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.

Animal Behavior

No, this is not going to be about my dog, Manny, though I will use him as a starting point. I often envy the simplicity of his happiness and the unfiltered expression of his emotion – tail wag=happy, whine=unhappy, e basta, as the Italians would say.
We humans often forget that we are animals - social animals – and that, often, our nonverbal communication is equally, if not more, important than our verbal communication.

What got me thinking about this? Conference calls, or, more generally, working far away from co-workers such that all of your communication becomes one dimensional – either verbal or written (I will tackle written communication in another blog), both leaving out the critical body language component – the proverbial wagging tail. As an aside, it is important to note that in-person meetings have their own flaws and aren’t always the most productive, but, I want to address the additional layer of difficulty in accomplishing things with a group of people that you don’t share the same physical space with.

Conference calls - When you’re “meeting” on a call rather than in a room with other people, it is easier for each attendee’s mind to drift into his/her own separate thoughts because the human voice alone is not nearly as captivating as watching a person’s face as they speak - watching them scratch their head, breathe deeply, or maybe crack a smile. Needless to say, those subtle human movements are not only captivating but communicative. Eyebrows raised conveys interest or surprise. Furrowed brow shows you are concentrating or displeased. If you look at someone as you say something challenging, you convey confidence. If you look away, you are nervous.

This gets at one of the major reasons why conference calls are often not productive. Who’s in charge? In my opinion, a conference call REALLY needs a benevolent dictator, whereas an in-person meeting can be more of a brainstorming session where all players are more or less equal (though that can flop as well). This is because there is often confusion about who should be speaking and how to take turns doing so without the nonverbal cues. The director needs to make sure everyone gets his or her turn to contribute. It is also the director’s responsibility to recognize where there is agreement and use that to move the meeting along. In-person meetings have the advantage of behaviors including the head nod (up and down)=I agree and I also want to see if others in the room agree, the head nod (side to side) = I disagree but am not quite sure what I want to say in opposition, and so forth. You can move a meeting along just by reading these signals. On a conference call, however, you can stick your voice out there into the void and let it hang there for a minute, uncomfortably waiting to see what the response is from the invisible audience. Someone actually has to ask, “Are we in agreement about this?” rather than saying “I can see that we are all on the same page.” Cue the benevolent dictator who can help to ensure that the geographic distance between the people doesn’t result in a misperceived disparity of opinion.

So, how do we solve this? There are great new technologies out there to allow people to be virtually together – the videoconferencing. The technology for this has gotten much better so that there are fewer awkward delays that lead to people talking over one another or not understanding what is being said. And this gets us part of the way. But, there is still a sense of camaraderie missing – a kind of human chemistry that helps us to understand each other. Back to dogs - think about what they are able to communicate just by sniffing each other (not that I would suggest a similar technique with humans). This points out the multidimensionality of our relationships with each other – in a videoconference, we can hear each other, see each other, but we still can’t BE with each other. At my recent staff retreat of co-workers with whom I have spent many hours on the phone, some of whom I’d never met, there was a frenzy of socializing, condensing many months’ of missing contact into 2 ½ days, and a realization that we all just felt better to spend some time getting to know each other.

This geographic separation seems to have evolved from employers wanting to hire the very best people, no matter where they live in the country – the national search for candidates for a position for which, in all reality, there is probably someone pretty darned qualified right down the street, or at least closer than halfway across the country. There was a period where people just picked up and moved for work, plucking up their families from their comfortable communities where they knew where to buy the best cup of coffee and where the best shortcuts were to get around the rush hour traffic, to move across the country and learn the intricacies of a brand new place. Hmm . . . I guess I did that too, or at least as a tag-along military wife for the past several years. I have already written about the challenges of moving all over the country (see “Why I Have No Friends”), so I won’t belabor that. Anyway, more recently, technology has allowed people to stay put in Durango, while working for a company in San Francisco. This is essentially the expression of priorities – give up camaraderie with co-workers in order to keep camaraderie with those you really care about, your friends and family. I can’t argue with that.

But, can’t we have both? Let’s all just stop moving! If everyone stayed in the same place for awhile, maybe employers would look for local job candidates and they would be there, not out in California. And, businesses would become more localized and co-workers could have real, in-person, interactions with each other. And, maybe we’d all get more done - and wag our tails a bit more.

