“How did I get so lucky?” I think I said the words out loud, they seemed that important. I was alone, standing at the edge of our early spring garden, spread before me in all its muddy glory. We’d had a busy morning, as several family members arrived early, armed with clippers and saws, shovels and gloves, to clean out years worth of wild raspberries, a forgotten pile of cedar chunks, and … buried wire fencing, the “most unlovely part of our property,” as I described it a few weeks ago.

Everybody got a turn at the fence. There were at least three different kinds, typical of our construction style which is to use whatever you can get for free. Or cheap. So there was rusty chicken wire, heavy sheep fence, and even barbed wire. It had all tumbled down years ago, and become part of the jungle that bordered one edge of our garden.

“Uncle Curt gave us that,” I told my son, who was trying to extricate a nice-quality, close mesh four-foot high piece from the roots that had pinned it to the ground. “They used it for a play yard for their boys [twins and their brother, barely 18 months apart. Those ‘boys’ are in their 50s now, the oldest a grampa himself]; it’s the best fence we ever had.”

The first son gave up and began sawing down saplings, so another took his place.

“My dad always told me about the time he was digging up a Victory Garden in a vacant lot,” I told this one. “And had to dig out a bedspring” suggesting that this fence wire was his bedspring. After this son wandered off to take photos of his little boy planting peas, his wife took over. Just as she finally got that wire fencing dislodged, her husband came back and pulled it out in a grand swoop. She was not pleased.

The lucky part? That, by some miracle of wishful thinking, I’ve managed to live my life in the very place I dreamed of as a child. That would be in a clearing in the woods, within sound of a running stream, in a century and a half old farmhouse. It would be knowing the intimate ways of animals. Watching an egg emerge from a hen, pulling a calf from its laboring mother, burying my nose in the horsey-smelling winter coat of an old pony.

I was a girl raised on wall-to-wall carpet, with concrete sidewalks and manicured lawns, on food from the supermarket, and by a mother who profoundly disliked anything “country”. Maybe it was our summer trips to Wisconsin, but at an early age I wanted to live in the North Woods, preferably in a little log cabin, a la Little House in the Big Woods.

By an odd sequence of events I ended up at Colby College for the last two years of my education. I’d never been to Maine until the day in September 1964 when a friend drove me from Logan Airport to Waterville to start my junior year. All I remember is the endlessly long road heading deeper and deeper into this unknown place. It must have been on later trips that I saw the signs at the entrance to the Turnpike listing how many deer, how many bear and how many hunters had succumbed that hunting season. Do they still post that?

The other day Wally and I went up to Waterville on a couple of errands, and I marveled that I’d ever lived there. We always get lost. Nothing looks the same, since they carved out the center of the city after my years there, urban renewal I think they called it. Hardly anyone had a car back then, not while at college. We walked everywhere, or hitched a ride to and from Mayflower Hill into town.

In two years I may have been off campus and away from Waterville a handful of times. Maine was basically a mystery to me then.

After graduation I returned to Chicago, rented an apartment with a friend, worked in an advertising agency. I only lasted a year. One hot August day, in my air-conditioned office, I opened an atlas to Maine, closed my eyes and stabbed at the map – five times. I wrote letters to those five towns, seeking a teaching job. Within days I’d had a phone call; Rockland had openings. Could I come for an interview?

 Sure thing. I got up from my desk, walked into the boss’s office and gave my notice. That same day I managed to sublet my apartment, then booked a flight to Augusta. A couple of Colby friends who were still hanging around the area drove me to Rockland. Within the hour I had the job. I’d be teaching sixth grade at the Junior High (now the Lincoln Street Center). Two weeks later, all my belongings – clothes, books, record collection – were en route to Rockland via Railway Express; it was Labor Day 1967 and I moved into a tiny apartment next to the railroad tracks at the intersection of Park and Pleasant Streets. My life, the life I dreamed of, was beginning.

A good friend shared this in the hope it will help someone else: “[Diane] thought she was having a heart attack this week and made the right decision to get checked out at the ER. She received the good news that she was not. My story is different: In December I thought I was having a heart attack, and I was. I also went to the ER, and that’s the important common takeaway of our stories.

I dithered for three important hours that could have ended my doubt with death. I vacillated and Googled and considered the implications of being wrong. We hear about so-called women’s heart attacks that are different from men’s heart attacks, but it was the classic symptoms that were hitting me. Just heartburn or something like that, right? Well, no.

My story ends well. After open heart surgery—a triple bypass that the medical community calls a CABGx3—and then resolution of some serious but tangential issues that resulted in an extended hospital stay—I’m doing well.

Librarian Sheila Polson writes that two popular programs are coming up Tuesday, April 12. First, from 4-6 p.m. all those knitters, crocheters and others who love doing handwork get together to work on their projects.  

Then from 6 to 7 p.m. “the book group will gather to discuss “H Is for Hawk,” Helen Macdonald’s compelling memoir about the year she spent training a goshawk while mourning the sudden death of her father. The book group is meeting the same night as the needleworkers this month only and will return in May to its more regular third Tuesday. This could be a great time for all you needleworkers to stay and join the book discussion, while people in the book group might want to come early with a handwork project and join in that fun too. Either way, everyone is welcome to come for part or all of the evening.”

Coming up next Wednesday, April 20, is the April Library Presentation, featuring this month Jennifer Armstrong. Jennifer has spent her life writing, singing, telling stories and making music. She will be discussing one of her many children’s books.

Most of us live within sight of the woods or some other wild place. This is the season of vernal pools, when they’re alive with frogs and salamanders and all kinds of tiny wildlife. Corelyn Senn writes: “I can see lots of frogs swimming around in my pond on the live-feed camera. Funny to watch. They are doing the frog-paddle. If I could stay home today…. I would sit in my bed and watch the frogs jumping and swimming in the pond ALL day.”