Sun, 04/21/2024 - 7:00pm

Ed O’Brien

The anspenglow upon the trees along Coleman Pond. I learned today that “aspenglow” refers to the light of the sun- that has already set, or is not yet risen reflected off the clouds. So cool. (Photo by Liz Hand)

I write this as the sun comes up over Lincolnville on a spring morning. I wrote last week about searching for signs of spring – what a difference a week makes.

Everywhere, the early flowers are blooming. The insects are waking up, especially the pollinators, never limited to simply honeybees, who will ensure that all our favorite fruit trees and berry bushes will produce.

The small critters have become more active, the birds sing loudly from the trees, exciting my furry little felines, as they stare intently through the screens of opened windows. Cats, always with wild hearts, want to follow their instincts, despite their readily available supply of the finest high-end kibble the Belfast Aubuchon can supply.

At some point in the last 30 years, my parents invested in hiring someone to smooth out the rutted cow pasture, which was crossed with several seasonal streams coming off Frohock Mountain on their way to Frohock Brook, and built a pond in the back field. It tends to eventually lose most of its water by late summer, but this time of year it is full to bursting.

It is usually a stopping off point for a pair of Mallard ducks, and a nursery for frog eggs, and once, in the isolation of Spring 2020, an impromptu and freezing swimming hole for the pack of bored children living here at Sleepy Hollow.

And of course, it is a source of frequent entertainment for the dogs that live here. Dogs and children love water.

Long ago, before the pasture was smoothed out, my brothers and I would use the small streams, iced over, as sled tracks. Lacking snow, we raced through the field on the ice, our dog Cubby, known to be part wolf but suspected to be part bear, snapping at our heels.

Before the large pond, their was a small body of water, a rock filled depression we knew as the Frog Pond. I remember speculation as a child that it could have been a filled in well. Regardless, it was a wonderful little pool for a curious child, and a great place to find frog eggs. It was kind of sad to return from wherever I was living at the time to find that the Frog Pond was gone and that giant rock at its bank, probably a small glacial erratic, had been pushed away in the service of creating a pasture you could cross without twisting an ankle.

Heh, it is funny what you latch onto when you are a child.

At our previous home, on Slab City Road, there was a large rock in the front yard that our young children had taken to calling “Pirate Rock” for whatever reason. Maybe for my middle boy’s love of the cartoon Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which was one of the main media staples that got him through the year of cancer treatments in that wild year that was 2013.

Driving down Slab City with my daughter the other day, she started talking about her memories of our old house. It now seems like it was only a short time we lived there, but to her and her brothers, the foundations of their memories started in that little place.

As I have written about several times before, my early memories are rooted to the place where we live now. For some reason, every time I approach the house, I see that last rock, just before the threshold, and remember helping my mom place it, completing the path of stepping stones leading up to the door.

I sit on the concrete steps before the rarely used “front door”, which leads to the stairwell that separates the recently created “upstairs and downstairs” houses, and remember sitting there with my mom on a late spring morning, as she taught me the various plants, and that sweet cicely is delicious. I was a connoisseur of edible plants as a child.

I pull out a bike from the lower barn, and remember watching my father milking the cow down there, making sure to offer a squirt off the teet to the various barn cats. There are still vintage beer cans in the rafters, remainders of his after work “milking beer”.

I have quoted my mom before about how we live upon layers, that the Lincolnville we live in today contains the remnants of the people who came before — the farming and fishing families, the early white settlers, the generations upon generations of Penobscot people walked this land while my ancestors were painting their faces blue in the British Isles….

And sometimes the layers are your own past, be you 79, 49, or 14.

Anyway, the rain finally stopped yesterday afternoon, and I was convinced to leave my hiding place in the new greenhouse my wife and mother built — now full of seedlings — where I had been reading, and join the dogs at the new pond. The pasture was still a bit squishy, but no running streams cross it. The pond was full, and the dogs had a blast. The birds were singing, the dogs were splashing, and the air was full of life.

Spring has come to Lincolnville.

Have a wonderful week, and reach out to me at ceobrien246@gmail.com.

CALENDAR

Monday, April 22

Select Board, 6 p.m. Town Office

Tuesday, April 23

Library open 3-6 p.m. 208 Main Street

AA Meeting 12 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

Lakes and Pods Committee, 7 p.m. Town Office

Wednesday, April 24

Library open 2-5 p.m.

Planning Board, 7 p.m. Town Office