Easter Sunday

So, at about 1:30 on Easter Sunday Lucy and I set out for Jasper Beach in Machiasport - one of the only beaches in the world made up of the semi-precious jasper stone and which is recognized by National Geographic Traveler as one of the world's best wild beaches.

Lucy starts to go a little bat shit when I flip the blinker off of Route 1 out of East Machias because she thinks we are going down to the Point of Main, my family land. Or maybe she goes bat shit because she knows we're going to Jasper Beach. Who the hell knows. She's a dog and I'm a human and, unfortunately for humanity, we can't really read each other's minds.

I pull into what passes as a parking lot at Jasper Beach. (Anywhere else this would be a circle dried mud where it's level on the edges but here it passes for a parking lot.) As a city person in a previous life I recognize the leavings of other visitors: fast food wrappers, tampon casings, and two 5-gallon buckets off the trail about fifteen feet which are too suspicious for me to investigate.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In real time I don't actually get onto the beach for about an hour because there's a mom and a kid about three years of age and this dog. They are returning to their car which is also a Honda Fit. I think, "Jeez. What are the chances of THAT?" Their dog senses Lucy in a way that only other dogs can understand and both their dog and Lucy go bat shit. To make matters worse, their dog is the semi-little variety that always acts, in the presence of other canines, like they are at LEAST three times their actual size.

I wait in my car. The littler dog barks and barks and barks and barks, circling my car and Lucy is returning all the bravada. Their dog shows NO interest in getting into their car. The mom is clearly embarrassed. "He was just perfect for the last two hours but now...." I try to help her but a half hour later I give up and leave the the parking lot.

Long story short: Lucy and I drive down to Starboard, the speck of a village where I grew up. We drive up to Bucks Harbor and down to the boat launch. Wasting time. In my mind I'm getting less charitable about the fact that a dog is keeping us from our walk. On our way back to Jasper Beach I am relieved to see the mom and the kid and their little dog heading outta there in their car and that, finally, Lucy and I can go for our walk.

It's not until I get out of my car that I see that the fucking little dog has scratched up both the driver's side and the passenger sides of my car. Curses. Curses. Curses.

Lucy and I hit the beach. There are sticks to be thrown. Incoming tide in which to swim. Things to in the wind and on the beach to smell. There is lots of running. On Lucy's part. There is nice meeting up with a poker buddy and her golden lab, also walking one of the world's best beaches. A much, much, much more civilized exchange. Very quiet, actually. I observe that canines have their codes - just like us. My poker buddy and I catch up on the news of the day, mutual friends, observations about canines.

On my return to the car - where I have fresh water for Lucy, there is a couple with their chocolate lab and a kite. The same couple who got married on the beach yesterday? They appear engrossed enough. They are on the wrong side of the berm to get the wind but I don't tell them that. Instead I make a mental note to bring my kite the next time Lucy and I come to Jasper Beach.

It's Easter. We return to the house, twenty minutes away at 30 miles an hour. Perhaps the sun is warm enough to support time on the deck with recent New Yorker magazines and a drink. Lucy and I are out there for about 30 minutes in the watery late afternoon sun. On the next hill a neighbor surveys garden plots accompanied by a little child and three dogs - one of which is a Newfoundland that looks as big as a calf. Their turkeys gobble gobble gobble every minute or so. Lucy sleeps as I read about a new Director at the Metropolitan Opera: Tosca having been "a disaster". I loved their Tosca production. What does that make me? A prototypical example of the next wave of opera lover? Or something else?

Broken Heart

It's the day before the Equinox, our first real spring day. Sixty degrees. I've thrown caution to the wind and put into the garage my snow shovel and a 50-pound bag of ice melt. No matter that many here still mutter about not getting too cocky about spring because remember that blizzard we had in late March of 1956. Tomorrow, in Annapolis, boat owners will celebrate The Burning of the Socks which they do every spring equinox in order to bring work and customers into the boatyards. They actually burn their socks, which they tend to wear only in winter. They don't wear socks again until the next equinox.

I get the idea that I'm going to spend a lot of this afternoon in my hammock, slung between two dying maples. I determine to bring a book with me: Fatal Shore. I also bring my IPod. And some ice water with lime juice. Before I go out to sling my hammock I post on my Facebook page: Hammock. Book. IPod. Immediately a friend comments that she likes my status and don't forget to wear sunscreen. I throw caution to the ever-increasing breeze and lay there, in my hammock, face to the sun, no protection whatever. It's the first time the sun has felt warm since October.

