April and an Old Truck

 It’s a gradual awakening. For me and the house and various machinery as well as the lobstering business I insist on staying in contrary to any common sense.

Here at 33 South Road, Matinicus Isle, Maine, the Easter vibe comes not in pastel or fluorescent pinks, oranges or yellows, crocuses, daffodils or forsythia blossoms, but in dirt-crusted black. 

The truck Megan paid $800 for in 2014 is now in its 11th season here. Hundreds of trips have been made up and down the island with as many traps as would stay stacked on the bed. The black Mazda pickup truck has had its share of malfunctions and breakdowns, but picture tightening battery terminals after lugging the battery up out of the basement, tipping some fresh gas in, sweet talking the dodgy starter until she comes to life and then watching the black beauty rise up out of the dead grass as the tires are inflated. That is resurrection. 

The lawnmower obliges, though it feels wrong to just about need mittens to cut the grass. Buoys get inspected for weak bridles and cleaned prior to this year’s fluorescent blue and orange coat. A few need my initials and license number re-branded into them.

So it goes with me as well. I really do my best to adapt to the mainland, but once I’m boots on the ground here I realize how much I need the crazy that comes with this remote island; how much I need the raw connection to the environment; how good it feels to be picking up dry broken limbs off the yard and warming myself with them a little later by the stove. I realize how much I cram down and out of sight the suffocating sensations of the suburbia that the mainland coast is becoming. As wonderful as it is, it’s usually not working for me by April, and I don’t consciously realize why I’m such a drag. Then again in November, the fear of cold man winter will have me grateful for a comfy nest. 

Thinking further out than just the yearly migratory cycle, this place reminds me I need the wildness and impracticality, if for no other reason than to remember how showing up here one April long past felt like being released from confinement. I felt there was adventure ahead in life and I was right. I often do not feel that way these days, so it’s good I came out and fired up black beauty one more time in April.

A Bad Day on the Boat (still beats a good day elsewhere)

 Those close to me would be justifiably sick of my bitchiness. As for many, this has been a bumpy summer for me. To compound the daily challenges, I've missed no opportunity to respond as poorly as possible, take offense at everything and make the worst of every situation. It could be the Delta variant and its promises of future masking, lockdowns, business disruption and braying about tyranny and oppression by those hell bent on incubating new variants. It could be that we're supposed to be going 33 and 1/3 in August, but it's more like 78 rpms with work demands. It could be bad wiring in my brain or the stankin' heat. 

Nowhere have I been more sour than in my office work. Things are actually great in that enterprise, but again I'm snatching misery from the jaws of happiness whenever possible. I don't understand me that way, but that's how it is. [cue the Babe mice: 'The Way Things Are']

Today, for example, the trap hauling day started with a visual migraine and unexpected trip back to the wharf for a snort of immutrex, which if you have migraines, I highly recommend. Laurie and I then set forth out of the harbor on a truly beautiful morning. There were a couple of lobsters here and there so all was going pretty well. 

About half way through our gear, two things happened. Actually, one thing didn't happen and the other thing really, really did. The thing that didn't happen was the pot hauler rotating such that my trap would come up. Quick and confused look at the switch. Move the handle back and forth. Nope. Seconds later, I discovered the thing that did happen, which was a boisterous fountain of bright red hydraulic fluid arcing across the forward compartment and down into the bilge. 

Fortunately, we weren't far from the harbor, and Laurie is way cooler under duress than I am. She got a bucket under the fountain so I could get most of the way in without committing environmental infractions. 

Just outside the breakwater, Jeb, savior in many a situation in Matinicus Harbor, came out and towed me to the mooring. 

I've taken apart a few hydraulic components, but the usual fog of breakdown stress had me questioning whether to lefty lucy or righty-righty to get the substantial fittings apart. I also prefer not to break things such that a small problem gets much bigger. The top piece came apart with a few swears and a pipe wrench. The bottom fitting pretty much gave me the finger with its rusted threads. Glistening though they were with recently liberated fluid, there was no give. 

