The murmuring pines and hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad prophetic,
Stand like Harper's hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."
-- Henry W. Longfellow
I was finally content where I was, but I had already pledged to move on. I accepted the Acadia job offer, the temporary ranger position, lined up grad school for the fall, and received notice of my first poetry publication all in the same week.
I hope to never have a week so busy ever again. My longest winter was over, the grief blasted away with explosions of activity.
I bid goodbye to the high-elevation red spruce ecosystem I had come to love so. I was off to the northern seashore, and I did not expect to see such a forest until I returned. I knew nothing about Maine, only that it was far away and romantic.
I started reading "Evangeline of Acadie." I had stumbled upon a slim, hardback copy in McKay's while visiting my cousin Isabelle in Tennessee: a cream-colored volume with a green spine and gold lettering. I had never heard of it, but here was an epic poem about a girl in the land I was about to visit. On the first page was a description of "the forest primeval." I was transported back to long nights on Cabin Mountain, bone weary from salamander surveys, but full of the heavy peace that hangs from the gnarled branches like a benediction. I lay on a thick mattress of moss of deepest green, smelling the decay of damp logs, looking up at spruce-curtained stars in their cloak of silence. Would I find such a place in Maine, too?
I would.
Longfellow knew his stuff. The spruce forest I recognized in his poetry greeted me with open arms as I turned onto Schoodic Loop Drive and cruised along the coast. The sprawling spruce crept all the way up to the bare rocks of the shore-- I had never seen such a thing. I arrived at sunset to a world of rocky cliffs and crashing waves bathed in slanting golden light. I saw a lighthouse on a tiny island, a rainbow of hundreds of little bobbing buoys I would later learn marked lobster traps, massive birds of prey swooping overhead, but not another soul for miles. I felt alone in this new forest primeval, but it was a good solitude. I felt like an explorer.
"How lucky I am."
The place I was to work was an old navy base, and my housing was old navy family housing. I would share a four-bedroom, one-bathroom rowhouse with three other girls. My own! Room! I could have had my own toilet and sink, too-- I was first to move in and could have chosen the master suite-- but I opted for the room with the most sunlight for my plants. We had a mossy backyard with trees and a picnic table, and the sea was barely a stone's throw away. I would walk down to it every night of my term, knowing I would probably never live anywhere oceanfront again.
How special to have the ocean so near after living in a land-locked state.
After cleaning, unpacking, and grocery shopping, I spent my first day exploring. I packed a lunch and a map and set off on foot from my little house. I watched the waves on Schoodic Point. I clambered over rocks at Blueberry Hill. I climbed to Schoodic Head. I found the only shady spot on the bald point and ate an apple while I finished Evangeline of Acadie.
I would learn that week that I had beaten more than 150 applicants for this position.
How lucky I was.