When I actually get into my hammock all desire to read leaves me. The pages of Fatal Shore flutter in the wind like a flip book. The weather report for today gives sunny and a little breezy, giving way to clouds. Squinting, no clouds yet, holding my IPod above me against the glare, I make out a woodpecker in the branches directly above me. Listening. I have a feather from a wing like hers in my kitchen, in an old glass inkwell that my ex-lover gave me in 1977 when we were courting, when she presented me with a tiny bouquet of Forget-Me-Nots. That was in Alaska. The state flower. The feather is black with tiny white dots. The woodpecker darts in and out of the branches. Listening. Calling. Listening.

Not inclined to read, I scan my IPod. Playlists...music does not amuse. Podcasts: The Ascent of Money...Secrets of InDesign...Understanding Balance Sheets...Nanotechnology, The Next Big Thing. I choose This American Life, the episode about frenemies, those people close to us about whom we have a great deal of anxiety, friends with whom we hesitate to spend a lot of time because of this anxiety, friends with whom we feel competitive, like those women on New Housewives of Orange County. Part of the Frenemies broadcast is about the genesis of the phrase "I'm not here to make friends..." which, it appears, was first uttered on an early episode of The Apprentice, a reality TV show. It's been uttered on reality TV shows many times since then which is the point of reality TV. Frenemies concludes. Then I listen to a collection of pieces by Scott Carrier; one is about amnesia. Carrier interviews a hypnotherapist, asks her generate thirty minutes or maybe an hour of total amnesia in him, but she doubts that she can. Few people are really that willing, she says. He goes for it but, upon coming out of hypnosis, is disappointed to find that he can still recall what he's been doing that day, the name of the friend he brought with him whose job it would be to help him navigate when he'd forgotten everything. A psychologist, also part of this piece, suggests that we forget that which makes us uncomfortable. The fact that he's not willing to forget becomes part of Carrier's podcast. This material is not really the sort of material that I should presently be listening to. But I persist. I have this feeling.

It's been five days since I learned that my friend died, with her partner, in a boating accident on Chesapeake Bay. My friend of over 35 years whose body washed up on Westerhouse Beach five days after she left in bad weather to presumably take the boat to Colonial Beach, on the other side of the Bay and up the Potomac. Her partner's body has still not been found. This was in December. I am sitting in the sun in Maine on the day before Equinox. I learned of her death in an email sent to me by our mutual friend and my friend's long time lover, now, of course, her ex. The three of us were together constantly in college in Alaska. Robin majored in geography.

It's been five days since I learned that my friend died. In that time I've sent email to everyone I could locate who knew us in Alaska. I've posted of her death on two email lists and people I have not met, but who have a sense of my life, have emailed back to give me the strength I've asked to borrow.

In Google Earth I've found Robin's House on her peninsula at Deep Creek. In the satellite view, her boat is tied up at her dock. Although one couldn't tell from the satellite, it's a Chris Craft, a 31 footer. I've searched for, found, and closely examined nautical charts of the waters between Deep Creek, Westerhouse Beach, and Colonial Beach Marina. Especially in the area identified as The Targets immediately south and west of Tangier Island, around which they would have had to navigate to get to the marina from their origination point. The Targets are a bomb site where naval aviators out of Norfolk practice getting good at hitting things. It's also said to be a good fishing spot. Anglers bring up unexploded ordinance, however, so one must be careful. There's a circle on the charts labeled "Prohibited Area". I've even conducted Google searches on Chris Craft, hoping to find out if her boat might have come with Loran installed. But no luck. I only learned that Chris Craft makes boats a lot bigger than the one that broke up, presumably in the area of The Targets. People who look for such things in circumstances like this have found deck chairs, a table, and small pieces of the boat but nothing else. Robin was identified through an autopsy and investigation. They found a car registered to her at Colonial Marina and the police put two and two together.

It's been five days and now I know a little bit about the waters around Tangier Island. I know that some guy who fueled them up said the weather was nasty, that he warned them not to go out. I know there were conflicting reports about how many people were on the boat. I want to know the cause of death, if the examiner found water in her lungs. I want to speak with the investigator and the reporter who posted five stories that I could find. And that guy who fueled them up, him, too. I want to get in touch with her two friends - the ones she told me about the last time we talked on the phone who have bought property twenty miles from where I live and who report that they love it there, that they eat out every night they're here. It was this couple who assured my friend who emailed me that, no, I had not left Maine. That I was still to be found here. My friend, the one with the news, tells me that once she found me she tried to call. But she would reach my answering machine, hear my voice, and go to pieces. No message. And so, three days before Robin's birthday I get the email.

I, too, am in pieces. Broken up like the boat. Who knows. I don't. I'm sleep walking into and out of the hole in history that now exists in my heart.