If You're Keeping Track, This Is Near Death Experience #2

Yesterday I got up and checked the weather. I'd been craving beach--ocean beach--since I got back to Maine, and I was bound and determined to go. The weather report for Phippsburg, Maine--home to Popham Beach, one of my favorite places in the world--was simple. It said the highs would be in the 80s and there might be some fog. The tide was high at 1:00, and the tide would be at its lowest around dinner time.

Perfect.

We got to the beach at 3:00, when the tide was still receding. It had shrank back enough to unearth the craggy island that it swallows at high tide, and lots of people were out exploring the tide pools that had been left behind. So we set up our blanket, stripped down, and headed off.

The water was freezing. The water is always freezing. But it didn't matter because the weather was warm, and I was happy to be at the ocean, and The Lady-Killer was happy to be exploring the caves and fissures between the rocks.

"I'm Maine's answer to Steve Irwin!" he said after he had words with a seagull, chased a crab, and dug through the tide pools to snatch up a translucent (and tiny) crab skeleton that had been molted away.

When we'd walked out to the island, when we'd started our exploring, the weather had been clear enough. There'd been fog and mist, sure, but it hadn't been anything alarming. But over that hour and a half we were on the island, the fog really rolled in. Before I knew it, I was turning to look back at the beach and it wasn't there. I couldn't see a quarter mile into the distance.

This was no big deal. I knew the situation with the tides. It wasn't like we needed to worry about getting off the island and back to shore before high tide washed in; it had just been high tide. There were plenty of people around--tourists with cameras, fishermen casting off the rocks, children splashing through the coves--and everything was normal.

But eventually I got hungry, I got thinking about the peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches I had in my backpack, I got to thinking about that bag of Doritos I had, and TLK had explored himself right out, so we climbed down off the island and started back.

We were leisurely about it. TLK did a few brave dives into the waves as they peeled off the sandbars, and he came out shivering every time. But it was getting hard to see him each time he went running out into the water. It was getting hard to see anything.

I've been to Popham Beach about a bajillion times in my life, and I'm familiar with its layout. It's an interesting beach because it's cut in two by run-off from a river that gives the water, when it comes in, some interesting tug and tow, which makes it good for surfers. This pattern makes it a little more tricky than a standard straight-shot coastal beach. It also makes for some interesting mini sand spits--tiny little islands, really--when the water is coming and going. On a sunny day, all of that is as plain as day, and you can make your way to and from the island without so much as getting wet.

But when TLK and I were heading back, I started to get nervous. I was sure we were on the stretch of sand that led back to the beach, but as we walked through the thick fog--and by this point we couldn't see ten feet in front of us--I could see the land shrinking, narrowing.

"I don't get it," I said. "The tide's not supposed to be coming in. It's supposed to be going out. This doesn't make any sense."

And then suddenly there was no more beach, and we were standing ankle-deep in the freezing water.

"Baby," I said. "Baby, seriously. What's going on?"

"I don't know," he said. "It's okay. It probably comes back up there. Let's just keep walking a little bit."

I nodded and took his hand, but already there were bad things kicking around my head. I had a really awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something was not right.

Soon, we were up to our knees. I could feel the hungry lick of the current under the water, and I began to panic.

"I'm scared," I said. It was the first time I'd said it aloud, but I'd been feeling that for minutes now. "I'm really, really scared."

"No," TLK said. "No, it's okay. Don't be scared. It'll be fine. I mean, there are a ton of people back behind us. We can just walk back that way."

That didn't make me feel any better. I imagined the other people back on the island still exploring, still taking their pictures as the water rolled over the sand between us. We would be stuck. We would be trapped. And there was no way anyone could see that we were trapped.

Or, if not that, then this: We would walk back to the island, yes, and we would find everyone gone--or suddenly surprised at the turn of events, at the water that was filling in and cutting us off from the mainland, which we couldn't see, couldn't even begin to imagine anymore--and we would all climb to the very top, the very tip, which was the only part of the island that didn't get swallowed by the ocean during high tide.

Or if not that, then this: We would walk back to the island and it would be just me and TLK, and we would sit there, waiting to be rescued, waiting for the Coast Guard's chopper when the lifeguards were closing up shop and found an unclaimed beach setup. There we would be--clutching each other in the dark, in the cold, in the mist from the waves that slapped around us--and our teeth would be chattering, and we would be freezing, we would be dying, and they wouldn't get to us in time, and then for years we would become the cautionary tale every Maine mother told her children when she sent them off to the beach with friends.

