by Bud Kenny
I was leaning to my right, into the storm, when I felt a tug on my left arm and turned to see Patricia yelling something I could not hear. But, when she nodded toward Della and started trudging toward her, I got the gist of it and followed. When the Big Sis saw us coming, she started to calm down and seemed to welcome our arms around her neck. Patricia was on her right side and I was on the left–all three of us with our backs to the storm. It went on for two more hours.
Around noon the wind settled down, the rain stopped and it looked like the clouds might let the sun break through. That’s when Patricia said, “I have got to get our stuff to a laundry. Everything is soaked. I’ll call Lynn and see if she can help us.”
We met Lynn Karlin a week earlier at the boat ramp on Three Mile Pond. She had been testing out her new kayak. Lynn was a professional garden photographer who lived in Belfast. She was going to try to find us a place to live around there. Four times as we walked toward Belfast she drove out to check on us. Patricia called her from the offices of the Audubon Institute, and within an hour Lynn had our wet clothes and my wife in her car headed for the laundry.
For the past week we had been experiencing an Indian summer, but the storm brought it to an end. The next morning when we got up, the sun was out but there was a bite in the wind. The nor’easter had stripped much of autumn off the trees, and the forecast was for more rough weather in the days ahead.
Thursday afternoon we were visited by Lynn and two other ladies who wanted to help us find a place around Belfast. We had a couple of options, but none of them seemed to fit us. That evening I called the Mermaid’s Purse Farm again. This time Michael answered the phone and told me they had been out of the state for the past week. Then he said, “We were excited when we got your message. When do you think you’ll get here?”
“So you still want us to come?”
“We sure do. If you want, I’ll find a horse trailer and come get you.”
“No thanks. We’ll walk up.”
Michael told me they had only lived on the farm for a year and a half. “When we bought the place it was a real mess. We’re turning it into a bed and breakfast. So we’ve been working hard to make it presentable. In May I got my foot caught in a bush hog. I didn’t lose it, but it got wacked up pretty bad. That slowed things down around here. We still have lots of work to do.”
I said, “I’m a pretty fair hand with a hammer. Maybe I can help.”
“Sounds great. Come on up.”
It was sixty miles to Prospect Harbor, so we had nearly a week’s worth of walking ahead of us. Sunday morning when we left Belfast, a frigid drizzle was falling and the weatherman said it was going to get colder with a chance for snow.
Monday night in LuAnn Wasson’s barn, Patricia said, “Are you sure you don’t want Michael to haul us up there?”
LuAnn Wasson boarded and trained horses on her farm east of Bucksport, and had two empty stalls in her barn. Della was in one and we set our bed up in the stall next to her. She was peacefully chewing hay as the wind wailed around the corners of the barn. Sometimes it sounded like the blizzards we had experienced on the New York apple farm. I was crawling into my sleeping bag when I said, “Is that what you want to do? Have Michael haul us up there?”
“It sounds like the weather is really going to turn to shit.”
We had just finished watching the forecast with LuAnn’s father and it called for sleet and snow over the next few days. I told my wife, “But we know we have a dry home ahead of us.”
Patricia snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag. “Hell of a lot of good that does us now.”
“Well, personally, I wouldn’t feel right about him hauling us up there. I walked this far, I want to walk all of it. But if you want to call Michael and have him come get you–”
Patricia popped up in her bag and snapped, “Stop right there, Bud Kenny!”
She yanked her right arm out and shook that index finger at me. “We are in this together! You’re not going to walk up there without me!”
Without saying another word she snuggled back down into her sleeping bag.
While winter whipped around outside the barn, I felt this huge warm glow well up inside of me. I leaned over and kissed the only thing showing out of Patricia’s sleeping bag–the top of her head. “That’s my girl.”
The gray and silver head tipped back, and when her face appeared, Patricia was beaming. She winked at me and said, “It’s all just part of the adventure.”
In the morning the weather was lousy and got worse as the day wore on. It started out as rain, which turned to sleet, then snow and back to rain again. We wore rain gear all day. That Tuesday we didn’t walk, we trudged along Highway 1.