Uncertainty about how something comes apart or goes together is often the hardest step of any repair, especially for those of us who have no training and only know how to deal with what they've already broken. I understand alternators, fuel and pressure sensor lines, temperature gauges, gear coolers, steering valves and other things I've become familiar with only when they fail. 

Clayton, as always, is the go-to person because he has broken everything that can be broken on a boat as well as a few that make Art Stanley, guru of all things marine diesel, to say 'well, I've never seen that before.' My sense is that Clayton is very proud of those moments. For me, he always knows the what and how that I do not. 

Since he was just climbing the ladder as we paddled in, I asked. "Thrust and pipe wrenches." Laurie interpreted that as muscle and wrenches, but Thrust with a capital T is spray goo that penetrates stubborn rusted parts even better than WD-40 or PB Blaster. I helped myself to a can and an extra wrench from his shop and had the business apart a few minutes later, plus a couple of paddles across the harbor. 

The rest of the day was a merry-go-round of calling Penobscot Island Air, finding out they had a plane landing in 5 minutes, calling Megan to pick up the dead hose from PIA, her getting it to NAPA to fabricate a new one and a lengthy cleanup process wherein multiple gallons of hydraulic/salt water broth were pumped out of the bilge into buckets followed by a great deal of swabbing, wiping and scrubbing. Added features were having to find my phone on the road in 3 separate pieces after taking pictures of the hose and carelessly leaving the phone on my truck hood. 

Throughout the day, I was more content than I've been for weeks in the office. A bad day fishing...

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. 

Where're the Toothpicks?

When I’m on Matinicus, there is no other place. That’s a sensation I always had, even as a vacationer. Once you’re here, there’s no other there over there.

The other sensation, which you can only get if your tourism goes on long term Year of the Cat style, is that the treadmill is set a few paces faster than your feet can go.  And the treadmill doesn’t just turn in a line, but also right, left, backwards and in three dimensions, and you need to carry buckets and tools and try to not spill your refreshment.

Without quite saying it out loud in my head, I am constantly telling myself: ‘don’t blink, because it is midsummer on the island.’ I do not want to miss a chance to haul traps, socialize, notice a flower, play kickball, walk, beach, look up at the stars, lay in the hammock, appreciate the bird songs, try to keep up with the grass, breathe, fix things around the house and clean up that colossal mess in the barn. ‘Hurry up and soak it in,’ I semi-consciously think.

This summer is an extra concentrated cocktail because I am back and forth between home on Matinicus and the mainland. I duffle-bag it three days a week in order to work the office job I took last fall when the fiscal cliff opened up underneath me again. 

I have a friend who travels hundreds of days a year for work all over the northern hemisphere. For me, there is some major jet lag involved even without crossing time zones. I also still have three or four island jobs to do, only in half a week instead of on a 7 day cycle. Then I have to at least appear coherent on Monday morning.

That, folks, sounds like summer in Maine for a lot of us.  Now, where are the toothpicks?

Tie-Up

No, lobstermen do not have to get in the boat if the price isn't reasonable. Lobstermen don't have to duct-tape their mouths shut about it either.

There is nothing illegal about a public call to tie up for the purpose of letting the temporary oversupply of lobsters correct itself, letting the processors catch up and allowing the price to come back into balance with the value of the product. This is actually an example of lobster harvesters being intelligent market players instead of passively waiting for things to get better.

There is no such thing as an illegal lobster "strike" because harvesters are not regulated as to their production schedule with the exception of the state law prohibiting harvests on Sundays between June 1 and August 31.

This is not price-fixing because there is no conspiratorial attempt to artificially set a price. It is simply an adjustment to the harvest for the purpose of allowing the market to correct itself.

Lobstermen are under no obligation to accept any particular price because they are participants in what is supposed to be a free market. Lobstermen also have a constitutional right to communicate about their concerns regarding market conditions.

 Now, let's eat. Eat local.