Or if not that, then this: We would decide that we couldn't be too far off coast and that we could swim it. I'm not a very strong swimmer--Amy once had to save me when I choked on a wave and then, predictably, started drowning on a choppy day at Long Point, and I haven't been confident in my abilities since--and so I could see TLK having to calm me down, drag me along, pull me like a lifeguard pulling a child from the deep end. I would be too scared to help, and I would panic, and I would make us drown.

I was certain of one of those outcomes. It was going to happen. We were done for. We were toast.

So we turned around, and I held the TLK's hand tighter than I've ever held it, and I thought about his mother and how much she was going to hate me for killing her son.

TLK was very quiet. I was very quiet. We walked back to where the sand started and widened, where he'd been diving into the waves. We walked and walked and walked. We couldn't see anything. We couldn't hear anything.

But then, coming through the curtain of fog, was a woman and her son.

I was near tears, and I leaned into TLK. I wondered if she and her son were doomed, just like us. "Do you think I should ask her?" I said. "Maybe there's another way back to the beach."

And then I was turning to her, excusing myself, asking her if she knew how to get back to the beach. Then, delicately--because I didn't want to alarm her, her son--I said, "We thought we were headed back there, but when we got up ahead everything's flooded in."

She smiled. Oh, that smile! It was heaven! It was salvation! She wasn't going to smile at me if she was suddenly realizing that she and her son--and the two people standing in front of her, hands linked so tight their fingers were turning white--were minutes from certain death.

"Oh yes," she said. She turned and pointed into the fog behind her. "Keep going back this way," she said. "Eventually, you'll see a ribbon of sand to your right. That'll take you back to the beach. Right now you're on a little peninsula that extends out from it."

And she was right. Maybe twenty feet away from us, there was a meandering sand path back to the beach, which we had missed when TLK was going in-out-in-out of the water and I was laughing at the way he ran into it--wide-armed, spastically. When we cleared the thick hang of fog and could finally see our stuff, we walked to it quickly, collapsed on it. I had never been happier to see my beach bag.

We stayed that way--face down, shivering--on the blanket for a long time. We didn't even move to eat our sandwiches; we simply raised our heads enough to get them into our mouths. It's just that we were so happy to feel dry earth, to know we weren't about to be swallowed up by the sea, swallowed up by the call of the lighthouse fog horn, the last lonely sound we'd hear before we let the undertow take us.

Lend Me Some Shellac, Would You?

Yesterday at 5:00 I was standing on the beach of an island that floats just beyond Boothbay Harbor. My shoes were back in the car, and my toes were sinking into a spongy carpet of seaweed that stretched from sand to tide pool to the water's edge. I had a plastic bottle full of white wine in one hand and a Tupperware container for shell collection in the other. My office-mate was ahead of me, scaling the higher rocks because he still had his shoes on. He had a plastic container of wine, too, and he was remarking about how insane it was that the entire beach was littered with periwinkles.

I was picking up the more remarkable ones--green as pistachios, striped--and trying not to spill the wine--which was surprisingly difficult to drink out of the type of bottle that is designed to use while exercising--and it was the first time I'd been happy in weeks. We'd already been to the aquarium, where I'd held a lobster and a starfish, where I'd petted a shark and a sea cucumber--and then we'd wandered Boothbay Harbor to see the ships and the band and the wares being sold at its annual festival. I bought fudge. I got my picture taken in front of giant sailing ships that had docked for the festival. It had been a nice day despite the clouds, despite the occasional mist. I felt better than I had in weeks.

I don't know what it was there for a while. I guess it was a lot of things. Maine has been under the cover of clouds and rain and clouds and rain for the last two weeks straight, and there hasn't been a day where the sun came through even for a few minutes.

There are also the nightmares. I haven't gotten a good or full night's sleep in weeks. Each night I jolt awake, terrified from one or two or three different nightmares where a variety of people I love or people I don't even know--Conan O'Brien, for example--are dying horrible, unsightly, and very public deaths right in front of me. Or if the people in the dream aren't dying, they are close--like in the dream where I gave birth, decided I didn't want my baby, and left him alone in an apartment while I went out for Chinese food with some friends from grad school.

In addition to all that, the Boy From Work and I decided to quit trying to get ourselves back together earlier this week, so everything has been kind of a mess. And this rain wasn't helping anything. I just need some sun.

