Those Funny Pages get updated every so often.

Way back in the early eighties, my brother, Peter, and his then girlfriend, Eileen, lived in Ed’s cabin on Grok Hill in Gilsum for four years, through three winters. They’ve both moved on, but here’s Eileen recounting her first visit back in eons.

“We borrowed a motorcycle from his friend, Bob, and biked all around the Keene area that I used to know. It was just wonderful…those windy country roads covered with trees in Fall colors. One of those two days we biked into Gilsum and then into Gilsum woods.

It was just as I remembered it…..Beech trees with yellow leaves covering the roads. It was such a good feeling to be able to point the way….know the way without thinking about it. The road into Grok Hill looked a little different because of the shed and tires, etc of the guy who bought the place at the main road there…and the old truck gone in the corner of where we always parked. We did meet the guy who lives at the main road there and talk to him on the way out. He seemed like he knew of Peter and Eileen – that was nice.

The cabin looked great from the outside….clearly you all have kept it in good shape….but I hate to say it…I was really taken aback at how dirty and unchanged the inside was. The cabin just cried out for occupants…it was hard for me to see the remnants of Peter and my life still occupying the shelves…unadorned, unchanged…mostly dirty and forlorn looking. The tiny-ness of the interior didn’t really surprise me…but the rest did. I found Peter’s recorder still there, odd books and shells and pictures….I felt like I wanted to come back for a week and scrub the whole place down and breathe some life into it. But, then I felt it wasn’t possible…it needs some occupants…or it needs to be made into a tool shed and a new cabin built. I hope that doesn’t sound terrible!

The guy at the bottom of the hill told me that he heard that Ed was moving to Colorado. Is that true? You should buy Grok Hill, Michael, if that’s true. You should buy it and build that house in the woods that you dream about! You could build at the old garden, if it is too difficult to get up to that knoll with any equipment. And you should bring in a propane tank for a cook stove and water from the well – with many filters! You don’t have to make it too “normal” with electricity, etc….but you could certainly build a more livable, usable space for you and Di and Matthew in the years to come.

It was sad for me to see Peter’s platform overlooking the orchard, fallen down…going back to the earth….also the garden fence and the shower. It was mostly sad for me….it all looked bereft of life…when it held so much life…and for me still some of my most vivid memories. Though as I said, clearly you’ve kept the cabin standing! And, I couldn’t remember for sure, but it seemed like the outside looked more finished. But even the out house looked sad. I don’t know…I really felt like going back for a week by myself and cleaning it all up…but….as I already said, I think really it needs a new young hopeful couple to breathe in new life. And I know it doesn’t take long for the mice and chipmunks to move back in with it unoccupied….but somehow I wished it was changed some….me who doesn’t like change! And, probably if it had been, I would have had my feelings hurt! Ha! ha!

So…that was my experience of Gilsum… “

I ran the Agassiz with Alan Symonds for some 15 years.  In June of this year, on the steps of the Agassiz, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 59, and on Monday the 13th (which should sound more ominous than Friday the 13th, if you think about it … ), Harvard held a memorial for Alan at the Agassiz Theatre.  400 people crowded into the 350-person house, with over 100 more watching on closed-circuit in the neighboring dance center.  For a bit on who Alan was, this “in-house” obit’s good; and this one is also pretty thorough (and took a full-page column…!).

I was asked to speak, along with Alan’s brother (who narrated a fabulous slideshow of Alan’s youth) and his old friend Joe Mobilia (who met Alan in highschool and was working on the Hasty Pudding renovation with him when he died).  Alan’s role at Harvard was borderline ineffable and immeasurable, and the legacy-worthiness of what I’d written (most of it just after he died, with no memorial in mind) kept me up at night.  And as I said to Michael a day or so before, I didn’t know if I was more terrified of losing it and being unable to speak, or going into a zone without getting emotional at all…

I got pretty choked up but nevertheless essentially sailed through and was told by many I done mighty good.  I sort of don’t remember my bit, really, standing in the spotlight only dimly able to sense the assembled multitude with whom I was attempting to project contact, doing what had been imagined for weeks, but with details and sensations that had somehow never been even vaguely imagined.  Pretty much an out-of-body experience.

