You may have followed my adventures in Maine, first in solo, then with my children and their cat…. We are now en route for new ones!
We all moved to Paris, France. Known as the most romantic city, it is for sure a big one, where I can cross as many people in one day as I could in a year in Maine!
My main discovery is the bike world: bike lines everywhere, separated and protected from the main road, crossings with bike-specific-traffic lights, special Sundays closed to cars, people going everywhere with bikes, holding their helmet in restaurant, and being late because of traffic jams… but discovering Paris while going to work instead of Metro-ing to commute is a luxury that I didn’t expect. My first route from home to work was passing by Montmartre, la Concorde, l’Opéra, Le Louvre, before reaching my office, with a view… and going home biking along the Seine before passing by Notre Dame, and la Bastille … if only the sirens of emergency and police cars would not be so loud!
This is my first blog. And this should be my very first post, but I am a beginner…
This blog will be my buoy. My lifebuoy, my lifeline, this little things that will keep me close to you.
I have decided to travel ahead of the family. We were living in
Singapore for a little less than 10 years and I decided to go live on
the other side of the globe, in Maine, US, on a little island named
Mount Desert Island. Madness? Maybe… Irresponsibility? Possible….
Opportunity? For sure… I am sure I will get the chance to talk about all
this.
Welcome to Zoë’s Blog!
Edit: Our two children – teenagers – joined me in December 2019 with our cat Phantom, six months after the original plan, due to COVID19. I have swapped my single-isolated-mum’s routine with a family of three’s needs… including adapting meals, rhythms, schools and increasing social activities while the pandemic is also guiding our life. We can’t wait to welcome our last family member, at least for some long days of holidays whenever possible. For now we are still face-timing…
3:30 AM. Getting almost ready. I rush my daughter… We shall not not be late today! 4:15 AM. Meeting with a couple of colleagues. There is a bit more people than expected at this time, and parking is limited…
4:30 AM. The ascension begins. Our headlamps look like little fire-flies. The small parade follows a long path in the trail that is made difficult by the darkness of the night. We are well equipped trying to find the best way among the big stones. Our bags have water, snacks, warm clothes and even hot coffee. 5:45 AM. We arrive at the top. I forgot that there is a road accessing the summit… Tens of cars are getting parked and people gather religiously around, finding the best spot for their camera and trying to have a natural shelter with enough view. The wind is nasty, blowing softly in every little holes of your body, and getting warm is tough. Everyone is freezing. We welcome the hot coffee and cocoa carried all this way. But despite bonnet, gloves and 4 layers of clothes our body struggles. We change spot with the hope of being more protected and sit embraced to each others to keep us warm. Suddenly, a red halo begins to appear already. Our “god” is slowly coming to us.
6:00 AM. the red area intensifies then shades into orange and yellow. We can see the light approaching. The atmosphere is getting tense, people are ready, anxiously waiting for him.
6:33 AM. Et voila! There he is! It slowly appears, majestic, big, wearing a warm yellow dress and rising in the sky like a one man show. The sun!
Round of applause. The mountain is celebrating. But the public is attentive, each milliseconds is a new picture. We can “see the time” flying. We forget our frozen fingers. The wind suddenly stops. It is like a prayer.
6:39 AM. The big round is full, spreading a warm yellowish color around Another 5 minutes and the parade finally begins to spread out. We are slowly packing and finding our way, hoping that walking will warm us quickly. We have to go back down the hill now, and we’ll surely enjoy the million colors of the fall.
It is another day on Earth.
NB. Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, at 1,530 feet (466 meters), is the highest point along the North Atlantic seaboard and the first place to view sunrise in the United States from October 7 through March 6. https://acadiamagic.com/CadillacMountain.html
I didn’t post about food since a long while. So I will open this food chapter with a local delicatessen which was also our new year’s eve main dish: Maine’s favorite lobsters!
I promised to my two children that if they would do some homework (among them finding an Einstein’s riddle), we would have lobsters for New Year’s Eve’s dinner. Oh, how motivated they were! I found a pier where I could buy lobsters, and because they were opened only mornings, I thought it would make sense to get them alive. So I cook my first lobsters at home – steamed them*. These lobsters were the biggest I have ever seen, worth a post on a blog even 8 months later…
Alive
With a sweet potato and green beans
Steamed – in a normal plate
* Cooking instructions:
Perfect cooking time – if boiling, fill with fresh seawater or water salted to taste, 3 quarts of water per 1 1⁄2-2 l bs. of lobster. If steaming, add water t o a depth of three inches t o bottom of t he pot. Add the lobster when the water is boiling, do not cover if immersed into water. Cooking instructions from Beal’s Lobster Pier website (https://www.bealslobster.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Lobster-Cooking-Instruction-Card-Web.pdf).