Information Inundation

I think I have started to write about this before, but taken off on another tangent. So, here it is in depth – the “information inundation” unraveled. Everyone talks about it, I know. But, I have a little different perspective having recently been in a culture where I was hungry for information, as most of what was around me was difficult for me to understand. Signs along the road, newspapers in waiting rooms, napkins at restaurants, conversations of passersby, slogans on the radio and stories on TV, were all in media-speak, which they don’t teach on language cds. I could usually figure out the gist of things, but I never got familiar enough with the language for it to come easily. Thus, it was a conscious choice TO understand things around me rather than NOT TO understand them. Rather than quickly scanning signs or advertisements and getting a sense of all of them, I had to choose the ones I wanted to figure out and make an effort to translate them, sometimes to comedic ends, as I didn’t quite get puns or figures of speech. Or, if I wasn’t in the mood for more input, I simply looked at text as art and conversation as music and moved along in my own little world.

Upon moving back, I was thrilled to have so much of my surroundings so readily accessible. I didn’t feel like a stranger – I could fully participate in the American culture. I realize that things in Sardinia were different on a number of levels: not only due to the language barrier, but there was also just less “stuff” to understand since we lived in a rural area there and now live in a city (or, at least a cheater city, as I like to call Portland – meaning that very much as a compliment).

This newfound level of participation was exciting. I felt stimulated and alive in a way I didn’t realize I’d missed while overseas. . . until it gave me a big, fat headache and I realized that my little brain couldn’t possibly hold in all this input without literally exploding. Thump, thump went my head as the information inside kicked and screamed to get out. I had no input filter, as I was eager and curious to take everything in, and so now I had to figure out how to let some of it back out. My rapidly firing synapses were like a pinball machine zipping from one thing to the next (have I used that metaphor before?), trying to snip off little samples of everything. I felt like a kid who eagerly gets out all her toys at once and then throws a tantrum because she can’t decide which one to play with. Too many is sometimes not enough and one can be the world - Basho should have said that. I found a great quote awhile back by George Wald, a scientist who studied vision, which says that something you are entranced and stimulated by can be like “a very narrow window through which at a distance one can see only a crack of light. As one comes closer the view grows wider and wider until finally through this small narrow window one is looking at the universe.” You just need to land on something and that, if you stick with it, it can become the world, encompass all of your passions, and design your understanding of everything around you.

So then, how do you choose? There’s only so much that one person can do and trying to do everything often results in accomplishing nothing. But, I am one of those people who reads every word accompanying each display at a museum exhibit. I have this fear that I might miss something good. But, I am beginning to understand that I will always miss something good and that’s okay.

Recently, on a stroll through the lovely brick streets of Portland, it dawned on me as I peeked in windows filled with brightly colored objects and read posters stuck on lampposts with upcoming events, that I’m really quite spoiled - how much better it is to have too many good things to do that you can’t possibly do them all than to be bored by everything around you such that you become lethargic and depressed. But, again, the trick is to learn that you must choose.

There was recently a great article by Sandra Tsing Loh, one of my favorite writers on what I like to call “the modern woman dilemma,” who talked about trying to balance family life and a career. This is really a subject for another blog. But, the sentiment, “You can do it all, if you live like a man,” is relevant. You have to let some things go for the sake of pursuing others and it can be fun when you do it for something worthwhile. Go for a walk on a sunny day and forget the pile of laundry on the floor – look at it and laugh as you walk out the door. This is really a different situation because sunny walks are definitely more appealing than laundry. The problem I described before is that there is often more than one good option and that those options compete with each other. And, then there’s always the worthless stuff as well. Somehow, you have to let just the good stuff filter through, keeping the junk out, and then choose amongst them.

So, I’m working on building a filter and on being glad that there is often more than one appealing option and that making a choice doesn’t necessarily close doors, it just challenges you to find a way to incorporate your other interests into what you are currently doing. And, there’s always tomorrow – one wouldn’t want to run out of interesting things to do and they don’t all have to happen at once, despite what the pace of life may seem to dictate. One thing at a time, Italian style; peek through the window, find your way into the sun and stay there awhile. The rest will follow.

"Sunlight captured in water . . ."

After a few entries of ponderings, I have finally decided to write another travelogue. It isn’t as if we haven’t had wonderful weekend romps and paddles since returning to Maine, but my mind has been too full of other “musings” to focus on those experiences enough to write them all down. So, after an amazing weekend spent in Downeast Maine, I am finally getting around to writing another recounting of travels. Being back in Maine and reconsidering what an “adventure” is, I realize that Maine prepared me well for adventures far away in that I truly learned to adventure while living in Maine, seeking out the nooks and crannies of the state for magical hikes and quiet small towns, and that it prepared me well for adventures afar. And now, I am back adventuring in Maine with a renewed enthusiasm that has been enhanced by my experiences away. In a way, I have started treating Maine as an island similar to Sardegna that I need to explore all corners of in order to have a complete sense of it.