And you know where it's sunny? Buffalo. So I pulled out my suitcases tonight, and I started packing early. I'm not waiting around until the middle of next week to go home. I'm leaving as soon as possible. And I'll be gone a long time, which requires some skillful packing. A lot of packing. Every-shoe-I-love-and-a-variety-of-purses kind of packing. So I dragged everything out of my closet and surveyed the mess. Some of my more casual summer purses were filthy with the grime of sand and melted gum, so I began emptying them so I could toss them in the washer. One of the purses had a small writer's notebook in it, and it's an old one, one that was around during grad school and beyond.

I opened that up and found the most ridiculous gems inside. Completely stupid, completely bizarre snippets and ideas and even a romantic intervention. To give you an idea, here's a few things to consider:

Quotes:

1. "I want to shellac the world." -- Me, at Diana's
2. "I'll conjugate his verb." -- Author unknown, although that sure sounds like something I'd say
3. "Will you diaphragm his sentence? UGH! DIAGRAM! I MEAN DIAGRAM!" -- Amy
4. During a discussion on the magazine Cosmopolitan: "It's a female magazine." -- Amy; "A female manatee?" -- Matt
5. "Those girls are big, bearded, plaid-wearing, campfire-making lesbians." -- Jeff

Notes to Self:

1. Sign on 169, heading to Minneapolis: COWS IN ROAD. USE CAUTION. BE PREPARED TO STOP.
2. Oglala. Lakota.
3. Pig! [The exclamation is dotted with a heart]
4. Teacher (young). Gets attention from student (failed a few grades?) Scene: teacher chaperoning @ h.s. dance.
5. Amy wants her gravestone to read: SHE LIKED CHEESE.
6. Unsalted butter. 3 1/2 oz. 2 cups heavy cream.
7. Congratulations Seth & Amanda. Congratulations Seth & Penny. Both on parents' business billboard. Two pregnant girls. Will the parents really announce both?
8. Amy's students think the word sectionalism is dirty. (Caucus too.)
9. My brother thinks these words are gross: seminary, rectory, masturbation

Series of Letters Written by Josh (with My Help) at the Bar Where We Use to Work (The Letters Are for The Spunky Russian He Was Then in Love with):

[KEY: blue = his writing; red = my writing]

1. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Here's what I think: my thoughts are not complete. You are one of my favorite people in the world. When you were here it was amazing. Now you're not and there's a little empty space in me. I've been thinking about that emptiness a lot. Instead of cutting you some... I blame geography and I would love so much to be your BF. I'm not sure, though, that either of us is capable of being in a long distance relationship right now. Let me tell you what I think: you used to intimidate me and that made me communicate poorly with you.
2. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Are you capable of being with me even if you're in grad school? I simply can't deal with this random on-off shit.
3. Dear Liza, I like your ass. Also, I like your hair. Do you want to be my girlfriend? We can have babies if you want. You can't cheat on me. Promise. Love, Josh.
4. Dear Baby, I'm sorry for this but we have 2 options: (1.) Be my girlfriend and don't cheat on me. (2.) We to back to talking minimally like before (this doesn't mean I'll never see you again.)

None of those letters got sent. (And for anyone keeping track, the night those were written was the night this memorable and urine-soaked event happened.)

That notebook and everything written in it just about made my night. And it--like the few hours yesterday that I spent kicking around the salty town of Boothbay Harbor--made me feel a little bit lighter for the first time in weeks, and I've got to believe that there are going to be more things like that--things that make me feel a little bit lighter, a little bit less like Saturn is continuing to bitch-slap me until the middle of August--coming my way soon, as I run around Buffalo, soaking in everything good that is waiting for me.

I'm Moving to Owl's Head. Don't Try to Stop Me.

God, I love Maine. I mean, I really love Maine. And this past week only enhanced my love for the state. The Boy From Work was here for a spring vacation, and we used our day to go up and down the coast, seeing and eating the best things along the way. We ate lobster in Cape Elizabeth and fried clams in Freeport. We ate chowder in Rockland and Boothbay Harbor. We saw three lighthouses and explored some of the sweetest, quaintest towns in the whole state.

But none were as sweet and as quaint as Owl's Head. It's a tiny town near Rockland, and one I probably would've never realized I needed to go to if it wasn't for the Food Network's 50 States, 50 Burgers project that named the best burger in each state. Maine's burger--the 7 Napkin Burger--sounded fabulous. Juicy. Drippy. Cheesy. Everything good in the world. And the fact that you could get those burgers to go and take them down the road to tiny Owl's Head Lighthouse for a picnic sounded even better.

And the BFW, who is always ready to go on a trip just to eat something delicious, was up for it. So we headed off for a day trip to Owl's Head and Rockland. We were going to eat lunch in Owl's Head, tour the lighthouse, then head back to Rockland for a trip out to the breakwater lighthouse and shopping in the sweet galleries and stores that line Main Street.