Back home. The cat is waiting for us, for our presence and the treats. Even if he was not allowed to go out during those days he surprisingly doesn’t run outside, but stays around us as we empty the car. “Are you really staying here with me or this is a trick and you’ll run out again?” A friend came twice a day to feed him and for sure play a bit, but it is obvious that he is happy that we are back.
We de-packed every bag, rearranged the left-over food and camping stuffs as if we would go back for an adventure very soon. Hopefully I am correct, well, it turns out it depends on me to book in advance… The bad weather of the beginning of the summer seems to be gone for now, so I hope we’ll have more sunny days to enjoy.
Episode 3 begun with cleaning then. Not very exciting, unless you focus on the next trip, enjoy the coffee on the deck, and think about the morning swim planed for the next day. But here is the thing: Jules had still his wished card to play. So I enrolled all of us to the Acadia tour, “on air”! It was great! Just enough sun to see without being blinded, a little bit fog to better appreciate the curves of the mountains, no wind, and a very nice pilot that even look after our house from above. We had a blast!
Bar Harbor
Sand Beach with Champlain, Dorr and Cadillac mountains
From Cobscook we turned back to our steps direction to the South but stopped at the Columbia Falls. Although the campground is not located directly to the sea, it has the particularity to propose unique ambiances, from Tepee to wooden triangle huts, as well as big camping slots for groups or families. This small business has individualized and very spacious bathrooms similar to a 4 stars hotel, sells farm products on honor system (very common in the region actually), and is directly connected to the Down East Sunrise trail, a 87-mile off-road trail on the East Coast Greenway. A good finding located in fact at less than two hours from home…
After Lea satisfied with her whale-watching wish, I was the one happy: watching the stars around a fire at night and hiking during the day, being energized by Mother-Nature. We hiked the full loop of the Great Wass Island Preserve, taking a break with a sandwich facing the ocean and enjoying the wonder of many plants and insects… including mosquitos and carnivore plants! We revised the alphabet trying to find either country, cities, animals or plants beginning with each letter, a game that took us close to the 4 hours hike!
We slept 2 nights in the Tepee, a big tent with an open ceiling – a path to the stars… but mosquitos were far more aggressive than in the Big North, and so we had to fight hard. We tried our best: citronella candles, coils, anti-bugs spray, long pants/long sleeves/socks and hoody, smoky wooden fire, but nothing helped really. We eventually decided to build the under-tent on the bed in the Tepee for the night, and one of us finished sleeping in the car! Despite all of this, this was a success, as we are all already thinking of going back there (Jules secretely wishing to be allowed to drive an ATV!).
I finally took a few days off. As we all know, vacation time can be challenging. This year I wanted a lot: be happy, rest a bit while making something different from my daily routine. I didn’t want to drive far – I am the only driver – , I didn’t want to organize complicated schedule – I am the only organizer – , I didn’t want fighting about what the plans were – I am the only one wanting to hike and workout – , but I still wanted to go out of our island and discover new horizons…
We made some deals and compromises. We would go camping, staying in Maine, and because nothing was very exciting at this point, each of us would chose something they wanted to do. I think everyone felt some kind of happiness. We laugh a lot, cried sometimes, played games to feel hikes shorter, had very bad times with mosquitos, cooked strange cans, played with fire, face-timed in a tepee, watched the stars, sailed and more… not too bad for a 4 days escapade. I’ll detail this great short not-yet-finishd adventure in 3 episodes. Here is the first one:
Cobscook state park campground. We had only a night reserved because, of course, I tried to book a bit too late. Each allocated slot was spaced from about 200 m, surrounded by trees and ponds, in a park of thousands birds and wild fruits – I found some blackberries for our breakfast. Although the camping was supposed to be full, I couldn’t feel any crowd, couldn’t hear anyone, showers were always available et the atmosphere was very calm… if mosquitos would not exist, this was paradise!