Patricia had arthritis. Before we started this trip she was concerned it would keep her from walking very much. It’s one of the reasons I built the seat in the cart. But once we hit the road, she found the more she walked the better she felt. But that Tuesday my wife ached too badly to walk, and she spent most of the day in the cart.
That night, we camped at radio station WERU. It’s a non-commercial community station that was started by Paul Stookie of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary. Their studios were along Highway 1 halfway between Bucksport and Ellsworth, and as we walked out of Belfast we met two of the volunteer announcers who asked us to stop in for an interview. Freezing rain mixed with snow was coming down when we got there. So when they invited us to camp in their basement for the night, we were quick to take them up on their offer.
The next morning it was overcast and cold, but at least there was no precipitation – until a little after noon. First it rained, then it turned into a heavy wet snow that began to accumulate on the ground. That night on the edge of Ellsworth was the second time that we rented a motel room. It was at the Twilite, and there was a sheltered place behind the motel to tie Della. After we checked in, the owners, Linda and Marv Snow, invited us to have dinner with them. (Yes, their last name really was Snow.)
“It doesn’t feel like we’re traveling anymore,” Patricia said, as she sat on the bed drying her hair with a bath towel.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re not exploring, just putting on miles.”
“Seems to me we need to get settled before winter really clobbers us.”
“I know.” Patricia sighed. “It’s just that I miss ambling along like we usually do.”
The weather the next day was the same–intermittent rain and snow. Other than stopping for lunch, a TV interview and two newspaper reporters, we just breezed through Ellsworth. I liked the feel of the town, but the Mermaid’s Purse Farm was only twenty-five miles away. We could come back and explore on a nicer day.
Eight miles east of Ellsworth a short man with a round belly, white scraggily beard and hair marched out to the edge of Highway 1 and yelled across the road “What in the world is going on here?”
His hair stuck out from under an orange stocking cap that made him look like he had a pointed head. The belly portion of his red sweat shirt was stained with grease, and with the jolly grin on his beaming face he looked like an unkempt Santa Claus.
I yelled across the highway. “We walked here from Arkansas.”
“Really? Well come on over and visit.”
“We need to find a place to camp for the night.”
“You can camp here. I’ve got plenty of room.”
Raye, also known as the “Wild Mountain Man,” was a chainsaw artist. He had life sized wooden statues of bears, an eagle and an angel lined up across the front of the property. A show room of his work was in a two story wooden building, on front of which was a sign that listed Raye’s accomplishments. He claimed to be the world’s first chainsaw artist. His first piece was done in 1953 at age eleven. Since then he had sawn over 50,000 pieces and was listed in Ripley’s Believe I It or Not seven times. In 2000 they filmed him sawing ten numbers on a toothpick. When I shook his hand I couldn’t help but notice that Raye was missing half of two fingers.
We spent that night in his wood shed. When he opened the door to show it to us Raye said, “An artist lived in here for two years a while back. He was from Arkansas too. Think I’ll start calling this ‘The Arkansas Suite’”
Around midnight Patricia shook me awake and said, “I think Della got loose. I heard something stomping around outside the door.”
My wife got up with the flashlight and threw open the door. Della was right there in the doorway with her ears turning back and forth. “What are you doing, girly pie?”
While I scrambled for my boots and jeans, Patricia stepped out and grabbed hold of Della’s halter. “It looks like the rope came untied from the snap on her foot strap.”
She stroked Della’s nose. “What a good girl. You came to find mom and dad, didn’t you?”
I had staked Della out in a grassy area not far from the woodshed, and she watched us tote our bedding into it. So she knew where we were.
The night before, at the motel, I had cut off the end of her rope that was tied to the snap because it was beginning to rot. I was afraid it might break in the middle of the night and she’d get loose. Obviously, I did a lousy job when I tied the new knot. With her lead rope, I tied Della short to a nearby post and hung a hay bag for her.
When we crawled back into bed Patricia said, “That’s scary. What if she’d gone out onto the highway? The way traffic flies past here, if she was out there in the dark–”
My wife paused and shuddered. “Thank God she came to us instead.”