The rest was better than good, tears mixing easily with gales of laughter, lots of talent pouring out of true devotion, the energy given back manyfold by a rapt audience of truest friends spanning over half a century.  So many familiar (and half-familiar) faces!  Lots of talk and hugs and catching up at the reception afterwards with people not seen for decades.  Hard to say something about an unexpected death could be perfect, but this was.

For those with time on their hands, here’s my bit (minus the ad-libs, alas).  Flights of angels Alan.  You da bomb!

Alan Intro

Alan Part II

Mike,

I was jogging steadily on the treadmill at the gym where Dom and I play racquetball, when Dom tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m going into the court to warm up”. Our court time wasn’t for 5 minutes, but Dom likes to push the
envelope. I said, “OK, I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

When I came into the court, Dom was stuffing his bad right hand into a glove. Watching him curiously, I stuffed a big long sponge under my sweat shirt as protection for my clobbered left shoulder, I asked Dom if the glove helped him hold onto the racquet. “Yeah, a little bit. Without it, the racquet almost blows out of my hand on a swing.” He wiggled his damaged pinkie finger, showing its limited range of motion.

We did the usual bounce-to-the-line for serve, and I won. Dom returned my serves to his back hand a little weakly, and I scored a few points, but I lost the serve when I tested his forehand. From then on, throughout the match, I returned to his backhand whenever possible and won that game handily, 15-8.

Before making his serve for the next game, Dom took the racquet with his left hand, and shook out his right. I couldn’t help noticing a grimace. Dom’s game fell apart in the first few minutes. I was up 9-0 and wondering what had happened to my old partner. So I relaxed a bit (always a mistake). Dom surged back and tied the game up 10-10. That got my attention, and I started exploiting his weakened backhand at the left rear corner. At the end of that game (15-10), Dom asked for a rest. Sitting outside next to the drinking fountains, Dom described the history of his hand in great detail.

After the rest, we hit the court again. Except for the first 3 points in one game, Dom never came close in the final three. There were a few of his trademark double-z-sidewall-frontwall-graze shots, but I had learned to play mid-court and returned most of them, much to his chagrin. Dom’s accuracy was still good, but the zip had been lost from his drives. Finals: 15-8, 15-3, 15-6.

At one point in the last game, Dom reached high overhead near the back wall, and missed the ball. Afterwards he said, “I just remembered how I jammed that finger and broke it. I was reaching back over my head next to the rear wall, just like that, and smashed my hand hard.” Apparently he had repressed the memory of the incident until that moment.

As we walked out after our sweaty hour, Dom showed how red that barely healed pinkie was. I said to him, “I sure hope you haven’t damaged it more.” Dom insouciantly responded,”No worries. It’ll get better. Let’s play again next week. We’ve got to get in as many games as we can before you leave!”

–rakkity

Pesky sent me this website

Diane and I’d just finished our grilled salmon with new potatoes and flash-nuked green beans and carrots. A dinner I made. I loaded the dishwasher as she packed leftovers for the next day’s lunch and pretty much out of nowhere I pipe up:

“I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“We went to bed early last night. You were out like a light.”

“Fast and dark, but I woke up twice. As usual.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“You never do. You’ve been sleeping like the recently executed. I get up and shower or I go downstairs and IM with Matthew. He’s always up until two or three.”

“What wakes you up?”

“I have free floating anxiety. I learned about it at IU in Psych 101 and now, after all these years, I have it. Finally. I think it’s this dead mother thing. Three days before the monthly anniversary of her death my gut knots and my brain goes kaflooey. I don’t settle back down until the day after.”

“You need a year to go by. A year helps.”

“It helped you, didn’t it.”

“It helped me and it helped Susan with Jimmy.”

“You mean a year from now I’ll be picking apples?”

“No, but you will be sleeping.”

