing thing about the whole experience is that we didn’t bring our camera, so we have no visual record to share, although we’re hoping to get copies of some photos from the Cannas family and will add them in, if we do.

After the ceremony, the guests, 300 or so in all, paraded by car to the Ristorante Parco degli Ulivi, where we were welcomed onto a poolside terrace overlooking hills masked in fading evening light and offered a stunning array of apertivi and antipasti, all elegantly displayed, including a prosciutto tree (a tinfoil-covered tree with pieces of prosciutto draped over the branches). Then, the true feasting began. We were seated at a table of a group of family friends from Milan, most of which spoke a bit of English. Andrea was quite thoughtful in doing this and made sure to check up on us several times throughout the night to make sure we were enjoying ourselves. Having learned a bit from Dan and Ily’s wedding in Sicily, we recognized that the menu we were given did not indicate choices for each courses, but instead listed everything that we were going to be served – 9 courses in all. Small bites of everything is the only way to survive if you want to try it all, and you do. Somehow, 3am rolled around and we had managed to make friends with the folks at our table, including a photographer from Dorgali who went out to his car to get a copy of his fantastic book, which he signed and gave to us.

The next day, we recovered. We slept until noon and had nothing but a cappuccino until dinner that night. In the afternoon, we went for a hike out to a beautiful beach tucked in the rocks, through fields of cows, sheep, and ostrich (not your typical Sardegnan farm animal). Right at the beach there was a little villa along an inviting path, and we briefly considered becoming squatters and taking it over. It was a bit breezy, as is the norm there, but we couldn’t resist a quick plunge in the Med before starting the return hike. That night, we met a group of friends at Oasi, a favorite restaurant we used to bike to when we lived here. It was a wonderful reunion with friends still living in Sardegna, including a new baby who had everyone smiling all night, and those visiting from Naples. It was like so many gatherings we had frequently while living here, the types of which we have greatly missed since leaving.

While walking through town one evening, we ran into Chicco, Andrea and Piera’s son, who had invited us to “pranziamo insieme,” or eat lunch together, at his family’s house the next day. Lunch is a tradition in Italian houses that is difficult to explain. Every day, the entire family (parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends) gather together mid-day for a lengthy lunch of home made fare. It is not a big event, just a simple gathering with good food where sometimes the conversation is minimal, but nonetheless it lasts for a couple of hours, after which everyone riposes for the afternoon before going back to work in the early evening. For the lunch we were invited to, Piera put together a platter of antipasti (local meats, cheeses, and bread) accompanied by piquant sundried tomato spread to start, followed by home-made crepes filled with spring vegetables - asparagus and artichokes, and finally a delicious apple tart. With our meal, we drank the last bottle of the season’s wine that Chicco had made. Before leaving, we attempted to entice Giovanna and Giovanni to come to Maine on their honeymoon trip to the US. From there, we headed into town to meet Augusto, a local trekking guide, who we hope will be a key ingredient in our evolving concept for a Sardegnan tour business and tossed around ideas for American groups of adventurous tourists. Our visit was short, as we had been invited by Liliana and Pippo to go on an evening horseback ride on Capo d’Orso, where they manage a stable and take groups for rides. We had an unbelievably beautiful evening, the horses plowing through the thick macchia, which released its spicy scents, and then taking a break to cool themselves off by kicking up the water onto themselves and their riders.

When we set out to go to Sardegna, we had in mind to go to Tiscali, a sinkhole up in the mountains outside of Dorgali where people from a nearby village built a hidden retreat during the Roman invasions thousands of years ago. We called up Giovanni, who runs the Agriturismo Didone in Dorgali, with his wife Katy to see if he could direct us to the trailhead for Tiscali and if we could stay at Didone, where we’d stayed a couple of times before. Giovanni met us outside a bar in Dorgali and upon greeting us, exclaimed that he could see me from far away because I was “lucida bianca,” shining white – the consequence of a long winter in Maine). When we met, I offered my condolescences after hearing from him over the phone that his cousin’s mother had died, the reason why, he had explained, he couldn’t accompany us on the hike. He gave me a puzzled look and explained that he was sorry that his horse had broken its foot and he needed to tend to it; I quickly realized I’d made an awkward translational error during our garbled phone conversation that morning and we all had a good laugh. The hike to Tiscali was beautiful – filled with wildflowers along the way and very few other hikers. After two hours of hiking, we reached the village, which is tucked inside a collapsed cave high up in the mountains. The ruins of the houses are still visible, built along the inside of the cavern walls.

