The pull of summer, a dream house, looking outward

Plus 4 excellent links

I didn’t expect to start this post with a revelation of my deepest desires. But as we used to say at school—well, okay, skip that. Let’s just say it was an expression of fortitude in the face of belittlement. A way to stir up an extra measure of needed strength. I need it now.

The problem is simple. My favorite house on earth is for sale for $1.4 million dollars. I don’t have the money to buy it.

I have loved this house for decades. It’s in my favorite town in Maine, and belonged to one of my favorite people, the kind of Boston Brahim brought up to always be aware of the feelings of others, to use the word “I” rarely, to be curious about all varieties of life, animal, human, floral. She was a textile artist who adorned her rooms with her work in lieu of ever modernizing them. The appliances are antiques, but the vista is glory-filled.

I am one for whom losing a house is as painful as losing a person or an animal friend. The houses I loved and no longer can enter haunt me. Sometimes the pain is unspeakable. The child in me can’t believe that a place that once held my soul is forever out of my reach.

My remedy has been to write about places I love. I have a novel coming out on July 5 called Fellowship Point, most of which takes place in Maine. I have been going to Maine all may life and have experienced it in every season. My love for that landscape runs cool and fresh in the aquifer of my spirit. For the novel I invented a peninsula that is home to many species of birds including gold eagles. There is an area that was a summer camp for indigenous peoples, perhaps as far back as the Red Paint people. In the 1870s a Philadelphia Quaker man was inspired by Thoreau’s claim that Maine was the only wild place left in the East to travel there on horseback and explore the coast on his way to the house of friends. He happened to turn down an empty peninsula and spent an afternoon watching birds and looking up at the sky from among the wild meadow and he had the feeling that this was where he belonged on earth. He bought the land with a group of friends and created an association to share ownership. The story begins 130 years later when the association members have dwindled to three and the future of the land is threatened by developers.

I imagined the place by writing about it and eventually know enough to draw a map, which was made legible by Jeffrey C. Ward for the book. It was a great pleasure to sit down with a pad of paper and a pen and write my way into that landscape, to follow my characters along the desire line that runs through the meadow between their houses and on their rocks over the rocks around the tip of the point. The place became more and more clear to me, and gave me to finally understand what my students who write sci fi and fantasy mean when they talk about world building. A world came to me and I was at peace in it. Fellowship Point passed through me and left its mark. It’s no longer mine; it’s headed out to the world. But I know that I can trust that other places will come to me that will be sanctuaries too.

To whoever buys my favorite house: understand what you have in it. I’ll be over here mourning for a while.

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I am posting a few links to a few favorite listens and an inspiring video. None of them are brief. Set aside about 45 minutes to an hour for each one. You will spend that time in the company of remarkable people who have been humbled and inspired by nature. Heading into summer it is time to remember how much wisdom there is in looking outward. Listen to music made with nightingales. Travel under the surface of the earth. Consider the space that we call solitude. Go for a swim in a cold river.

Find your own beloved places of summer ‘22.

https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/the-nightingales-song/

https://onbeing.org/programs/robert-macfarlane-the-worlds-beneath-our-feet/

https://onbeing.org/programs/stephen-batchelor-finding-ease-in-aloneness/