Maine Metaphor: Experience in the Western Mountains. S. Dorman

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СКАЧАТЬ and white, running between two ponds; stretching from one green wood to the next: a small segment of a very long line linking the village with southern and northwestern Maine. There are other white threads—pond roads and a beach—twining through the green and blue tapestry. At times it seems that tiny traffic on the white causeway is never-ending, a string of minute vehicles—tiny cars, trucks, buses, campers. The last are arriving for the fast-approaching summer season.

      Some of the nearby oaks sticking up from the ledge below are clothed in last year’s leaves, rattling and clacking on stiff gray limbs. Here are no shining taut small leaves, no new growth surging up those twigs to push off the old and the dry, the used. The branch might as well be in some desert—its life is so dried out. It could be in a borderland of the Sahara. Some place where wind lifts sand clean into the atmosphere, sending spacious mountains of red dust far out to sea.

      Aside from the clacking of leaves, I hear an intermittent muted noise of distant traffic and the constant hum of the wood mill in the village. I hear the birds, sweet tweet, and choo-choo-choo-chee. Wind whistles faintly past my ears. Once in awhile I hear the tinkle of the dog’s license as he rolls over behind me.

      The tapestry changes as clouds move slowly over the mountains, the old rounded mounds of once-tortured earth. Ghosts of shade move across the spread flanks, darkening various contours in the weaving. Hawks stitch their flying threads in and out. A lesson in flight occurs above the tree-covered slope below this ledge on which I perch. The big hawk and the little soar and flap, roll out and pull up. In both lessons and flight they play, diving to meet in the air then career apart. For me they animate the tapestry perhaps more than the traveling caravan down on the highway.

      The cloud moves above, blocking heat. I cool beneath it. It makes the air more like itself of the past several days when rains fell, sweetly. A week ago, in the midst of rain, I planned this trek, knew what weather I was looking for. Today, near the end of May, it’s here. So here I am. This is the view from Swans Ledge. From this height, I can almost see the Sahara.

      I have no garden to work. Our soil is acidic from layers of pine needles. The water of the landlord’s aquifer and dug well will not tolerate fertilization. Anything more than half a cubic yard of fresh manure per one thousand square feet would contaminate our groundwater. It would take a field full to urge this ground to grow.

      Today, instead of working a garden, I went “grocery shopping.” At the armory in Rumford. I picked up government-issue food. Once or twice a year we get a flier in the mail that entitles us to a GI handout of surplus. We became eligible by receiving fuel assistance under income guidelines. When the jobs were there we did not use the privilege, but, now that jobs are hard to come by, we go get the food. Gratefully.

      This time it was peanut butter, canned green beans, canned steamed navy beans, canned pork, flower, honey, raisins, and five pounds of real butter. On the way home from Rumford I saw snow thick on White Gold.

      The greening trees below are no longer dormant. But, up here on the ledge, I note the—dead?—branch on an otherwise verdant tree. Clack clack.

      Lately I’ve been noticing that the fair greening opens and edges its way up the flanks of the old hills. These rounded heights of earth/rock have been gray-brown-and-white for months and months. Now they come slowly viridescent from side to summits. And below them spread the town waters, the white roadways, half-hidden houses, the yet sleeping and matted shallows of the north pond. But what else is out there? Things that can’t be seen?

      I don’t see the invisible submicroscopic food-makers. One such comprises only 0.03% of the atmosphere: so little, yet so mighty in food. But even that scant content should stay beneficially small. The invisible something to which I refer is CO2, and it is on the increase in our atmosphere. At first glance more would seem better. An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would make for increased foliage and larger leaves. Trees would actually add girth. Foods—rice, potatoes, wheat, corn—would increase in photosynthetic activity; but the benefit would be to the carbohydrate, not the protein, content. Bigger would not be better for muscle tissue and body-building. It would not help us handle rototillers or the spade. Even insects would have to eat more to obtain protein. And this would be the effect of increased carbon on plants . . . Where plants would still grow.

      The CO2 increase will heat up the planet by maybe 2°. Not much, but an increase of only 2°C will cause a dramatic decrease in worldwide crop yields. The dust bowl will return to the US permanently but this would be offset—worldwide—by a benefit to Russia, where yields will increase by 50%. Nebraska, in effect, would move to Saskatchewan. Currently marginal, arid places like those of the so-called developing world—Africa, India and Brazil—will suffer most. For Maine, projections include a one or 2°C increase in the mean temperature. There may also be an increase in rainfall, making us more climactically (if not so geologically) suited to the raising of crops. Maybe summer, and not just July, is coming to Maine after all.

      There is more rich invisibility out there in the spread tapestry. Arcing above me, and spreading below, photons from the sun are just arriving off their minutes long journey from that monstrous flaming ball of gas—source of our physical life. The photons left the sun while I was working on the paragraph about food makers, but now they are interacting with pigment molecules wherever they strike: in my eyes (making images), in my skin (mutating cells), and in the chloroplasts of all those leaves emerging below me. Light, captured by the chloroplasts, will reduce the carbon to sugars. From inorganic CO2, these bright plants will produce the organic compounds of carbohydrates.

      Away, out upon the remote surface of the north pond, I see the great and dead-looking mats of vegetation left over from last year. Like the nearby oak limb with its clacking leaves, they need this pump of life, this carefully balanced and mighty carbon cycle operating in respiration and combustion. They need it to revive from winter’s dormancy.

      I took the GI goods out of their box and looked them over. The butter went to the refrigerator, the flour and canned goods to shelves. Disappointed when I first saw these foods at the armory. I dunno . . . expected whole pork roasts, fresh green beans, dried beans that I could bake. Had thought, from reading that flyer, that the food would be fresh and fill bags. Six cans, that’s all. The butter, though, that was something. And honey—it was processed by bees. Two boxes of raisins, too. The flour was bleached however. Picky picky.

      I was hungry after my hike to Swans Ledge. So I opened two cans I could mix together: the vegetarian navy beans and twenty ounces of canned “pork with natural juices.” “Carne de cerdo en jugo natural.” With its lid off, the pork looked like an island in a sea of gooey fat. I got a spoon and, gingerly scraping, scooped out the fat. I’ll mix it with the dog’s food later. Well! The fat wasn’t much after all. The meat almost filled the can. Just a little gelatinous pork juice here. Dumped the beans and pork into a pot. Plopped that on the burner. Supper, anyway, was easy.

      The pork-and-beans mixture stewed up, along with some dried onions and ketchup—added for flavor. Ladled some into a bowl and went upstairs to watch television. Allen and J.D. were out. So I plopped on the bed, blew on the soupy mixture, tasted it. Mmmmm. Maybe another bowl? Back down the stairs.

      Allen came in. I was hyped. Got out the big bowl, the GI flour, raisins and honey; some oil and baking powder from the cupboard. Cupcake tins. I began making muffins. They were in the oven: 24 muffins, packed with GI raisins. I went upstairs to watch the news with Allen while they baked. Aroma began filling the house. I went down and put on the kettle. As the water boiled the muffins browned.

      I took tea and freshly buttered hot raisin muffins upstairs. Allen, sitting in the chair, wasn’t interested in muffins or GI pork-and-beans. Maybe later? I sat back on the bed and cut into my muffin with a fork. Steam rose. The butter, yellow and melting, soaked into the soft cakey raisiny muffin.

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