After many miles of hiking on a hot day, we were in need of a dip in the Med. We found our way to Cala Cartoe, a beach nearby the agriturismo which was not quite as nearby to the parking area as we had thought. To reach it, required a 20 minute walk from the car, but it was worth the extra mile or two for the wild, wind-swept vista, the site of the movie “Swept Away”. It was wind-swept, indeed, such that our swim was quite brief and quite refreshing! Back at Agriturismo Didone, Katy showed us the new rooms they’d constructed since we’d last visited and pointed out the area by the main house where Giovanni planned to construct a pool and a “Salon di Relax,” basically a lounge area for weary tourists. “Relax” actually translates to “relaxation,” but it still sounds funny. We had talked with Giovanni about our idea to bring Americans over to explore Sardegna and stay in agriturismos like his and he was definitely interested – another partner in our scheme. On our walk up to dinner, we were greeted by a little black pup, who looked suspiciously like Manny, who had visited the agriturismo with us just a year ago . . . For dinner that night, we enjoyed a hearty feast of tomato soup and various piglet parts including heart, liver and ear, which Giovanni described with great enthusiasm by pointing to his own anatomy, and home-made sausages. We braved a little taste of each of the piglet parts, having tried the stomach and intestines during our last visit to Didone, and thought we were worthy of a spotlight on Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” (or, perhaps we could serve as local guides for him). For desert, we had Sardegnan seadas, fried pastries filled with the home made ricotta we have enjoyed every time we’ve stayed at Didone, which were covered in honey, and we washed them down with Giovanni’s Mirto. Knowing that he is a font of local recipes, I asked if he had ever made Mirto bianco before, which is made from the leaves rather than the berries of the plant. I asked because we were down to our last bottle of Mirto back in Maine and the berries, which ripen in the winter, were long finished, but there were plenty of new leaves. He told me how to make it and, in a couple of months, I’ll see how worthwhile my illegal transport of a bag of mirto leaves into the US was.

The next morning, we awoke to the sound of clanging sheep bells and looked out the window to see soft morning colors over the mountains as well as a sheep curled up right under the wheel of our little Fiat parked outside our room. I wish we had thought to record the sounds of the sheeps’ bells, as they are quite evocative of the Sardegnan countryside, and it would be fun to hear them again back in Maine. After breakfast, Giovanni took us for a hike up into the mountains to see some of the homes of the pastori, the mountain shepherds. The houses are simple stone circles, much like the bronze-age nuraghe found in the region, with juniper branches arranged in a teepee-like structure on top. The shepherds keep their goats in stone stables nearby and they stay in these ovili with the kids (capretti) just after they’re born. We were truly in the wilds up there and were only able to visit these remote farms, usually off limits to tourists, as the shepherds are quite territorial, because they are friends of Giovanni. The views from there of Cala Gonone and the Valle de la Luna, where we had hiked last year, were spectacular. Sometime midday, after a parting beer in Dorgali with Giovanni, who seemed to know everyone in town, all of whom passed through the bar to say hello, we headed back north to Palau.

One morning, while out walking near our old house, I had come across Pietro, the caretaker for our building. We got to be good friends with Pietro over the time we lived at Faraglione, as we were the only year-round residents - he was always full of good tales about Sardegnan history and culture. When I saw him this time, he made me promise to come by his house one afternoon to visit with him and his wife, Lucia, who had taught me how to make Aciuleddi, Sardegnan Christmas cookies fried in honey, last year before leaving. And so, on our way to La Maddalena for dinner with friends, we went by Pietro and Lucia’s house for a visit and left with a bottle of home made Mirto. Pietro had given me his mother’s recipe for Mirto when he saw me picking berries in front of our house our last winter there. After our visit, we boarded the ferry to La Madd, feeling strangely familiar standing on the top deck drinking Ichnusa as we looked out at Santo Stefano, and on towards the town of La Maddalena. Once there, we took a quick stroll through the piazza to see what had changed in the last year. The most impressive was the Hotel Exelsior, the big waterfront hotel, which was formerly quite rundown and now had been completely renovated in preparation for the G8, which was scheduled to take place there this summer. Unfortunately, the conference has now been relocated to L’Aquila, the site of the recent earthquake, which has greatly disappointed the locals who have spent enormous amounts of time and money in preparing their little island for the big event. The political reasons for the move are apparently quite complicated; but, nonetheless, the La Maddalenini were very much looking forward to a chance in the spotlight with the departure of the Americans and a void left in their economy. After a brief look around town, we headed to a fantastic dinner at Jen and Herve’s, featuring fresh fish, which Herve caught and cooked on the grill. It reminded us of the many gatherings we’d had in their garden with good friends for various birthdays and holidays.

