Mud Season

It's mud season, here in Maine. This is when the intensity of the winter continues to haunt us. The snow takes its time to melt, and it leaves wet, sludgy pools in its wake. The skies are gray and blah . . . blah, blah, blah. 

My first mud season in Maine was also the first of my depressive episodes. Serious stuff. Days of seething irritation and just-below-the-surface rage--at myself, at everyone and everything around me. I had no clue what was happening. I just thought this place was HORRIBLE. I drove to school (where I taught children with serious behavior disorders), muttering about everything being awful. I dragged myself through the day, and then drove home muttering about everything being awful. I went to my bedroom, turned on a TV, and then spent the rest of the evening lying on my bed with glazed eyes and not really seeing or hearing what was on the TV. I ignored the concerned looks and questions from my roommate (and often got pissed that she even bothered to talk to me, because . . . why? Why would anyone want to talk to me?). I wondered how I got to this place, literally and figuratively. And, I tried to stay as numb as possible, because when I let myself feel, it felt dismal. See the color of that mud in that picture to the right? That was my brain, that was my mood. Allie Bosh's blog Hyberbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression is a brilliant animated story of this booger of a disorder. I find some form of expression, whether written or visual or musical or physical, is the best way to slog through depression. But, I'm a fortunate one because using creative expression, some therapy, and a little bit of medical help, I can break through the gray. Not everyone is so lucky.

Mud Season

This is the time when winter's layers
begin to melt, slowly bringing to view
what's underneath, the detritus 
from these past months, an icy cement
of old snow, trash, decayed leaves and grass, and mud 
in it's most troublesome form.

This mud is dark and thick and 
it's everwhere,
everywhere I step, everywhere I look. It's on
my shoes and my dogs' paws. It tracks
into the floors of my house,
where I mop and mop and can never
get rid of it, this mix of the external 
and the internal. In future months
it will nourish the vegetables that sustain
us, it will support the flowers that bloom the new 
season, and the grass that will carpet 
on top of it, it will dry under a crisp sun, and become
but dust, easily swept away. 

But that is months from now. Today, tomorrow,
the weeks ahead, it will only worsen, 
as these things tend to do.
I will see this landscape progressively darken
with winter's leaving, the muddy places revealing 
more of themselves, making it impossible 
to ignore them, forcing me to see

that sometimes what gives us life
has it's ugliness, at least for a bit,
until time and effort and the illuminating light
and heat of a sun can render those remnants
just a light dust, one easily swept away. 
 

To the Winter Coast

If you live in Maine, your sanity depends on getting outdoors--especially in winter. They have a thing here called "woods crazy." It's real and it happened to me during my first winter in northern Maine.

 Months spent in the dark, confined to the room with the woodstove, with snow piled up like a fortress wall preventing you from seeing beyond the boundaries of your yard, lend to an unhealthy mind.  It took me a long time to figure out that my quality of life depended upon learning to tolerate (and dress for!) the cold, and to get outside. 

Last weekend we skied by the sea, at the Ragged Mountain, Camden Snow Bowl. 

Now, that is a view. The only place you can ski and see the sea on the Eastern Seaboard. Camden-Rockport, ME

This Sunday, we decided to check out the record-breaking snowfall on the coast. My goal was to get to Lubec and Eastport, because that's where the biggest snowfalls have happened. However, between the time-change and sleeping in until 10 a.m., I blew that dream. It is a 3 1/2 hr. trip one-way to Lubec and Eastport. Our next best option was to head to Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park. The park is closed in the winter, but if you are lucky, someone has plowed some of the Park Loop Road, and we were lucky! Take a peek at this beautiful place.

We smelled the sea, stomped through snow, and had ourselves a day. 

The snow frosting the rocks, briny breeze, the frozen Taunton Bay, and the type of good-tired that makes two Old English Sheepdog brothers fall asleep all tangled over each other in the backseat-kind of day.

 I recommend it. Go out, smell the air, walk the earth, let your cheeks get icy cold and ruddy.

Go!

Winter is the Beginning

We start in winter. Not the typical place to begin, but it is apt. This winter is particularly remarkable, as we have received a massive load of snow--70+ inches in only four weeks. And, it's FREEZING. Lowest average temps for February on record, a whopping 4.5 degrees F. I wasn't kidding when I said in my "About" section that Maine challenges me. 

Yet, winter is the time when things rest and it's a great time to reflect on where we are and where we hope to go. Winter's quiet, (and its impassable roads!), allow you to be present. To stop moving. To wonder. You get the chance to both feel and see your breath! You get the chance to store energy and get ready for the spring to come. 

My first year in Maine, I was living up north, in central Aroostook County, teaching in a small, rural school in Mars Hill. Mars Hill is known as the first place in the U.S. that gets the rays of the rising sun. Look it up on a map. It's the great north woods, on the US/Canadian border. That January in 1984, we had 18 days of -30 degrees F and below (that's NOT including windchill). I had to buy an engine heater for my car and plug it in each morning to warm the engine so it would start. I grew up in Nebraska and thought I knew how to handle a cold winter. Boy, was I ignorant. On March 16th that year in "the County", we received 36" of snow in less then 24 hours and they didn't even cancel school!!!!!!! That winter killed my love of snow and cold. I developed a pervasive case of Seasonal Affective Disorder--just ask my roommates from that year and they will confirm this.  

It took years of hating, and then working to once again love, winter. But I did it. I learned to get out and play in it. I bought a sled and used it like I was a 10 year-old. I bought some snowshoes and began to explore the University of Maine woods' trails in winter. The hush of a snow-covered forest is soothing, and it soothed me. It also gave me confidence. If I can learn to enjoy and make the most of something I once loathed, I can change how I feel about other things as well. 

One of those things is cooking. I, as of only a few years ago, was a non-cook. I was actually a disaster in the kitchen, hence the page of this blog that will house my entries about cooking, "Maineiac Kitchen." My husband used to say, "I never in my life saw anyone who dirtied so many dishes to make one recipe." That's me. However, something changed for me over the past year. I began to read some food blogs and tried my hand at the easiest ones, mostly those containing sugar. Gradually, I'm improving and oddly, for me, I'm enjoying it. It's actually becoming relaxing. There has always been some shame for me that I couldn't nurture family and friends with food. Panic would set in at the idea of having people over. I am embarrassed to admit that I worried when we got invited to someone's house for dinner that I would then be obligated to return the favor. (Yes, I am that neurotic.) I noticed that many food blogs don't speak to novice cooks. They use terms, ingredients, and cooking utensils that we beginners can't begin to understand or utilize. I hope to fill that niche, a bit. I will do my best to speak to those of us who have limited culinary knowledge. There's a lot of information out there for experienced cooks, but not so much for those of us just discovering the satisfaction of cooking for others and ourselves. I thought I would start with simple recipes, however I found that I am drawn to things with various elements. If I'm going to do something that isn't easy, I want to enjoy the end result when it actually turns out, and when it doesn't, I have a great lesson in acceptance and a chance to remind myself that, "while it didn't work, you took a shot and that's what matters." Plus, the old adage about learning more from mistakes than successes is true.

Additionally, I am a therapist and will use this site to post information, stories, and strategies for resolving stress and exploring how focusing mindfulness, including being mindful of thoughts and beliefs, can foster a sense of well-being. Those entries will be stored in the "Maineiac Mind" page. 

I sit here typing, with my dog, Toby's, head on my foot. The woodstove is crackling. The sky outside the window is almost as white as the snow. The sun is fighting to break through. It's a start.

For this moment, this one section of time, all is well. That, in itself, is everything.

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Post Storm, January 2015, Stillwater River, Old Town, ME