Hobbs: Why are you digging a hole?
Calvin: I’m looking for buried treasure!!
Hobbs: What have you found?
Calvin: A few dirty rocks, a weird root, and some disgusting grubs.
Hobbs: On your first try??
Calvin: There’s treasure EVERYWHERE!
~ Calvin and Hobbs
Prior to this trip I had never before visited Maine, much less lived there. Yet it seems like a place I might have lived in another life, a life where I was very cold. Maine is a place where nature permits people to stay as long as they don’t overtly disturb the land as humans are wont to do. It’s odd that we often wish to “escape” the city to spend time in a place like Maine, a place that has largely resisted our need to organize the earth. But this begs the question, why did we construct cities in the first place, only to devise a means to escape from them? Oh wait, jobs.
We are spending this evening in Portland Maine, about halfway up the coast. Portland is a fantastic place, and I wish we had more time to explore the many islands that dot the coast, principally Peaks Island and Diamond Island.
Stephanie is keen to sample the legendary Maine lobster, so we trundled off to find a Lobsteria or whatever they are called. We found a place a bit out of the way, a funky rough-hewn diner that had a bit of that roadhouse look. Stephanie and Matthew got lobster (duh) whilst I settled for some now forgotten food-like material. The trip to Maine was made whole when the lady asked if we wanted chowdah. Yes indeed I do. I almost answered “ay-yuh” but that would have immediately exposed me as an interloper and perhaps subjected me to keel-hauling or other arcane northern ritual.
The next morning we stumble down to the breakfast bar, and instead of the usual eggs and bacon I take a wild gamble on the oatmeal. It had been decades since I last had oatmeal and it’s odd that I still actually like it, given my opposition to all things guck. I can still hear my mother in her lilting Irish brogue, telling us that it “sticks to yer ribs” before watching us streak out the front door and into the cold morning air. In homage to that long ago time I promised myself that I will start making oatmeal regularly in the morning, Here in a place I never knew, a memory is triggered and an old dog is taught an old trick. Calvin was right.
Next stop; Burlington, Vermont, a place I would have lived except for one fateful decision by Pop in 1965.
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