That brings us, sadly, to our last day. All week, we looked forward to the Friday market in Palau, a weekly ritual when we lived there. Mostly, this was because our precious supply of the best sundried tomatoes in the world, which came from there, had finally run out after carefully rationing them out through the last year. So, we resupplied on sundried tomatoes as well as purchasing other goodies both there and in town to bring back for friends and family. We finally had to stop shopping when we realized the limited capacity of our suitcases. In the afternoon, we packed a picnic and went for one last trip to Cala Trana.It was an amazing day - unexpectedly warm and bright, given the forecast. It wasn’t until we were returned and were within fifty feet of the car that the first raindrop fell. This was perfect timing, as we needed to clean up and pack our things that afternoon, always a sad task at the end of a vacation, so at least there wasn’t sunny gorgeous weather taunting us outside. In fact, the rain set in in the evening and wasn’t predicted to let up for the next few days, so we had really lucked out. We said our goodbyes to the Cannas family, doing our best to express our gratitude to them and inviting them once again to visit us in Maine - describing emotion in a foreign language is always quite a challenge. We had our last night’s dinner at the pizzeria at Camping Acupulco, right next to our old apartment, through which I walked every morning with Manny on our way to the beach. We were joined by Massimo, our friend from the La Maddalena Park, and Paola, a fellow marine biologist who I befriended in Palau. Massimo had helped to organize a beach cleanup last September on Caprera as a part of Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup (another part of my secret mission to return more frequently to Sardegna via my job). I am hoping to get Paola on board as well, as she has connections to the environmental office in Palau. Maybe I’ll have to return next September to help organize it.

Verrrrry early the next morning, we were off in our little Fiat to the Olbia airport, flying out as the sun came up over the Mediterranean. Sometimes it is good to leave a place a bit bleary-eyed, so that you are too tired to feel sad about leaving. Now, the challenge is to try to encapsulate the experience through stories and pictures to draw upon until we can return there again, maybe for vacation or perhaps through one of our many conservation or tourist-oriented schemes. Sardegna, Fall 2010 anyone? One week. Testers wanted. Details to come . . .

March 1st

We both woke up groggy, stretching out sore limbs indicative of a bug of some sort, before slowly getting out of bed to look out the window and see more snow on the ground. “In like a lion,” indeed. And then, I walked out of the bedroom to see that the one remaining pink blossom on the bougainvillea, which we had bought to remind us of life in warmer climates, had fallen onto the floor. Harumph.

We spent a long, lazy morning inside drinking coffee and reading. At some point, we felt the need to actually get dressed and get out of the house. And so, we set out for a walk on the Eastern Promenade, our usual Sunday destination, with views of the islands of Casco Bay and open spaces for Manny to romp. Looking out the window, the sun was blazing crisply through blue skies and the snow had stopped, leaving a pretty dusting to reflect the light. We made it about half a block out the door before the bite of the wind turned me around to get a hat, which I had optimistically left behind, eager to expose my head to the sky for the first time in several months. Better prepared, we continued on, sniffling at the breeze, but happy to be squinting in the sun. Once at the park, we headed down the path, which I walk on at least once a day and know the contours of quite well. But, we were quickly schooled by the icy layer hidden beneath the freshly fallen snow. After a few warm days, the ground made briefly soft and pliable, the moisture had now refrozen like lumpy, uneven scar tissue. Chad promptly took a comic-book-worthy wipe-out – feet literally right out from under him, followed by a nose dive by Manny straight into a snow bank, leaving all four legs pointing in opposite directions. I took a lesson from them both, and scrambled up the slope to the cleared pavement - on all fours, feeling a bit defeated, but happily unbruised.