Thus begins the tale of Labor Day weekend. In pursuit of a manageable long weekend adventure, and having been curious about the northernmost part of the coast of Maine for quite some time, we decided that it was time. The state of Maine is really darn big and that in all my travels within it, I had never been all the way up the coast.

As a bit of an aside, but with relevance to my previous blog about the lack of local friends, I have to start on Friday of the weekend and describe how our evening picnic came to be. While running on the Eastern Promenade one afternoon, I had a double-take moment where I thought I recognized a classmate from Bowdoin. Then, a few more strides down the path, I realized that it was, in fact, who I thought it was, though I was now out of comfortable earshot. I passed this information on to Chad, who did a little research through “Linked-In” for me (as you know, I am still a hold-out on social networks for the moment) and managed to get in touch with our friend, Pete. On my home from work the next day, I stopped at the tailor and happened to see Pete’s wife and we exchanged numbers and addresses – realizing that we lived only blocks away from each other. On my way out of the store, I got a message from Chad saying that, at the very moment when I had run into Joan in person, he had been chatting with Pete over email. We all decided it was fated that we should get together and arranged for a picnic on the Promenade . . .and voila, local friends, and we reconnected with them in person, (though we did reconnect over cyberspace as well). And so it finally begins – the making of local friends. Too bad they’re moving to South Portland next week.

On to Saturday. After loading up the car with loads of equipment and provisions for the weekend, we were off to see old friends – not so old, but in the strange conception of time when you have left a far away and different experience, it feels like longer ago than it really is. These are friends from La Maddalena who now live in Gardiner, Maine in a great old farmhouse that they’ve renovated. We lunched Italian style, visiting on their porch in the sun with a glass of wine and then enjoying a delicious, lingering meal while discussing where to buy rare Sardinian foods, like pane carasau (a cracker-crisp flat bread) and pecorino cheese, in Maine - they being foodies like us. We waxed on about the lifestyle we had in Italy and how other-worldly it seems now looking back. Finally, roused ourselves for the long drive north.

Our first destination was Cobscook Bay State Park, located, not surprisingly, on Cobscook Bay. On the drive up, we listened to a western story on cd, making us remark on the first red-tipped leaves of late summer (we don’t use the "f" word yet) in accents as if we were gangster and gun moll. We finally got there and schlepped our stuff to our campsite (car camping does not inspire conservative packing and we had managed to easily fill up the Jetta with stuff, ourselves, and the pup), which was quite private and quiet. Just as we had set up our little blue tent, gotten the grill going with our lovely salmon filet we’d brought along, and set the picnic table for a fancy camp-dining experience, a few drops began to fall. Luckily, Chad had precautionarily put up the rain fly before we started cooking and we had kept our rain jackets handy - too bad Manny didn’t have his own slicker. He was quickly ushered into the vestibule of the tent, much to his dismay, so as not to become a wet, chilly dog, whereupon he repeatedly poked his nose out from under the flap and attempted to escape and we had to take turns pushing him back in. Despite the rain, we managed to eat our salmon, pouring a bit of water off our plates, and drink a little watered-down wine. Then, we headed to our snug tent for the requisite terrible first night’s sleep of any camping experience. We hadn’t exactly earned our Thermarests that day, spending most of it eating or sitting in the car – lesson learned. Through the night, Manny only attempted to escape twice, both times followed by attempts to enter the tent with us, instead acquiescing to simply laying as close as possible to me in my sleeping bag while the door was still closed, making our small tent even more squished.

The next morning, we caffeinated ourselves with our handy Italian stovetop caffeteria and were on our way to Quoddy Head State Park, located on a headland looking out towards Campobello Island in Canada. It was a gorgeous hike, which took us on a side loop along a plank path through a peat bog filled with red and green sphagnum mosses and insect-eating pitcher plants – apparently the result of a retreating glacier a long, long time ago. We ended our hike at a smooth rock beach, perfect for picnicking and a wade out into the chilly, clear water, and then scrambled up to the famous striped lighthouse. After our picnic, we went into the town of Lubec, dubbed the “easternmost town in the United States,” which was also one of the sleepiest – an interesting mix of neat frame captain’s houses that were painted whimsical colors set next to shoddier versions of the same that looked long abandoned. In a quick moment, we had seen the entire town.