I turned to Patricia and said, “I think I know who this is.”
We were walking alongside Highway 1 in the town of Hancock when a Ford pickup stopped across the highway from us. After the driver got out and slammed the door, an Old English sheep dog stuck its head out the window. The driver limped as he made his way across the pavement. There was no doubt in my mind that this had to be Michael from Mermaid’s Purse Farm. I extended my hand to him. “Hey, Michael. How’s it going?”
His gray bearded face beamed. “You figured that out pretty quick. You guys are making good time.”
“We should be there tomorrow afternoon.”
Along the Atlantic seaboard, when you say you’re going up the coast, it’s natural to think north. But in Maine it means east. From Ellsworth on up, the coast is known as “Down East.”
When you look at a map of the state, the coast line looks like it has fringe dangling down into the ocean. Going up the coast Highway 1 in Maine is 278 miles long. But if Highway 1 followed the actual shore line it would be 3,478 miles. All of those peninsulas, reaches and spits of land created hundreds of bays and harbors. While we continued up the coast a few of those inlets came right up to the pavement. But we couldn’t see open ocean because of the mountains and ridges on the land masses that made up the fringe of Down East Maine.
From Highway 1 we took Route 195 out onto the Schoodic Peninsula to Prospect Harbor. It was five miles of ups and downs and when we got to the village, all we found were a few homes, a deli, a post office and a tiny library.
Mermaid’s Purse Farm was on Light House Point Road. And when we got to the junction of it and Highway 195, Michael and the sheep dog, Pye, were waiting for us. “I hope you don’t mind if we walk with you to the house.”
It was a narrow lane with homes and trees on both sides. But when we got to the farm all of that disappeared. Ahead of us was the open Atlantic. It was a brilliant blue with frothy white waves breaking over ledges out at the mouth of the harbor. On the left side of the road was the house. A white two story wooden structure with several dormers and bay windows. It almost looked like a castle. Attached to the back of it were three barns. On the right, across the road, was a large open field that bordered the harbor. Moored out in the harbor were several brightly colored lobster boats. On the opposite shore was a sardine cannery. We truly would be living in a New England fishing village.
The farm had no paddocks, fenced in pastures or even a stall for Della. I would have to build all that. For now I’d have to stake Della out like we did on the road. After I did that, Michael gave us a tour of the place. Two of the barns had been made into workshops and storage. The largest of the three barns was empty, except for some stacks of lumber.
We talked it over and decided I could build a stall in that barn for Della. I had told Michael on the phone that I wanted to build a new wagon. One we could sleep in. He said. “You can build it in this barn.”
On the house tour, Michael showed us our room, which was upstairs with a king-size bed and two windows that faced the Atlantic. After lugging some clothes up to the room, we joined Michael in the kitchen where he fixed cocktails. Lifting his glass he said, “Welcome home.”
CHAPTER 23
IS THIS REALLY THE End?
I KNEW THIS WAS HOW Maine would be. Sweet sand beaches lapped with gentle surf under perfect blue sky. Romping barefoot through the soft sand around Prospect Harbor, I stumbled over a rock. Scurrying for traction on slimy seaweed, my feet slid out from under me and I tumbled down toward ocean boulders.
Suddenly, something shook me. “Wake up Bud! Wake up!”
Crawling out of sleep, I recognized the voice was that of my bride. We were in the bed, in our new bedroom at Mermaid’s Purse Farm. Thank God I didn’t fall down on those boulders.
“Someone is knocking on the door downstairs.”
“I could hear it. They were pounding hard. Dawn had just begun, so there was just enough light to see when I went to the window. First I looked out to where I had tied Della for the night–she was not there. I looked in every direction. She was gone. Then I looked down and saw a pickup truck with a camper. Something told me this was all connected–Della missing and someone knocking at sunrise.
I scrambled around for pants, boots and a shirt while I sputtered to Patricia what I had just seen. When I grabbed the bedroom door knob, she wailed “Oh no!”
