A time for Samhain

Tonight my circle gathers and we will have our Samhain celebration. We will begin to walk the Wheel together...

I can't think of a more perfect day to celebrate Samhain. Outside my window I am watching the wind blow the last of the yellowed maple leaves from the trees. The air is cold, biting and damp. The lush green shelter of summer is fading, replaced by elongated gray bark fingers. The sky is low and smoky. Everything in the outside world says it is time to pull inward, to slow down.

I curl up on the couch, wrapped around a cup of hot tea, kitties snuggled up to my side and my feet. My body craves rest. I've spent the past few weeks coming to terms with its recent limitations, not knowing what is bringing this fatigue. I have been frustrated, the desire to do has not faded, though the energy is not there to complete all I want to do. I reach inside myself to find acceptance and patience...to find a way to be at peace with not knowing right now...

There is synchronicity in the timing of this. Outside life is slowing down, settling into the coming winter, accepting the approaching darkness. Inside myself I find I must do the same. To take the lesson that Nature offers; to be patient with my own fallow season and to know that however long it takes, a day, a week, a year...it will pass or become something new.

In the mean time, like the world outside I rest; sitting with stillness my thoughts can't help but turn inward.

I can't think of a more perfect time to celebrate Samhain.

Summer...ugh, summer...

I work in an air conditioned, climate controlled office. After eight hours inside where it is chilly enough for me to don a hat and heavy velvet jacket I will step out the door into a moment of warm relief broken by the impact of heavy air slamming into my lungs. Walking home at even a slow pace will leave me drenched from armpit to elbow, tiny twin Mississippis of sweat running from beneath my breasts, slow trickling across my belly to my thighs.

At home I change into the emperor’s finery and lay still in front of the fan, letting the magic of evaporation take effect. Aaaaaah…I enjoy the feeling of falling back into comfort.

I do not like it but, I don’t let the few weeks of humid ick we call summer in Maine stop me from going about my business. I still workout, still go to my dance class, still walk everywhere and I still bake bread. I continue hug my sweaty friends, cuddle my lover and though I compensate (the fabrics are lighter, the skirts shorter, the tops have only straps instead of sleeves) I still wear black.

I do what I can to fight of the impact of the heat. I eat freeze pops until I pee rainbows. I fall asleep to the hum of the fan. My showers are as cool as the rain. I’ll do my best to find positive things, like dipping into the cold ocean and the plethora of wildflowers we have this year. As everyone who lives in Maine does, I persevere.

I am not stoic about it though. I’ll complain. In fact this is likely the only weather you will hear me whine about. I will tell you quite readily just how much I don’t like summer. How it makes me uncomfortable, that I can’t breathe the air. I’ll tell you it isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity (because really it is) and you will tell me I am crazy when I say how much I prefer a snowstorm to a sweltering day in August.

I don’t live here because I want to be warm. I live here because the other 46 or so weeks that aren’t summer are quite enjoyable. I love September through most of June. I like fall jackets and winter sweaters. I like mittens, and hats and scarves. I like the squish of spring mud and the trickling sound of snow melt dripping into a storm drain. I like the lead up to summer and it’s fade into the yellow days of autumn. It’s just the actually event of summer I don’t enjoy.

But right now it’s here, and I have to live with it. So I’ll sit in front of the fan while my tongue turns from blue to pink to green to red, and I’ll sweat through my walks to and from work. I’ll dance, bake, make love and celebrate life despite the sticky-ick. Yes, I’ll endure. There can only be a few more days left of summer. It is Maine after all.

A sign that summer is here.

Two things have alerted me to the fact that summer has finally arrived in Portland, Maine. The first is that last night it was humid and stuffy enough in my apartment that I actually went to bed with a fan in the window, and the second is that over the past 24 hours my liquid intake has primarily been in the form of florescent fruity flavored frozen liquid; a/k/a the freeze pop.

Freeze pops are not something that I put on my shopping list, the first package of the summer is usually an excited impulse purchase (“ooooh, freeze pops!!!”). At some point, generally around late June early July, they appear in the grocery store. Usually filling a large bin at the near the entrance, bags of little plastic tubes, each filled with a sweet, brightly colored, room temperature liquid. Bright red, orange, green, purple, blue and yellow; liquid jewels waiting to be frozen into icy sweet goodness and devoured.

The flavors vary slightly depending upon who manufactures the particular brand but you can be fairly certain that there will be orange, lime, red cherry/berry, blue (is there really something that this is supposed to taste like?) and grape. The package I picked up this weekend has a few extra flavors: one that I am pretty sure is supposed to be mango, lemon and (much to the joy of my yellow fruit loving boyfriend) banana.

I don't know as I ever found a freeze pop flavor that I don't like, but when the supply has dwindled it will be primarily grape that is left over (this appears to happen in other people's freezer too). It isn't that I don't like grape, it's just that all of the other flavors are much more appealing to me. Orange and the red berry ones are likely my favorite. I love the blue because it mostly because it makes my tongue a funny color and it reminds me of a certain someone's kisses.