Once home, we decided to stay put for the remainder of the day and drink cups of tea – a safer pursuit than our walk had proven to be. Then, it dawned on me that it had been a year to the day since we’d arrived back in the United States from Sardinia. I remembered our last days there - leaving good friends behind after a farewell coffee at Circolo, the Italian officer’s club, riding the ferry for the last time into the port of Palau whereupon we waved goodbye to good friends as our taxi pulled away along the pines and past Acapulco beach, where I walked Manny every morning, and flying off to Rome, where we spent the night before flying all night to Atlanta and then Boston, finishing our trip with a warm welcome by Chad’s parents at Logan airport accompanied by the barking of Manny, a happy sound, as it signaled that our pent-up pup was still alive after 18 hours in his crate. After all that and a sound night’s sleep back in New Castle, NH, we awoke to snowfall. It was March 1st. And, it was magical.

After living through four months of winter in Maine, March is not as charming as it was upon first arrival from the Mediterranean. But, I am able to relive a bit of the charm through my own eyes, in reading my thoughts of a year ago. It got me thinking that I ought to look for more tricks to enjoying the fifth month of winter amongst my old writings, and so I dug up the journal I kept during my year on Chebeague. That winter was the ultimate test – alone in the winter on an island just after leaving behind the comfortable, socially rich life of an undergraduate. Upon rereading my journal entries from that March, I found many of the same frustrations with winter and also the same solutions – stay busy to pass the time, stay outdoors as much as possible, spend time with good friends. And, leave. So, 24 hours after the last bougainvillea blossom dropped, we bought tickets to return to Sardinia in May.

I realize that I may be disappointed in some ways, upon returning there - good friends gone and our life there finished. I also imagine that much will be the same, which can present its own sort of disappointment (Chad often says that he doesn’t like to see the weather report in a place after he’s left because it is confirmation that the place goes on without him), but also provide a sense of comfort. With the perspective of a year, I now understand the things I miss the most about life there and those that I don’t, but which I appreciate in being back here. What I do look forward to, in returning, is the insertion of warmth, an escape from winter in Maine, and an infusion of slow pace and simplicity, which I hope to bottle up and bring it back with me. I read once on a sign outside a local wine shop, “Wine is sunlight trapped in water,” a quote from Galileo. Perhaps I can at least bring back some bottled up Mediterannean sunlight in the form of wine, or, even better, Mirto. In the absence of the ability to literally bottle up the full experience and bring it back with me, one way of storing experience is through writing, which I will have to do upon our return. In the meantime, in midwinter, it is nourishing to read my notes from March 1, one year ago, when a fresh morning’s snowfall was cozy and delightful.
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Winter is heavy, hard and slow

What used to be an 8am departure for my morning walk with Chad and Manny, is now delayed at least ten minutes by putting on boots, finding a hat, a scarf, picking the right jacket for the conditions (sleet, snow, or just reeeeeeaaally cold), donning at least one pair of gloves, and finally, making sure all items of clothing are tucked inside each other to avoid any potential gaps through which the cold air can enter. The lightness of being is literally taken away, as you realize when you try to move in all of this gear and feel a bit like you’ve donned one of those Sumo wrestler suits you can put on at a carnival. The spontaneity of things goes away, as you can’t pop in and out of doors with the fluidity of warmer seasons’ constant temperature. There is no grabbing a pair of flip flops in winter and heading out the door. The physical heft of winter can make you feel the heaviness of daily life in ways that summer frees you from, allowing you to shake off things easily and let them be carried away by a warm breeze.

It isn’t really the cold itself that I mind, though that is a part of it, but it is the encumbrances of winter. The slogging that we do to get through and around the winter weather begins to wear us down much like slogging through the daily barrage of keeping up with bills, taxes, and all of the paperwork of life. The systems that allow us to exist with the splendid comforts of heat that magically comes on with a switch, drinkable water that flows into our houses, sewage that disappears down a pipe, and snow that moves off the street overnight, all, unfortunately require a lot of paperwork. While, perhaps, reducing the physical load on us, they often wear us down mentally as we try to understand who we are paying for what and why. All of these systems designed to make life easier sometimes just seem to complicate things and make me want to run away to the woods to a little cabin where no one will bothers me. I think – that’s where the magic lies – out in the country where the pine trees are dusted with snow and you can cross-country ski out your door (although I’ve done that here several times this winter). But, then, speaking of encumbrances, you’d have to plow your own street, dig out your car from the pile of snow it lives under in the driveway, rather than walk a few blocks to the nearest market, and you might lose power for more than a half an hour when there’s a storm.