“It makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.”

“Not the year thing. The anniversary thing. With me I mean. My family never celebrated anything but Christmas and the kid’s birthdays. I don’t know when my parents were born, I don’t know Brian or Joan’s birthdays. I still think Matt was born in ‘86 on the 16th of July. I only know yours because of the built-in mnemonic. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentines…those days didn’t exist until I married into your family. “

“And you are all the better for it.”

“Maybe, but I think my mother’s haunting me.”

“Michael, it’s called grief.”

“No, she’s telling me she really did want a birthday present.”

Matthew’s Comics

Jewel

Zappa & Vai

My orchid is six or seven years old and always blooms right before Thanksgiving. This year, in a much larger pot and with our current rain forest environment, it bloomed two weeks early.

As we pulled the canoe back to the truck, someone turned on the wind switch. It was like a wind monster had come suddenly striding across the ridgelines and gotten into a beef with the pond. Roaring, swirling, portentous winds made our timing impeccable — it sounded like it meant lengthy, nasty business. Glad to be on solid ground and not out on the water, we tied down the canoe and headed back for camp. Where the wind monster’s even more badass father was hard at work giving Misery its namesake mojo.

The previous night’s “wind” had reversed course 180 degrees and was now coming in across the waters unimpeded. Our crisply tethered tarp snapped and popped in the gale-force wind tunnel of our site like a panicked goat staked in the path of a Tyrannosaurus, several of its tension poles missing. Our oh-so-tall tent had been pushed into the bushes of the tiny clearing into which it had barely fit (sufficient level ground being a notable criterion for deploying such an abode). But surprisingly, nothing had been sent down the driveway and across the road by the single-minded howl. After trying in vain to resecure the tarp, we yielded to sanity and took it down in the horizontal pellet-gun salvo of intermittent rain. Mark took to the passenger seat to listen to weather reports to see if this was a passing fancy or a long day’s night, while Mike and I spent a bracing hour or so cleaning up and securing things as if we were ceding the territory — though we had no place to which to retreat nor lasting desire to do so. In the end, the sheer practicality offered by The Road gave us our only sensible option. Had we in fact achieved Enchanted’s shores, we’d’ve had no choice but to improvise, though I’m glad not to have found out how I’d have served dinner that night. As it was, we threw what we could into the truck, placed goodly rocks atop our coolers, staked down our mainsail of a tent (including a rope across the top secured to massive trees), and headed off down Capitol.

Yes … Though we blush to disclose this detail, roads that size have names – the current “landowners” have put up perfectly familiar suburban road signs with reflective white letters on green rectangles sticking up out of the bushes — as incongruous a sight as I can remember. Capitol. At the end of which is pavement. Down which can be found a loose cluster of 7 or 8 buildings meriting the name West Forks on a map. Food and shelter.

And so three dirty, soaked and bedraggled – and slightly sheepish – erstwhile campers ascended the timber stairs of The Emptiest Restaurant We’ve Ever Eaten In and made the acquaintance of Blonde #1, our waitress. We had our choice of booths and slid into one with a good view of the bar and the massive chainsaw art – actually pretty impressive – and gazed about the true log-cabin architecture at more knotty pine than seemed plausible. Her Blonde Coolness brought menus, recited the draft list, and we tried to keep the dry jeans we all clutched out of sight, lest the commonality be misconstrued somehow. One by one we surreptitiously made use of the facilities to change and tidy up a bit. A second blonde waitress somehow also kept herself busy, though we three hardly taxed Blonde # 1, and # 3 could be spied behind the bar, making some sort of list and trading out Dave Matthews for what turned out to be Sol Jibe. After awhile one of them noticed the chill (anything short of Misery’s antithesis of a blowdryer was heaven to us), and they turned on the heat. Michael would’ve been last to change, but the warm air blowing under the table eventually dried out his soggy pant legs, and he was able to save his lone change of clean clothing for the ride back to Massachusetts several days later. We made our peace with the weirdness and ordered.