The Cobscook Bay area is made of multiple islands with little villages, ports and harbors. The scenery is magical, with a changing sunlight making every picture you take the best one. The sea is rich of lobsters, clams and salmon, but also seals, porpoises (similar to dolphins), and whales (Minki whales and Fin whales – the latest being the second largest mammals on Earth!). Lea had the wish to see whales, and so we went on a boat tour! We had a blast watching majestic whales, playful seals and proud eagles. A success!
Elegant and cheap shelves are not easy to find. My first ones as a student were built with wooden planks and red bricks. These shelves followed me during my studies and a bit after… but as you can imagine, the bricks were a bit too heavy to move everywhere!
Now that I wanted to get some nice new but cheap and modulable ones in Maine, I jumped on the occasion when someone was selling fresh cut red pine planks in November 2019 (see the post « Finding a home » ). But all the work was still to be done: sanding, re-sanding, varnishing, re-varnishing, Just to talk about the planks. Apart from that, finding red bricks or other similar stuff to be able to assemble somehow the benches one on top of the other was another story. Not to mention the long wall that should be in the new rented house – which I had not find, yet – , since the red pine beams would have to be cut otherwise…
Well, I was lucky. The wall was there, in the new rented house, just the right length. The only thing that took time to find was the « thing » that would replace the $75 / piece of red bricks that I refused to buy at this price – Maine, the land of granite, is just not the right place to buy bricks made of clay! There were some concrete ones, just not the right taste for me… But when I realized that I could use wooden bricks, I only had to go to the nearest DIY-material shop!
I took several weeks to make it, but I am pretty happy about the result. I put only 2 layers of varnish and I wanted to paint in white the wooden bricks… but this will wait until the next move: guests congratulate me, and filled with books and boxes the shelves have now their entire space in the dining room.
It is curious how nature can change. This summer is something completely different than what I experienced last year: it is often grey, windy, rainy, rather cold but temperatures actually go up and down quite drastically… I don’t really recognize the environment: the same seasonal plants that were so happy last year have trouble growing and flowering on the pots, the sky is not wearing this constant intense blue color, and the mountain has not this characteristic odor of warm pine tree smell. It is hard to think that we are almost in the middle of the summer, and that we all feel rather tired than energized. Fortunately the water of the lake is warm and we can swim regularly. As I am trying to continue workout as much as I can, swimming is the best rehab workout I can do, because I need to be twice careful with the slippery rocks in the mountains and the change of the weather. Our early swimming sessions had to be cancelled twice for thunderstorm, although we managed to get a moonlight party last week!
Nevertheless, the rain has some good point too. Plants and trees needed water after a very dry spring, wells are filling up with fresh water, and some animals and plants shine: frogs sing and colorful mushrooms are suddenly everywhere! – I am not quite sure what are those, and I won’t bother making an omelette, it seems that most of them are poisonous!!
It was a few weeks ago already, but it is still in my mind as if we had adopted a family for a short while… A pair of Black Phoebe decided to install their nest around our Geranium. Strange location for a safe place, especially because I was watering extensively the garden bed… but it may well have discouraged the deers to eat the plants, at least for a while!
But during the last several weeks my right hand was just a useless part of my body, rather cumbersome. I became slow and frustrated, couldn’t type properly, couldn’t cook, couldn’t open a tap nor finish the last bites on my plate.
I took risks: I just thought I was still young and show off snowboarding… and broke my arm. The bones around my wrist were displaced and the radius broken so I had a “distal radius open reduction internal fixation” (ORIF) procedure. A fancy name to say that they had to open the skin, reestablish the right angles of my bones around the wrist, successfully work on the broken pieces like a puzzle, fix all the arranged pieces with some metal plate and screws, and close the surgical area that left a scar of about 10 cm.
In other words: it was a mess, and I am now a bionic women!
During the last 5 weeks I had to rely most of the time to the others for every single action. Slowly I learned to use my left hand better and better. My writing is not hesitant anymore, it has more strength now and I even begin to believe that I may become ambidextrous… Trails were dangerous and every vibration was painful, but I can now hike with confidence and just begun to run again. The children learned to cook and realized how much we should do in a home to stay comfortable and clean; one grows with big steps, these ones were imposed but probably at the right time for them.
And guess what? yesterday I could tie my shoes all by myself again!
Zoë's Blog 