This left us a bit more time than anticipated, so that we could see Eastport, the “easternmost city in the US,” though I might down-classify these both locales as a village and a town, the claim to Eastport’s city-dom being a bit presumptuous. That said, I had imagined Eastport to be a little run down and depressing, having lost much of its fishing and processing industry years ago, but it was burgeoning with art galleries and renovations to early 20th century brick buildings that lined the main street. At one end of town, we were reminded of the fishing heritage by a large gnome-like statue of a fisherman, supposedly erected for a reality TV show. The harbor was full of well-kept fishing boats and loads of people fishing off the pier for mackerel, swimming through the swift current. On our way out of town, we saw the current ripping through the narrows with fish jumping and a plevy of seals having an easy meal.

From there, we drove out to Shackford Head, where we went for a quick walk out the headland through drizzly rain, hoping that we would return to have a drier dinner experience that night. We read that the beach nearby was the site where several Civil War ships had been burned - their stories told on an array of plaques. Maybe they just needed an out of the way spot that wouldn’t draw too much attention. The precipice at the end of our hike looked out in one direction over an array of salmon aquaculture pens, which are an important part of the economy in Downeast Maine, and, in the other, over the breaking clouds and streaming evening light on the water. Afterwards, we happily made use of the campground showers before preparing dinner under clear skies at our campsite. A long day of exploring, hot showers, a filling dinner finished by some Kahlua-enhanced hot chocolate enjoyed fireside, all led to a good night’s sleep. Just to be sure of it, we also clipped Manny’s leash to the tent to prevent a midnight runaway pup.

The next morning, we drove to Cutler to hike the Bold Coast Trail, having provisioned with a picnic and plenty of water for the 10-mile loop. It was truly a magical experience with no one on the trail but us for nearly the whole distance. We walked the inland portion of the trail first, discovering woodland delights such as a purple fungus, a wood frog hopping across the path, and an array of animal scat filled with the wild berries that grew rampant – blackberries, raspberries, and low bush blueberries (our favorite). Finally, we emerged at the coast, sunlight illuminating the tiny village of Cutler with its picturesque white lighthouse. We lunched at a fantastic rocky outcropping and watched the waves crash below while airing out our sweaty t-shirts, (an illustration of gender differences).

Amidst the rocks, we found cranberries growing and glugged the rest of a near-empty water bottle to make a collection container, now prepped to gather more berries on the return journey. There were endless patches of blueberries, bigger than any wild ones I’d seen, and we couldn’t stop picking them until we’d filled up the entire bottle. Even Manny partook, nibbling away as we stooped over the bushes. I recently saw a sign outside a shop in Portland that said, “wine is sunlight trapped in water.” I think blueberries are Maine summer captured in water. A bit disappointed that our lunch spot didn’t provide a swimming opportunity, I spotted a perfect pebbly beach part way back and we refreshed our tired, sweaty selves – rinfrescante, as the Italians would say – quite cold! All told, one of the best hikes we’ve ever done anywhere in the world – really.

And for the final leg of our journey, we drove south to Acadia National Park to visit friends who live in Bar Harbor. Almost comically, as we crossed onto Mount Desert Island, a bald eagle flew over head. Matt and Sara, our friends there, said they had ordered it to greet us. We spent a relaxing night with them, sharing recent life stories, and then said goodbye in the morning after a short hike in the park.

A long, but very scenic drive back, accompanied by more coarse western stories, put us back at 5 Sheridan where we did a marathon of laundry and dishes after cleaning out our car of all the camping accoutrements (when you’re camping for just a few days, who really needs to do dishes?). Even Manny got a bath. And, thus ends the first Portland travelogue. We are determined to have many more, so stay tuned, though I am sure to muse some more as well along the way as well.

Why I have no friends

Ok, I have lots of friends. But, none of them are here. Every weekend, it seems we are going somewhere. And then, we come home and we are alone in the great city of Portland. I think that, since moving back to Portland in March, we have been in Portland for a grand total of four complete weekends. And, most of those we have spent mostly alone and are glad to do so as we have had a very busy social calendar in just five short months. So, it feels like we have loads of friends, sometimes like we have too many and we’d just like some peace and quiet. But, what we don’t have is local friends to call up last minute and grab a drink or dinner on a Saturday night. One of the things that we had looked forward to getting out of the Navy and moving back to the US and especially choosing to live in town in Portland was to be part of a community where we could develop a local network and put down some roots and not worry about leaving in a couple of years. But, here we are. I realize that this is a bit premature as we haven’t even been here for six months, but it still feels funny.