The 7 Napkin Burger is the brainchild of the owners of the Owl's Head General store--a place where you can get homemade burgers and chowders, cookies and whoopie pies. In the warm summer months, there are ice cream novelties to be scooped up. And if you just ran out of ketchup or toilet paper and don't want to travel back to Rockland to grocery shop, you can pop into the General Store for the necessities, which are arranged in the back of the shop, right behind the small eating area.

And that eating area was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Big and small tables were covered with patterned vinyl table cloths and stocked with plenty of napkins--which you definitely need when eating the burgers. There were a few friends gathered at two of the tables next to ours, and it was clear that this was routine. This was what they did. They came to the store every day for coffee and a snack or a full lunch. When someone came through the door, they were greeted by name. The girls behind the grill--two nineteen year-olds in gym shorts--knew what to serve up for them. They settled in at their table to talk about the weather, to local school, their neighbors. It was so friendly and charming it made me want to lock my legs around my chair and stay there forever, even through the coldest months, when the town's residents would no doubt come through the door stomping off boots and rubbing feeling back into their hands before settling into their chairs for hot chocolate and a slice of crumb cake. I wanted to be one of those regulars worse than anything. Especially after the girls delivered our burgers, which oozed with ketchup and mustard and pickles and cheese. If someone had come into the store at that moment and announced they had a charming apartment for rent--one with a seaside view--I would've been on the phone with the movers, telling them to go on over to my apartment and pack everything up and move it on up the coast.

Of course, Owl's Head wasn't the only amazing place we visited while the BFW was in state. Here are some of the highlights:

This picture was taken at Owl's Head light, which is right up the stairs behind us. As you can see, it was a windy, windy day. When you are planning on going anywhere near the ocean, you have to dress expecting it to be substantially colder than it is inland, especially in the spring. The wind comes in off the Atlantic and rips right through you. We chose a ridiculous day to tour lighthouses--especially one that is a mile into the ocean. Yeah, that's right. We traipsed along the Rockland Breakwater Light in those winds and almost had our ears torn off.

When preparing for a visit to Maine, it's best to fast for a week before your arrival. After all, you're going to eat a lot of seafood. A lot. Here's Ross with one of the chowders we ate over the week. It was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as the best chowder I ever had, which was served up at a tiny cafe in Damariscotta.

This shot was taken at Southport, which is a small island in the waters outside Boothbay Harbor. There is a tiny beach on the island, and we took off our shoes and walked across it, pausing to examine the millions of shells that were scattered across it. The BFW was very impressed with the purple mussel shells. (I'm pretty impressed with them, too. The insides are pearlescent and beautiful. I've got a bunch of them on my desk at school.) In fact, the BFW was so impressed that he took a closed one away from the beach with us. He wanted to see what it would look like it it opened. We both got a littl squirmy about that, though, when the mussel, which cracked open a bit while we were strolling through Boothbay, sucked back shut when the BFW tried to open it further to investigate. We left that thing in the parking lot. I didn't want anything oozing out of its shell on my car floor.

This right here is me in my moment of glory. On our way from Boothbay Harbor to Damariscotta, where we were going to eat dinner at the place with the best crab cakes in the world, the BFW and I made a pitstop to play mini-golf. I got a hole-in-one on a really hard hole. Because I am awesome.

If you look in the background, you can see Hendrick's Head Light, which is in Southport. The gray areas in the photo? All shells. Beautiful, tiny little spiral shells I scooped into my hand and brought back with me. (Mine didn't have anything ooze-y living in them.)

I could write poetry about The Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth. The poem would start by describing the beauty of the shack's location--on a granite cliff just above the waves of the Atlantic--and then move into the beauty of the shack's food, where lobster rules the menu. The Lobster Shack's lobster roll is my favorite in the state. But that's not the only thing that's good there. Clams, crab, mussels, whoopie pies--all delicious. But their strawberry-rhubarb pie? It's perfection.

Last Day of Freedom

Here's where I spent my Labor Day:

I got to the beach maybe two hours after high tide, and I stayed for hours, writing, reading, and marveling at how much the landscape changes as the tide goes out again. Near the end of my stay, the beach was littered with shells, which is the way I prefer it. There's something about a beach full of shells that insists that people--grandmas, toddlers, tough biker guys--look down and search the scene as they pass over it. What everyone's really looking for are sand dollars--the prettiest of everything that gets washed up--but there's plenty of other shells to be found.

