Food Supply,” Robert E. Rhoades writing in National Geographic traces the fragility of today’s food supply to genetic uniformity. He also traces the salvation of food by the use of “land races.” These are the old varieties, now dying out, which were once used throughout the world to produce myriad kinds of corn, fruits, grains, coffees, and other vegetables. In other words, the basis of everything we eat. Today’s agriculture is monoculture. Industrialized farms grow a single type of corn, grain or vegetable; each genetically tinkered to improve its yield. When a blight occurs the loss is devastating. Yet the great and various propagation of food known in the past would arm today’s farmer against such loss. Here, in furnishing this orchard with carefully preserved land races, Paul uses the proven ways of the past against our presently limited and industrialized food culture.
On what was once the old hilltop county road, treading down grasses, struck by birdsong, we pass the Red Astracan to enter woods, in search of Wellington Byrd’s foundation. We follow Paul’s lead, for the road—overgrown on either side—is rutted with the treads of his tractor so footing is awkward. The dark of foliage overhangs and shadows us. We are sometimes forced off into the budding bushes by water in standing puddles. Again we see the old stone walls and realize that this overgrown little-used way was once a buckboard thoroughfare. I’ve named this essay “The Overgrown Way” for this metaphorical quality.
Just off-path we step in among bushes above the deep-sunk cellar hole. The deepest and squarest I’ve ever seen—massive green foundation stones are the largest I’ve found in any such cellar hole. Paul points out the large stump of birch he cut inside this hole. Good, healthy, white wood. Rings tell that it was 100 years old at cutting. The homestead was built, indwelt, decayed and dispersed in the hundred years prior to that: a product of Wellington’s labor on land granted him after the War of Independence. (Another term and event rich in metaphor.) This great tree made its home and nurture in the cellar hole and lived on for another hundred until the time of Paul’s saw.
We stand talking about the prowess of a gone-by century; gone-by like the withering of a complex, elegant, flower. The massive stones were laid one on top of the other without aid of hydraulics. Men used draft teams, mighty oxen, and block-and-tackle to achieve such feats. In pointing out that decayed houses were once stripped and burned for their nails, Paul expresses admiration for their resourcefulness and economy. It brings to mind the connected dwellings abounding in New England 100 years after the revolution.
Thomas Hubka, author of Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn, writes that they were the product of that crux in time of 19th-century Maine when the State was on the cutting edge of agriculture. Nothing was wasted, including buildings. Houses and sheds were bought and moved; they were added to other houses to form ells and extend dwellings out to their barns. We see one, which is pictured in the book, every time we go into the village. Its second story was once a house on some other ground. Then it was moved and raised, the ground floor erected under it as part of an elaborate extension. Houses grew by accretion of prized components. The connected dwelling, with the odd orientation of its various components, reminds me of the angles posed by those groupings of Maine’s Civil Divisions on the map.
It was a time when Maine crops were in high demand. In 1880, when the average farm was 103 acres, and farming wasn’t so specialized, there were 64,000 farms statewide. Farming was largely self-sufficient, and Maine’s leading source of income. About one third of the State was devoted to agriculture. Specialization did not take off until remote Aroostook County sheared off the forest in its eastern portion, and “got into” potatoes. That specialization prospered only because steel rails came to connect The County with the sea ports of southern Maine. The forest went to the sea.
Still talking of these things, Allen, Paul and I walk back along the overgrown road. We walk back through the new old orchard, past the stumpy blackened field, the great garden: unworked as yet on this early May day.
Learning Fishing
Watching the neighbors fish for trout at Indian Pond, small and round and snugly hidden in the granite hills. The protective circle rises above a dimple full of water. Miles of mountains, the woodland roundabout—flatlanders have scant knowledge Indian Pond is here.
Cold, below the summits. The sky? Low clouds in motion. I stand outside the car while Tall-one dons his waders. Standing near, Light-eyes, the wiry one, ties a fly to the line. Wind overhead roams in the pines, a great susurrus ghost, the life in our gills.
The pole in his hands is thick and green. It has an eye at the end for threading the line. Hair hangs in the light eyes of the young fisherman as he works with chilled fingers, shivering, talking about Uncle Baldy who has no problems doing this. He wishes he could pin Uncle Baldy down sometime and learn a little of his flyfishing technique.
Late 20th century surveys by the American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association show only 10% of freshwater anglers learning the sport after the age of twenty. It’s during their formative years that people acquire a love and learning for fishing. And only 40% of adult anglers teach their youngsters the skill, instill them with the love. Here’s the declining trend in a productive, vital, and beautiful pastime that feeds the body and nourishes the soul.
Light-eyes finally gets the line tied and we walk to the shoreline thick with spindly trees—the way trees are in Maine. The blackflies show up, dancing in front of my face. Some light, but don’t bite. They are not yet ready to lay eggs.
In his great waders, the tall one moves slowly into the water and begins flicking out the line. The reel pays it out in a straightforward manner. I step past the sandy bottomed access into the trampled wet weeds. Here are three thin trees to lean against . . . out of the way where I can’t get caught on the flicking line.
An article with no byline in the Lewiston Sunday compares the motions of angling to those of other sports. The accurate cast and lure placement, the retrieval, all contribute to convincing the fish that a tied-fly is the real thing. The motions of angling are like those in team sports we are familiar with. (The wind up, the pitch, the follow-through.) But in casting there are other considerations, like lure and line. And the unquantifiable—timing.
Light-eyes stands on the opposite side of the boat access and encourages Tall-one with his advice. The pole belongs to the advice giver. Both have been fly-fishing only once before. They plan to take turns with the pole and waders.
The tall fisherman wears a green felt hat. He leans over meditatively to spit tobacco juice between flicks. A fish jumps. They’re out there.
The first time these young men were here they got six, one right after the other. That was two fish over the limit. Light-eyes would get a bite and fling the wriggling silver thing back onto shore. Small fish, maybe eight inches, but muscular and fighting. Anything smaller they tossed back.
Again a fish jumps. We talk back and forth across the boat access, Light-eyes and I. He says the other guy was in court this morning for smelting on a closed brook. Fifteen people were there, all caught at the same unposted spot. The fine was $110, something like $35 over his week’s unemployment check. Closed brooks and ponds are all listed in the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife regulations; but where a crowd gathers, one takes it for granted without consulting the book. Fishing lessons are expensive this way: 15 people—all locals who could ill afford it—at $110 a head . . . amounts to $1650. Is there a limit on how many fishermen a game warden can catch from one unposted brook?
The long tall wader hooks one. It comes back into the water of the access: too small. Light-eyes reaches down and unhooks it. A bit stunned, it stays awhile in the access. He looks at it, speculating that it was conceived here in the pond, not stocked by Fish and Game. I should ask what this look is, exactly, but don’t.
Light-eyes isn’t satisfied