The Guinness was great, Mike’s pulled pork sandwich unspeakable, other stuff unremarkable but good, and most all got gratefully eaten — the dessert was sinfully worthwhile. We lingered, then further procrastinated by playing a little pool in the third floor “lounge” — there was more losing than winning going on, though some fabulous shots were sunk. Yet a fourth blonde showed up, a twenty-something we’d noticed at the gas station while filling up just before arriving here, possibly a daughter of one of The Three Blondes, as she loitered about with a relative’s familiarity, heedless of our shabby selves. Though it was getting late, two other tablefulls had finally arrived. Out on the Kennebeck some moonlight could be spied. Ultimately we shuffled off into the now-gentler night and drove the dark roads (with one extinguishing of the headlights in a nod to Dan Akroyd and Albert Brooks in the opening scenes of “The Twilight Zone” feature film) back to camp.

Where all was well. We stayed up a little, made a half-hearted fire, and with the wind monsters somewhat settled (but still huffing nearby) and the rain elsewhere, Mike went back to his vigil, Mark and I to our ripstop townhouse, all hoping the optimistic weather report – which was actually for elsewhere – boded well for our corner of the north woods. Many times I coasted awake to the sound of a resurgence of winds and thought of Mike, out in the open. His night was pretty sleepless, he tells us, the buffeting more the cause than the cold. Though that, too.

Turns out Bingham, south of us, had tornados. Much of the region endured the same sudden severity, which was nowhere forecast before we left. We spoke around the fire of what we’d’ve done had we had to do something, had we been across a pond without the option of The Road, but we’d made our peace with taking the easy way out, a notable change in individual characters and group dynamics. No regrets dogged our heels as we set off the next morning up the talus slopes below the ridge that overhangs Misery, out of the lingering winds and into embracing sun in the shelter of the ridge’s lee, a new quest calling us out of another late-breakfast-become-lunch and off to find whatever it is we come out there to find. Change. Nature. Vistas to photograph, and before which to sip good wine. A bit of breathlessness. A new appreciation granted by comfort with real contrast.

Adam

Blonde # 1 stood to one side, aloof as ever, as Blonde # 3 gave a fan’s impassioned intro to Sol Jibe, whose Arabic-tinged and clarinet-embellished piece called “Rhumba” we’d just enjoyed. Which sounded to me like a riff on Ferron’s “Shadows on a Dime”, hence the query to # 1, passed on to # 3 – the bartendress – who handled all CD’s. Except that neither blonde knew Ferron, and nor, apparently, did Sol Jibe. But anyway … The fresh rapport with # 3 finally helped warm # 1 to us somewhat – how could she not come around?  We were the only ones in the place – and she even made an effort to cajole us into dessert. Twist our arm.

But wait. Multiple blondes? Ordering food? Oh yeah …

Rewind.

After we blew Day One trying (and failing) to find access to this-year’s destination of the persuasively-named Enchanted Pond – access convenient enough for our twenty-Sherpa truckload, that is – we headed back up the many miles of gravel to an arguable counterpart, Misery Pond, chosen both for its end-of-a-long-day ease of access, and the name. But there’s easy, and then there’s easy. Misery lies only a little past the first bend in about 10 miles of vertically-rolling but otherwise arrow-straight, two-opposing-logging-trucks-and one-howling-with-fright-pickup-truck-between-them-wide gravel road. The “driveway” is only about 20’ long. That’s it, and you’re there. We were so aghast at its proximity to this north Maine superhighway (and lack of a picnic bench) that we investigated access to a site purportedly somewhere out across Cold Stream Pond a few short miles away, but we couldn’t be sure we knew where it was out there once we made Cold Stream’s shores, and dusk had made its intentions clear, so we returned to Misery, at least for the night — rights to the option to relocate on the morrow retained.