I spent an awful lot of time this summer walking up and down the beaches of Maine. In fact, I was a regular beach bum. My job this summer was simple: I was paid to relax, to write, to read, to brush up on being a good teacher. And I did all that. I relaxed. I wrote. I read. I found the joy in teaching again. And I managed to do a good chunk of that on the beach.

Today I drove out to my favorite beach, treating it like it was the last time I'll see a beach for a long, long time, like when I wake up tomorrow it will be mid-December, and there will be snow up to my knees. (The snow thing is unlikely; also, there are already beach plans for next weekend.) But my trip was mostly symbolic: it was the last trip of my honest-to-goodness summer. Tomorrow afternoon marks the start of my college's fall semester. Tomorrow I will meet my literature class and one of my composition sections. Then, on Wednesday, there will be more composition and my creative writing class. I've got a really great semester lined up, schedule-wise, and I'm teaching some great classes.

I'm sad my long, beautiful, lazy summer vacation is over, but I'm not sad school is starting back up. After all, I've got a stack of new folders, notebooks, staples, and paperclips sitting on my office desk--and we all know that a lot of the beauty of a new semester is in the hope and anticipation that seeps out of school supplies, infecting us, infecting everyone, and making the whole world seem good and full of possibility.

Here's hoping.

That Seagull Owes Me $3.50

This afternoon I headed off to the beach, but not before I popped into one of my favorite bakery/cafes--the one that's very likely run by pretty dark-haired lesbians. They make killer desserts. Lemon bars. Whoopie pies. Mocha fudge brownies. And I wanted to make a little picnic lunch, something I could sink my teeth into after several hours of tanning, reading, walking, wading, and seashell-gathering.

So I picked up a panini, chips, and a pecan bar that was so big it might as well have been a mini-pie. I couldn't wait to eat it.

And the pecan bar sat perfectly hidden in one of my beach bags the whole time I beached. It sat under a giant panini. No one bothered it when it was sitting in my beach chair as I lazed on the ground, and no one bothered it when I was off on my first long walk of the day--the one that took me to the west beach, the one with the wildest waves.

At dinner time, I broke into the panini. I was busy enjoying the grilled chicken, the sauteed peppers, the sassy pesto dressing while nearby a seagull was busying eyeing me up like nobody's business. Earlier, I'd witnessed this same seagull--the one with a red stripe that looked like a ketchup stain on his beak--saunter up to a large group close to me and snatch a chip from an open bag that was leaning up against a lady's leg. She screamed. Her whole group screamed. She got up and galloped after that seagull, who loped away, taunting her by not even having the decency to fly away. The lady chased him so with such vigor that the whole top of her bathing suit almost came off. Her straps slid down her arms and she finally had to give up. She stopped and tugged those straps back up. "STAY! AWAY! FROM! ME!" she yelled to the seagull. The seagull just dropped the chip on the sand and started nibbling it into bite-sized pieces.

That same seagull was now looking at my panini like it would be a great next course to his meal. I ate most of it, though. There was only a little sliver of bread left, and I rolled that up tightly into a piece of paper before sticking it back in its original bag, back on top of the pecan bar. I tucked it away in one of my beach bags. I hid it under two books, a notebook, and a couple of bottles of sunscreen. I set that bag on the chair and put a blanket on top of it. I thought, Just you try, seagull.

And I went off on another walk, this time to the other side of the beach, where cottages and mansions sit above sand glittering with tumbled rocks and shells. When I got back, the beach leading up to my setup was littered with crumpled paper. At first, it didn't occur to me that the paper looked an awful lot like the paper my panini had been wrapped in. I got back to my blanket and chair and saw that my entire bag had been moved from the chair. The seagull had nudged it onto the blanket and burrowed down through all the other things to find my food. He'd taken the scrap of bread, and he'd taken my pecan bar.

My pecan bar.

And he was sitting in the sand a ways off, just looking at me, all smug and satisfied. And you know what? I didn't even get mad. Not one bit. Because--let's face it--that was one ballsy, clever, and strong seagull. I was sad about not getting to eat my pecan bar--it looked really, really good--but I was almost pleased to give it up to an animal who had so much commitment to thievery. The stake out, the execution, the whole robbery was well played. The only thing that bothered me was having to scuff across the beach and pick up my missing things--including a few sheets of my novel-in-progress that had gotten between the seagull and his dessert. But I came home and soothed myself the only way I knew how: by baking up a pan of peanut butter brownies. I stuck a cup of chopped pecans in the mix just so I wouldn't miss out completely.