Sour Cherry Pie and Mental Wellness

Megan did all the pretty parts

Scraggly, lichen covered cherry trees sit at the southern edge of our lawn. Most of the time, the only color below their limbs is from freshly painted buoys hung there in the Spring. This year is the second time they've borne fruit since I arrived in 2006. 

The first time, some serious foragers from Australia came and picked a bunch, in exchange for which, Olive and I had a really cool tour of their 44 footer; their home for several years running. I asked Bernie if the electric fence warning sign was for real, and he replied 'it is when we're in Venezuela.' 

Megan and I puzzled about how to get at the fruit as the branches are feeble and the good stuff was up high. We backed 'Jaws,' the great white pick-up truck, in underneath and were able to get a bunch that way. Then it was stacking a lobster crate in the back which extended our reach and harvest. 

There is a vast wealth of random items in the barn, some of them useful. The giant plastic candy-canes from many Christmases gone by turned out to be great for hauling down branches and bringing many more sour cherries into reach. 

Megan figured out how to slickly pit the cherries with a chopstick while I did up the crust and then the filling. She then did all of the crust finishing, saving me from whatever embarrassing presentation I would've come up with.

Cherry pie from your front yard is a random act of kindness from a beautiful world. 

I intend to deploy pictures of mine to respond to fellow members of the classes of 1990-1992 at the University of Maine School of Law who thought it necessary to post pictures of their sour cherry pies. Janet's also originated here on Matinicus Island, so she beat me to that fair and square. Mine, however, is inherently superior based on the following reasoning: a) it's here in my house; and, b) it hasn't been eaten yet.

Having worked for years to achieve some balance between legal work demands and being out here and working on the ocean, I can say that the last couple weeks have been an excellent example of not achieving that balance. The Maine Bar Journal's most recent edition was all about attorney mental wellness. It couldn't have been timed any better. Not being in the criminal/divorce/child protective realm any more, I don't think about work stress as something needing any real effort to deal with. It turns out, however, I can turn even the nerdiest, most transactional legal work into a nightmare with a little effort. It also turns out that coordinating lenders, buyers, sellers in different states, along with big piles of money, super tight time constraints, wire transfers, time sensitive document shipping and keeping title clear is actually somewhat demanding on occasion.  

So it was joyous to me to go out last Saturday in the post-tropical storm swell to set and haul gear east of Matinicus Harbor. I was reminded that there isn't much that a good ass-kicking on the water can't put into perspective.