A fine first night, with a fine first dinner, finally out in the woods and out of the truck. Okay, some cons — without Q’s magic, all our firewood seemed to have been treated with some sort of noxious retardant, smoking abundantly without sustaining flame; and the makeshift table I cobbled out of the bones of someone’s campchairs and lids to Mike’s Rubbermaid tubs lashed to a tree for support offered all of 5 square feet of highly compromised semi-horizontal surface that was nowhere convenient to the fire pit. But we’re not whiners. Not sitting in our camp chairs, Dark-n-Stormies in our mitts, and many go-with-its heaped onto steaming bowls of Schreib’s most excellent vegetarian chili. Mike had his nest feathered out on the point overlooking the lovely waters of Misery Pond, and Schreib and I looked forward to a night on our princess-and-the-pea rigs inside our new tent, which afforded the novel experience of standing up full height in its capacious and invigoratingly-colored interior. Life was good. We lingered long, nursing our uncooperative “fire” and chatting.

The next day began with the ubiquitous gloomy grey weather we know all too well, and we rigged a handsome tarp to keep the anticipated rain off our fire pit and firewood. After a leisurely breakfast eaten quite late – we’d stayed up past 11:30 and had slept in well beyond our abilities at home – we pondered our options. The morning’s logging trucks had rumbled by what inside the tent sounded like mere inches from our heads, and the lack of a picnic table was additionally annoying. Even if just for the doing of something, we decided to go investigate Cold Stream Pond in more detail, see if we wanted to relocate. We retied the canoe onto the roof rack (Mike and Mark had used it to gather firewood on the shores), gathered a few supplies (most of which were still in the bed of the truck) and some snacks (the first lunch already blown off), and set out. As it started to rain.

By the time we got to that other shore, sprinkles had become steady drizzle, but returning to sit around under the tarp was hardly appealing, so we skipped a few stones, put on our raingear, clambered into the canoe, and set off across the pond. We were headed into the wind, which was swirly and pushed us about some, but no real whitecaps were forming, so crossing was just a matter of effort. Despite the diminished visibility we could see across the extent of the water, and behind us the hulls of boats parked at the put-in made a clearly discernible target for the return trip. Paddling, even in the rain, was comforting familiarity, the activity and new places to explore welcome. We had a site to scout, maybe islands to explore.

But each likely landmark proved just another tree or rock, not the beachhead of a site, each possible passage a blind cove, pushing us back out to round what were all peninsulas, never islands. The site should’ve been roughly midway, from our memory of the map (which we’d left back at camp given the rain), but we got to the far end of Cold Stream with no hint of a site. Good thing we hadn’t sought out this purported option the night before …

And what an end it was. Dead snags on the shores bespoke a sort of wasteland, and though the vistas might have been compelling on a blue-sky day, the grey skies came down to the surrounding shores and seemed to confine this pond to miserable solitude. Even were there a viable site somewhere around here, we weren’t relocating. So we drifted a bit in the rain with the winds at our backs, and then headed back along the shores just to see if we’d missed anything.

All the way back into the first cove, well past where the site was likely to be, we spied some orange ribbon blazes and tied off. Just inside the woods in deep moss was a piece of rebar sticking just out of the ground with a bright orange plastic cap such as are used at jobsites to prevent impalements. What could possibly be marked here by ribbons and an iron stake driven into the ground … ? Mike noticed something even odder – a clear line of sight through several hundred yards of woods. Feeling a bit like Hansel and Gretel following breadcrumbs laid by another whose intentions were unknown, we set off.

Into a clearcut. Not exactly the payoff or deep mystery for which we’d hoped. As it turned out, from later examinations of our map, the line-of-sight likely marked a township division, kept clear by surveyors. The undisturbed moss made it unlikely any loggers used this passage for access to the pond. Nothing before us compelled us to forward progress, so we tossed candied-ginger shortbread cookies to each others’ gaping mouths, sipped at a flask of Scotch, generally lollygagged awhile, and headed back, having even forgotten to scavenge firewood, our trip essentially merely time killed. No treasures or discoveries, barely any exercise. Just a protracted way to get wet.

Turns out the adventure was back at camp all along – we just needed to get away while it put on its party dress.