Needles

“I always have a sense of trembling,

but so does a compass after all.”

                             ~ Jerzy Kosinski

     Frieda's needles click clack, big plum colored aluminum knitting needles. She is weaving ribbons of bright cloth, scratchy wool yarn dyed with turmeric, plastic shopping bags, tall blades of grass—anything she can get her hands on. She is making a rug, or perhaps it will turn out to be a wall hanging, she muses. She's been carting it around all summer in her over-sized canvas tote. The project has accompanied us to Swan Lake, Sand beach, and the park by the river in Old Town. This August afternoon, we sit by each other on a grassy bank on Schoodic lake at a friend's camp. Tall waving pines frame our view of the serene expanse of water. We're keeping one eye each on our kids jumping off the dock. Just 50 feet away, the brood is screeching and splashing, scuba masks suction-cupped to their small faces. There are inner tubes and dolphin floaties; there is a pirate ship raft and water squirters. There could be mutiny any moment.

     But for now, at our home base by the picnic table, in padded lawn chairs, we are free of interference. Frieda is content, having something to do with her hands. Click-clack, she pulls a strand of yarn taut, whips a loop around the needle points, straightens out the row and holds it all up at arms' length for assessment. My eyes rove around the picnic table for something to eat, to chew on, to do with my hands. Click-clack. I shift in my chair, stare at dirt between my toes. Those needles are pointing at something; and Frieda is a bit quiet. I twist the thick silver band on my left hand; the skin is raw underneath, worn down. I look up at the wind moving the branches of the pines. I stare at the horizon of the water, consider how many gallons are in Schoodic Lake. Bloody hell, if I simply sit here one minute longer I am certain she will ask me for strands of my own hair to weave into her textile in progress.

     Earlier in the summer, Frieda's sister Nina gave me my first knitting lesson. It was a July afternoon, and we sat by her pool in Winterport. All of the children, peeled out of their wet suits, were now wreaking havoc indoors. Nina gave me thick metal needles, easier to handle for a beginner. We huddled close together on deck chairs, towels wrapped around our wet swimsuits.

     “Ok, to start, you have to 'cast on',” she says brightly. Nina is a knitting fiend, with knitted bands of yarn around the trees in front of her house. She has woven a backgammon board into the side of a knitted bag—how do I jump into that kind of commitment? She is a fanatic, but a good teacher.

     “Got it. Cast on.” Cast off, wax on, wax off, I think to myself. This is more a philosophy, mental training, this knitting thing. But I obediently wrap the yarn around the tips of the needles, paying careful attention not to drop the stitch. She is so patient, showing me again and again how to hang a strand down and keep a tight weave. But it is hot, and here I have a wad of wool yarn on my lap. I love the idea of whipping out glorious scarves and mitts and hats for all my loved ones, but I feel it in my bones that I am not ready to knit yet. Maybe it's just that it's summer and I am too restless to sit still with the wool.

     Yet I dutifully finish a few messy rows of stitches; it looks like a scarf for mouse, a poor mouse who can't afford store-bought. But as we sit by the pool, me the earnest knitting pupil, I quietly watch Frieda and Nina, the sisters. Nina's current project is a gorgeous sweater of earthy-colored wool, wool she acquired from a local sheep farmer named Betty. Nina runs her hands over the first rows of Frieda's rug and tells her she should pull out that last row, “It needs to be tighter, Sis, or it'll make the whole thing look awful when you're done.” Frieda's face goes stock still for half a second, her mouth slightly open, as she looks down at the rug. But then she looks up, at the sincerity in Nina's face, the concern that she will be disappointed in the final product if she doesn't re-do that last row.

     Frieda lets out a long breath, “Aaagh, you're right, Neen. Dammit-all to hell, that grass was a bitch to weave in! Anyone want another gin and tonic?” We all laugh and lean back in our chairs, stretch our legs straight out as Frieda gets up to fetch the pitcher of drinks and we cock our ears for sounds of children crying, or laughing.