Downstairs, I flung the front door open to find a middle-aged man wearing a black ball cap and dark down vest. “Are you the guy walking across the country with a mule?”
After I answered him, he pulled back the left side of his vest so I could see his badge. “I’m with the Gouldsboro Police, and we’ve got your mule up on Highway 1 about ten miles from here.”
Right then the police radio in the pick-up began to babble. The officer reached in the truck and pulled out the microphone. “I found him at the farm on Lighthouse Point Road.”
When the radio babbled back, I heard “. . . got hit by a semi-truck!”
My knees began to buckle from under me. My spine turned into jelly, and suddenly I had vertigo. Going down, I grabbed the officer’s arm and whined, “She got hit by a semi-truck?”
Driving down Highway 1 in Maine, in the dark hours of morning, always made him edgy. Those hours are when the big animals were most active. In all his years of driving eighteen wheelers, he never hit one, but he had seen plenty. And he’d heard the horror stories of drivers who slammed into deer or moose on a night-time highway. Moose were the worst. Their dark color made them harder to see, and their eyes don’t shine in headlights like deer eyes do.
Plus, they’re enormous. When you’re barreling down the highway at sixty miles an hour if you hit an 1,800 pound animal with antlers, there’s going to be damage. One driver was killed a couple of years ago when he hit one. The impact threw the moose up through the windshield–antlers first. The thought of moose antlers crushing the driver’s skull sent a shiver down his spine.
Up ahead, lights came on at Young’s Market. Suddenly, something big darted out of their driveway onto the highway. He didn’t know what it was, but it was huge. Simultaneously he laid on the horn and stomped on the brake pedal. The big rig skidded toward the animal whose eyes shined in the head lights. It had stopped on the highway directly in the path of the semi-truck. The driver struggled to control the skid. “Move Dammit! Move!”
“No! He said she almost got hit by a semi-truck. She’s okay.” The officer said. “We’
ve got her tied to a tree up by the highway. Come on, I’ll take you to her.”
Officer Jim Malloy had just climbed out of bed, when he got the call that they needed him to track us down. Because of the two stories that had been on local TV, and the picture with the story in the Bangor Daily News, everyone knew who Della was and what we were doing. Plus, for the past few days, we’d been very conspicuous as we walked along Highway 1. But no one knew where we were. After more than an hour of trying to find us, the police got a call from someone with a scanner. They had seen us pull into the yard at Mermaid’s Purse Farm.
“We need to find a way to get your mule back here.”
“I can walk her back.”
Jim said, “I’m sure you can. But after what you’ve been through, don’t you think a ride in a truck and trailer would be nice?”
In case they didn’t find us that ride, I threw our saddle and bridle in the back of his truck. Then Patricia and I climbed in the cab, and off we went to retrieve Della. While we backtracked the route we had taken the afternoon before, Jim asked us about the trip. Then he said, “I heard you’re writing a book.”
“Yes. I call it Footloose In America - Dixie to New England.”
“So the end of the book is when you got here?”
“Right.”
Jim laughed, then said, “So, I guess Della just wrote you a whole new chapter. Eh?”
The knot at Della’s end of the rope had come undone again. When I got the saddle and bridle off the cart, I saw her tracks all around it. I could also see where she’d circled the barns and farm house several times. The Big Sis had been looking for us.
When she saw me get out of the truck, Della began to paw the ground and call to me. When I got to her she immediately started rubbing her forehead on my shoulder. Officer Malloy said, “I’d say she’s glad to see you.”
A community effort got our little vagabond family back together. First there was Lisa at Young’s Market. Around 5 a.m. she saw Della dart out in front of the truck and called the police. She also called Anne, who lived nearby and had horses. In the dark, Anne Osborne brought a bucket of grain with which she caught Della and tied her up. The police found us with the help of the couple with the scanner. Then the police called Suzie who had a horse trailer. She owned Chase’s Restaurant in Winter Harbor and was supposed to cook that Sunday morning. But she got someone to cover for her while she toted us back to the farm. No one would take payment for anything. They were just glad to help.