Every person has a slightly different way of eating a freeze pop. Some people bite and chew their way through the entire pop. Others will suck the juice from the frozen pop, leaving behind a faintly tinted white point that needs to be bitten off before moving on to repeat this juice extraction action on the remainder of the pop. There have been people known to use a combination of both. One thing that all freeze pop devouring techniques have in common though is that tiny bit of cold, sweet liquid in the bottom of the plastic tube. And no one leaves the liquid behind.

Whether you suck the liquid out, or pop the plastic back into a tube shape to pour the syrupy sweet remains onto your waiting tongue, freeze pop wrappers always end up empty. To leave any juice behind must surely violate some cosmic universal law – one which comes with hefty karmic punishment; an eternity of only grape flavored freeze pops perhaps.

My freezer will contain this yummy treat for the rest of the summer and my tongue will not return to its normal pink hue until after labor day. If you stop by for a visit, you will be offered a chance to partake in this icy summer treat in whatever manner you see fit. Freeze pops are, like many things, best when you can share them.

What is your favorite flavor?

A new home...

I am settling into a new apartment; going through the process of opening all the packed boxes, reassembling and arranging my furniture, creating new routines that fit this living space. I am getting used to the rhythms of this place. Though I only moved a few blocks from my old apartment, the feeling is very different.

I had lived in my previous building for 12 years. Six of those years were spent on the first floor and the remaining six were on the second floor, in a apartment that was a mirror image of the first. The space changed but the location was the same. While my view changed a little, the neighborhood was still the same. I grew used to the sounds and rhythms of life that went on around me there both inside and out.

This building, with over twice the number of apartments, is much quieter. I the week that I have been here I have only rarely heard my neighbors comings and goings. The front door makes only a faintly audible 'thump' when it closes. The only hint of sound I have heard from my building mates were some muffled 'oh-oh'-ohs' of love making above my bedroom early this morning. Had I been asleep or in the living room I would not have heard even that.

The neighborhood is much quieter also. My apartment is on the side away from the street, and a block away from any main thoroughfare. I don't hear the traffic sounds that I heard through the night from Park Avenue. After 9:00 my new street falls silent. Quiet enough that I can hear the footsteps of some one perambulating up the sidewalk long before they come into view outside of my window.

There are two sounds I have come to love in the short time I have been here. Outside of my window live several tall maple trees where every dawn and dusk birds gather to sing. I feel a bit like a Disney princess listening to the harmonies that take place outside my windows; watching the birds flit from branch to branch, the males puffing up their chests to sing. The cats of course love this too, adding their chitters and mews to these low light avian jam sessions. These same maples also make the rain into a soothing rhythm section.

Settling in has been a process, slowed a bit by a shoulder injury that prevents me from doing much heavy lifting. The kitchen and bathroom were the first rooms to be fully ready. My main living space is still in bit of disarray but tonight a friend is coming by to assist with reassembling my computer desk, the last piece of furniture to be put into place. Once this is done the remaining boxes will be able to be unpacked, there will be places to put everything and I can begin to do the more fun parts of moving...like figuring out where to hang pictures and fine tuning my decorating.

I feel that I will be happy here. I am looking forward to really settling in, making this space my own and watching how things change here through the seasons.

City dweller find wildlife 'tucked away'..

From today's Portland Press Herald:

City Dweller Finds Wildlife "Tucked Away"

Leather Aprons

When I was a kid one of my favorite treats was sugar or snow, or leather aprons. My mum would heat up maple syrup on the stove and when it was ready, she would send my brother and I outside to scoop up bowls of snow over which we would drizzle the hot syrup to make a tasty, gooey, maple treat.

Here are directions for making this bit of Maple goodness from the Maine Maple Producers Association website (where you can also learn a lot more about maple syrup).

"In the old days, when syrup making was a community affair, children and adults alike enjoyed the taffy-like candy made by pouring hot Maine maple syrup onto well-packed snow. This first treat of the maple season should always be accompanied by plain doughnuts and sour pickles, which provide a necessary contrast to the sweetness of the maple.

Heat the desired amount of syrup to 22 degrees above the boiling point of water. Without stirring, pour immediately to form a thin coating onto packed snow or shaved ice. Wind the taffy onto forks for eating -- it's too soft to pick up. A quart of syrup is sufficient for 12 to 16 people, depending on how many of them are under 10."

Enjoy!

When Casco Bay Froze...

I was looking out over the cove as I waited for my food to heat up at work. I have to say, no matter how I might feel about the office moving, we have ended up with great views. The cove is partially frozen. It has been very cold these past few days; cold enough that even salt water can freeze. The center of the cove is still free water though and there are gulls and some hearty ducks floating, swimming and diving.

Several years ago I worked with a woman who lived on Peaks Island in Casco Bay. The island is not that far from shore. Close enough that some folks commute by kayak in the warmer months but too far for a bridge. This woman lived in a small house on the island which had been built some time in the 1800s. However the house was not built on the island. It was constructed here on the mainland and brought out to the island after completion on skids across the frozen ice of Casco Bay.

Yep. That's right. Casco bay used to freeze over solid enough, and predictably enough, in the winter that a whole house could be dragged across the ice to the island. I am not sure of the last time the bay froze over but I did find a link to this photo of five men who in 1933 drove a car from Chebeague Island, which is even further out than Peaks Island, to buy the local paper.