October 19, 2010
It’s easy to lose track of time without the outside world. It’s easy to lose track of time without a routine of personal hygiene. I stood outside tonight as the moon bellied up, naked and cold, shivering as I washed my filthy body with water warmed by the stove, a washcloth and some good old Dr. Bronners and realized that I hadn’t washed up since Saturday. My hair was unbearably greasy, I had become fairly odorous as I spent almost the entire day working outside and damn, it’s been quite cold, so I haven’t found the desire to change my clothing. Needless to say, my socks could have marched from my body themselves. Anyone who knows me well knows I normally shower every day, twice a day sometimes. I wash my hair daily and brush my teeth three times a day. I certainly change my clothes every day, and almost every night slip into pajamas. Somehow, out here, with the lack of running water, I have developed a pleasure in being dirty. And I have developed even more of a pleasure in standing outside in the moonlight, completely nude, using a washcloth and hot water to cleanse my body. I never thought dipping my head into too-hot water after lathering it with soap could be so refreshing. Towel drying, in the frigid autumn evening might be one of the most invigorating feelings to be felt. Showers are for babies. I suppose I began to describe my bathing situation because it did in fact remind me that I had lost track of time. It is Tuesday evening. To me it could have been any day of the week. I didn’t know the date until I figured I should at some point today. I have been here just about three weeks now. I have accomplished very few things, but have seen and done countless.
I am flawed in many ways. Once a social butterfly, I have become a social retard. Once worldly and a multi-tasking perfectionist, I am now slow, and enjoy watching ants carry leaves, I squeal with delight while listening to the trees groaning in the wind, alone, I enjoy walking through the woods, with no conversation, like watching the light move over the valley of arbors, exploding with the colors of the season. I lose track of hours, days and I guess, weeks. Sometimes I can come out of my own brain and not remember for a second, where I am. I’ve been living in a daydream since I left Montana. It’s been beautiful for the most part. My heart feels like it is on fire. Once again, I’ve fallen in love with a geographic location and put aside human beings in the process. I have been communicating for the most part via written correspondence. The only person I really have to verbally communicate with is Nate, and his father Pete, and the postmaster and the gal who works at the convenience store. Most of the time I am living in my head…and my head, well, it’s like a child. My imagination is seemingly never tired. I still cannot believe all that I’ve seen here.
I’ve been infatuated with Maine since Nate kidnapped me ten years ago and brought me here after school one afternoon. He took me to a jetty and we climbed into an abandoned lighthouse on the coast and drank beer and talked about life. The ocean crashed angrily beneath our hanging feet. The gulls squalled and screamed and the fresh salt air washed over me as I half listened to Nate, feeling so excited I could have peed my pants. He took me on a country road and for the first time in my life, I saw the sky exploding with stars. I remember the way it smelled here. I remember the way my belly felt all full up with such excitement. I was lucky enough to come and visit him and my friend Justin many more times over the years. The more time I spent up here, the more I dreamt of it. The more I longed to be here. My friend Justin took me on many adventures, and seeing my delight, fed me, more and more each time. Having an entire month, to sit and exist here, has been more in some ways than I thought it could be. It has been much quieter than I would have guessed.
For the most part I wake with the sun and fall asleep not too long after it sinks down below the White Mountains. We seem to follow a sort of schedule that feels nothing like a schedule. As I mentioned, the days and nights blend over and over and over again. Some days we work from the time we awake (Nate is always awake and outside working before I crawl out of my sleeping bag). He gives me tasks to complete and I work often beside him mostly doing grunt work, as I am unskilled. I’ve been shoveling, moving, piling, pulling, tilling, ripping and hauling. The pitchfork, mccloud, axe, rake, shovel and wheelbarrow have become an extension of me. I learned to use a come-along the other day to move a one-ton rock with my own sheer strength, simple physics, a chain and Nate. I helped to install the wood-burning stove that we use to keep us warm. I chop the wood that we burn. I wash dishes with rainwater heated on the stove. Hopefully I’ll plant grass seed in the yard before I leave on Tuesday. My back is sore, my body bruised and my clothes covered in a fine layer of dirt and mud. My fingernails seem to contain their own constant soil sample. Being here in Maine, in the country so to speak, Nate and I do not look out of place when we walk into the Paris Farmers Union to pick up supplies, in the state of dirt and grime that we are in. I do not feel embarrassed or dirty while sporting my ripped up dusty jeans or giving money to a cashier with grimy, cracked hands. I actually feel quite proud and productive. Nate made a good point to me, that this is a novelty to others in the outside world, mainly to our friends living the city life in Philly, New York and LA. He is unfortunately correct. But what he is doing takes courage. It takes strength and patience. It takes craftsmanship, it take sacrifice above all. I have not felt this free in such a long time…and ironically I am working physically harder than I ever have. The constraints of the world “out there” mean nothing here. With the lack of tapping into constant electronic communication, I have time to think, and feel and see for myself entirely. I have virtually no money, but don’t need it. The cost of living here is radically different, the quality of life almost immeasurable. It takes a certain type to live this way. You must be self -sustaining and self-aware. It amazes me to think that most people I know would not like this lifestyle, that they’d have a hard time without non-stop internet, that they would not look forward to long days of physical labor, that the entertainment you may have would primarily be watching a movie, listening to your own thoughts, sharing conversation with your friend or the local folks. No coffee shops, no movie theaters, no bar to wander into, not here in Denmark. Everything is a drive away. And I suppose- the closest place to find city folk who share a certain taste for fashion, culture and metropolis inspired ways of living within the living breathing concrete and steel beast that is a city would be in Portland Maine. Extroverts rely on a city to validate them, give them opportunity, find companionship, congregate and bounce their thoughts, wishes and ideas off of others. Here, the only validation you have is your own productivity. The company you keep tends to be the trees, the mountains, and the land. The folks you have to socialize with are your family, local neighbors, your postman, your convenience store clerk and your friends in other towns around the area…in season; you have tourists to change up the dynamic. The only opportunity seemingly, is the one you make for yourself. There is certainly something to be said about city life…the feeling and the excitement of feeling like one cell moving around in a massive body of other living, pulsing cells. There is an excitement that comes from the formula of many different minds all melded into one place times the endless possibility of place and commerce and interaction within a city. Out here, the excitement, at least for me, comes from just existing. Just noting my breathing and body actually working.
My time is nearing an end here. And I seem to go through a familiar pattern when I have spent time in a “place”. I try to mentally catalogue all I have learned. All I’ve seen. I like to find the characteristics that make the place I have been significant, individual, and extraordinary. Maine easily has it’s own presence. It’s own way of being. It has been called “vacationland” and I can honestly see why. The trees around me have changed every day. Winter (or what I am used to associating with winter-like weather) has moved in. Frost is now on the ground in the morning, and the nighttime air makes my cheeks rosy. I can hear hunters in the woods, and now when I hike I have to wear Blaze Orange so I don’t get shot. The lakes look less calm and often they have a fine layer of whitecaps all pushing about. Whether the sky is grey or bright blue-everything looks like it is on fire. I’ve had a time here. Oh it’s been a time. I am almost positive I’ll be back again in the spring to see how far Nate has come along in his endeavors. Knowing him, everything will look entirely different. And knowing me, I’ll have seen too many things and been too many places and be entirely different myself. I’m sleepy. The weather is not necessarily forgiving. I’m sitting by the stove, keeping warm. I’m wondering how life in Philly will be. I’ll miss it here…but I know in my gut…it’s time to move on once again. Thank ya Maine. It’s been swell.