The reality is that winter is just hard, no matter how you do it. But, some higher power has made it beautiful so that I still love it, despite what a pain it can be (literally, my knees have just healed from a massive wipe-out on the ice in front of our house two or three storms back). But, when the fresh snow falls and coats everything with a clean, sparkling layer of simplicity, it is irresistible. Snow takes all the hard lines in the man-made world and makes them softly curved, hiding many of the ugly things like black, cracked streets and sidewalks in the process. And, everything is one color; there is a human need for unending patterns in nature like the ocean, the sky, the desert, or a field of wheat, which can sooth a busy mind. Snow has that power as well, but in some ways is better because it is fleeting and can cover up so quickly what was once so complicated and make it smooth and plain.

Snow days are also great throw-backs in time. You can walk down the middle of the street and, when there’s a parking ban (which flashes on the top of the Time and Temperature Building in the middle of town, which usually just reiterates how cold the temperature is -as if everyone hadn’t noticed), there are no cars on the streets and they are wide and inviting. Schools are cancelled and offices shut down early, so the people that you see out in the snow are often in jolly moods. Jolly enough, usually, to help those who need it, like cars that need an extra push or people who need a hand shoveling a walk. There is a sense of community in a city forced to slow down its pace where people have time to notice their surroundings.

Then, there is the innocence of winter – not only the white simplicity, but also the fun. Anyone who watches kids sledding and rolling around in the snow like it was candy and doesn’t smile is a big scrooge. And there is plenty of grown-up fun to be had as well - skiing, sledding, snowball fights, snowshoeing – not to mention the joy of coming back inside after braving the elements and drinking something hot and eating large portions of belly-warming food. Sometimes it seems silly to go outside in the middle of a blizzard when you don’t have to (which I have been known to do) when, instead you could be inside, warm and dry, rather than getting frostbite, and you wonder, “why this unnecessary expenditure of energy?” Because it’s fun and people need to have fun. As Chad apparently said at age 5 or so to his mom when she cautioned him to be careful crossing the street, keep his coat on, and remember to say please - “Mom, can I have a little fun along the way?” Winter is a great reminder of the need by adults for fun. So, I’ve vowed to suck it up, put on all the layers, tuck them in tight, and get out in the snow as much as possible to take advantage of the fun parts of winter.

That’s all well and good when there is nice fresh snow and the world is bright and you can play in it. But, then comes the sullying of the snow. We had three dogs over one night and you can imagine what the crisp, white snow in the yard looked like the next day. While I understand the need to salt and sand the roads, it results in brown crumbly glop deposited all along the edges of the roads. Once the roads are plowed, the dirt continues to accumulate and get darker and muckier. And then, it melts, and you get ice and you fall (as I did) and you can’t do all the fun things that you could do before because the snow is now covered in a crust that cuts through your ankles when you ski and leaves you post-holing, temporarily suspended and then jolted down to the ground, with every step. Manny, with smaller feet than I, really suffers. Then, there’s the scraping. It brings me back to scraping old paint off of woodwork – the terrible sounds and the tiresomeness of it. In this case, the aim is to remove the casing of ice around your car (although, the other morning we were literally frozen into the house at the backdoor and had to go out the front door to open the back door from the outside). Sometimes it is easier just to turn the engine on and let the windshield heat up on its own, though this requires that you can open your car door to get into the car. This is not fun. Nor is removing the pile of snow that the plow deposited across the end of your driveway and that now weighs two tons because it is saturated, compacted, and frozen. And, once the fun is gone, the feeling of burden returns, and it is too much work with too little incentive to go outside to play.

I will conclude by saying that I am learning, or relearning the tricks, after five winters away – when you simply visit winter, but don’t live in it, it doesn’t count, because you can leave it behind and return home.

A few tricks-

- Get outside and much as possible and play. Reap the fun aspects of winter.
- Laugh at yourself (and maybe swear a little) when it feels like you’ve been beaten down one too many times.
- Make a lot of soup and invite people over to share it.
- Don’t whine – the people in northern Maine really have it bad.
- Make stuff – candles, beer, cheese. It doesn’t matter what, really.
- Write down the things that are swirling, blizzard-like in your head.
- Realize that it’s ok to go away to someplace warmer – it’s not a mark of failure.

Finally. Spring is coming. I have seen the first gullible sprouts poking up near melted snow (quoting my mom).

Your tricks? I’d love to hear them.