Susan Hand Shetterly - Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town

Settled in the Wild

ALSO BY Susan Hand Shetterly

ESSAYS

The New Years Owl

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

The Dwarf-Wizard of Uxmal

Ravens Light

Muwin and the Magic Hare

Shelterwood

The Tinker of Salt Cove

Notes from the Edge of Town

Susan Hand Shetterly

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2010 by Susan Hand Shetterly.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Anne Winslow.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shetterly, Susan Hand, [date]

Settled in the wild : notes from the edge of town /

Susan Hand Shetterly.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-56512-618-3

1. Natural historyMaineAnecdotes. 2. Wildlife watchingMaineAnecdotes. I. Title.

QH105.M2S54 2010

508.741dc22 2009030802

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

For Margot and Dan

in admiration

What must a man do to be at home in the world?

There must be times when he is here as though absent, gone beyond words into the woven shadows

of the grass and the flighty darknesses

of leaves shaking in the wind

from The Silence by Wendell Berry

Contents

Acknowledgments

I must first thank my gifted, beloved children, Aran Shetterly and Caitlin Shetterly, who allowed me to write about them, supported my work on this book, and who are excellent readers and editors. Without them, I would have few stories to tell.

A profound thanks to Andra Miller, my perceptive, generous, patient editor, and to my agent, David McCormick, who believed in this book and in me.

To my talented readers who have persevered through versions of this manuscript: Cynthia Thayer, Ken Mason, Pam Chodosh, Maggie Hand Miller, Rebecca McCall, Monica Wood, Terry Tempest Williams, and Robert and Rita Kimber. I give you my love and thanks.

To Osmond Bonsey, Mike Benjamin, Sandy Bolster, Brad Allen, Bruce Connery, and Cherie Mason for sharing their knowledge and ideas.

To Mark McCullough, premier biologist, who gave his time and expertise to answer my questions. I cannot thank him enough.

To Paula and Norman Mrozicki, Margret Baldwin, Susan and Hugh Curran, Dhyana Bisberg, David Page, Mary and John and Mary Furth, Nancy Hathaway, and Nancy and Andy Kandutsch for their work to preserve and steward our precious lands on the Morgan Bay watershed, and for their nurturing friendships.

To Susan and Charles Guilford, Mary and Steve Hildebrand, Sue Straubing, Ruth and Jim Yerkes, and Mariah Hughs and Nick Sichterman, for their love of place. To Ray McDonald for allowing me to write about him. To Wilbur Saunders for his careful edit, and to Anne and David McGraw for their decision to save Jed Island from development. To the staff and the board of Blue Hill Heritage Trust, especially to Jim Dow and Pam Johnson, who taught me how to think about land and how to work to save it. Their intelligence and hard work have given me inspiration and an education.

To those teachers who live on in memory: Marion Stocking, Naomi Church, Jack Dudley, Chandler Richmond, Laredo Carter, and Philip Booth.

To the memory of my mother, Dorothy, my father, Trav, my mother-in-law, Birdie, and my father-in-law, Pop. They are the scaffolding of my life. Whatever I have become, I have built from their support.

And lastly, to the gift of wildness in the lands where I have made my homein Prospect Harbor and in Surryand to the many lives they shelter. I owe them just about everything.

Settled in the Wild

Part One

I leave a window open on April nights and put my pillow close to that cold slice of air because I want to hear spring come back to this small clearing. Sometimes it snows and I hear that soft muffled falling, or it sleets and I hear instead the sharp tick of ice against the glass. But mostly the sounds are new.

One night a flock of Canada geese flew north under the half-moon. I woke to their bugling from the south and listened as the birds crossed over the roof, close enough to catch the sound of their wings like a bow drawn back and forth across the bass strings of a cello. Maybe ten geese. Maybe fifteen. An uneasy silence followed as if the thrust of their heraldic flight had upset the air behind them, as if they had broken through the glaze of winter above my house and trailed springs upheaval and promise.

After midnight, a porcupine climbed into the weeping willow by the frog pond and started to snip off the young branches, tender and crisp with new leaves and swelling buds. I heard one branch, then another, slip through the branches below them and land on the ground with an almost inaudible sigh. Lying under a pile of quilts, I counted the falling branches. When I got to five, I forced myself up in the dark, turned on the kitchen light, and stepped outside. The light sparkled on the frosted grass beneath the tree. I was barefoot, wearing an old T-shirt. Another branch dropped as I walked in the dark to the driveway, picked up a handful of stones, and pitched them in the direction of the tree. They bounced off the trunk, splashing into the frog pond through paper-thin ice.

In the moonlight I could see the dark blob of porcupine against the sky. It was pressing itself against the trunk, about twenty-five feet up, like a big irregular fruit stuck in the branches. I tossed a few more stones.

Thats for eating my tree! I said.

Back in bed, as clearly as if the porcupine were answering the force of my assault, I heard another branch drop.

An hour or so later, a loon flew over. It filled the night with one long cry. What the voice said was that the ice is starting to melt off the nearby lakes, almost enough to give loons the open water they need. What the voice said was that it could hardly wait.

Just before dawn, a raccoon, perhaps the first to rise from its restless winter sleep, began to sort through the shed. I must have left the door ajar. I listened as it tossed aside what was probably a wine bottle out of the recycling bin. Then the empty plastic compost bucket rolled across the shed floor. Then something heavy dropped. I wasnt sure. Maybe one of my sons old winter boots that I wear around the yard, now that hes grown up and gone.

Everything in that cold predawn was exquisitely quiet except for this one raccoon, the only soul in the universe making noise.