We have loads of friends in the states of New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts, all within an afternoon’s drive from us. These are the people that we spend most of our time with. We travel to see each other – a kind of social commuting. Think of the cost of this. Sometimes I think I should start a “Friend Local” campaign to complement the “Buy Local” movement that has grown so popular. It would encourage people to cut down on their social carbon footprint and support local communities by making friends with their neighbors instead of driving to and fro all of the time. It really does seem silly how many people are essentially trading places on the weekends to see their friends in different places. But, we love them and no new friend can live up to the worn warmth of an old friend. It’s just that we don’t have any energy left to add in local friends to the mix and so we remain in this transient state - although we so much want to be part of a community, we just aren’t here enough because we are busy with friends elsewhere.

I would never give these friends up and I could never relegate them to simply being electronic friends because of the fantastic immeasurable value of physical human togetherness, though I have had to do this with many friends who are simply too far away to see on a regular basis, which brings up another challenge to making local friends.

I know they’re out there. Every day I see people who look jolly and adventurous – perfect “new friend material,” but then my cell phone rings and it is a friend from San Francisco and they’re gone. When I get home, I think, maybe I’ll walk up to the local coffee shop and hang out for a bit and see if I meet any interesting people. But, then I check my email and there’s a new note from a friend in Spain and I forget about getting coffee. And, here I am, blogging, to keep in touch with all of you rather than meeting the people who live next door. You get so good at distance communication and find ways to use emoticons and punctuation to show your emotions when you can’t literally show them, that you feel like you’re almost there with a person. It’s amazing how much someone’s own “voice” can come through in the tone of an email and how skilled we’ve become in getting that across when we can’t see each other face to face.

I have wonderful friends all over the country and I love that I can keep in touch with them when I can’t see them and that it is so easy to communicate with people so far away. Think about what it must have been like back in the days of letter writing when months would pass with no news from loved ones because the ship carrying the letter sank in a storm or maybe the letter was just lost. Now, in a matter of seconds, you can have an exchange with someone halfway around the world! And, knowing that you may only get one letter through every few months, think of the effort put into composing that letter. It would be no dashed off two line email to say you heard a song that reminded you of the time you were at summer camp together.

You would think that because communication is so much more efficient now, we would spend less time doing it. But, it seems to be just the opposite. It is so simple to call or text or email or Skype or chat or blog that you can hardly resist. And, other people can’t resist either, so that you’ve got to respond to all of these flitting thoughts all of the time. On one hand, I love to know when a distant friend is thinking of me, but on another, I feel compelled to immediately write back. As a result, it sometimes seems like I have a virtual secondary life, and I don’t even participate in online gaming or serious virtual worlding that is out there.

Between seeing not-so-local friends and keeping up with distant friends, I find that my social budget is pretty much used up both in hours and emotional supply and that there isn’t much left to make friends in my own neighborhood.

Enter the social inventions of “Facebook” and “Linked In” and the like. These sites attempt to reunite the floating lost souls who once hung out in college or at an old job and have since moved across the country and lost each other, as we have all become so ridiculously mobile that this is more the norm than the exception. The mere existence of such networking sites proves that quick communication is imperfect and that you can still lose touch with people and that there is a need for a way to reunite. Although, I have snobbishly never subscribed to these website because I figure that I am in touch with anyone that I would want to find and that I probably lost touch with those others for a reason. I do admit, however, that I have heard many stories of successful reunions and have also poached these reconnections from other people who have alerted me to old friends who now live nearby.

This brings up the concept of the friend swap. Every time I move to a new city or have a friend that is doing so, we swap contact lists of people who we think the other would enjoy. I recently had one of these experiences where I had a kind of friend “first date” with a friend of a friend. You talk about the friend in common, a bit about yourselves, suffer through a few pauses, and then evaluate whether you think you’ll actually ever hang out. While I have never had an unpleasant experience of this sort, it always feels a little forced; really, you have been set up on a blind date. Sometimes it works and sometimes you pleasantly part and go your separate ways.

So, what do we do about this? I really don’t know. I want to have it all – not-so-local friends, distant friends, AND local friends. I know it will require patience, for one, but also perhaps some creativity. Maybe I do need to join “Facebook” – who knows. Any ideas? I’d love to hear them. Commiserations are welcome too, of course.