     Back at Schoodic Lake, the kids are now squealing and thrashing in a nearby cove. I catch Frieda's eye, and we smile softly. She knows I would give her strands of my hair if she asked. We are easy with each other. She is calm and compassionate, fun-loving and creative. I only wish all my relationships were so comfortable. Frieda tells me I should go for a swim while I have the chance. I get up from the table, leaving her with her knitting, and head down to the dock. I am nearly there when I hear wailing from the cove, and then yelling about who is hogging the big blue water-squirter and who is squirting water in inappropriate places. Frieda rushes down to the cove, again urging me to go for the swim; she's got this one.

     I walk to the end of the dock and stand above the surface of the lake. The air and light are careening, shining, fish gill; they rise to me, weave around me. I swoon a inch, shiver, and recoil for warmth: my toes are the only part of me dangling over the dock's edge.

     It comes to me just then: compass points.  Her needles, they are directional, pointing, moving and working, giving guidance but not answers. Turn this way a little; it's warmer over here. Things are quieter, more peaceful in that direction. I heard them, and felt them in my own hands, telling me to consider a path I am afraid to take.

     Slowly, I sway side to side, on the dock's edge, snap my arms straight up, bend knees, and let the lake have me for the rest of its light.

My Natural Birth

I am not a runner, but a walker. I walk to find things, to see things, to get the blood flowing—running is too hurried and jostling, plus it's hard. I find myself clutching my chest after about three minutes. So, I walk to get a lay of the land. In walking, I've realized there is a lot going on out there away from the buildings and bustle of people. And once I discovered what I'd been missing, I was transformed.

I walk to work off stress and get outside. I walk to see what's growing where and what is dead, what creatures are flying through the air, and what the density of clouds and amount of light has to tell me about my mood. I walk to feel the brush of warm June air on my neck, or the shock of deep January cold in my nostrils. I walk to pine after the moon as it rises away from me, and to feel the squeaky-crunch of fresh, lunar-white snow under my tread. I walk to work out the day—to finish conversations that never resolved just right. Then outside alone, with no roof and walls boxing me in, I straighten out those nagging loose ends, and tie them up, just so.

My compulsion to walk began when I was about 19 and attending college in Massachusetts. I would walk around Kenoza Lake on the outskirts of campus, and its narrow rolling path quickly became addictive for me. I loved the woods on my one side and the lake water on my other. Here is where I started noticing nature and wondering who and what was out there, in the woods, or by the water. I heard the high trills of birdsong and wished I knew the bird's name. I started mentally trying to sort out the different trees, the various maples and oaks and the evergreens--all of which I called “pine trees.”

Growing up, I climbed some tall pines, and apparently never learned the difference between a white, scrub or jack pine, a red or white spruce, a cedar, hemlock or larch. But as a girl, I was intimate with the eastern white pine, enough to have its sap covering my palms and skinny legs. Climbing its branches until I couldn't climb any higher, I'd clutch for dear life, swaying at the crown of the tree. Then, proudly call out to my mother, “Ma, look how high I am!” Yet, I think I only called out like this once, given her less than amused reaction to seeing me two stories up in the air. I quickly learned that climbing so high is best done on the sly.

There is something about being outside and observing both the minutiae and the grandiose of nature that puts me, with all my manufactured trappings and 21st century problems, in my place. Being out there reminds me that there is so much more going on than my issues with the oil company's customer service or the slow drain in the bathroom sink. That flock of Cedar Waxwings I saw down by the Kenduskeag stream a few winters ago took my breath away, transported me, and all mundane problems with it--if only for an afternoon. I eventually had to deal with the oil company again, and the clog in the sink, but my spirit was lighter in the process. My world was now larger than four walls and indoor plumbing and heating.

In Pennsylvania (college, part two), a grueling botany class and an eccentric, long-haired environmental sciences professor initiated me into the sect of bona fide, incurable nature lovers. I could hardly take a casual, impromptu walk anymore. Newcomb's Wildflower Guide had to be tucked in my backpack, along with a nature journal to record my keen and earnest observations of all flora and fauna. Scouring used book shops, I collected other identification guides—mushrooms, trees, birds. Gathering while on my walks was irresistible, but I learned what was acceptable to take and what wasn't. Rocks, interesting sticks on the ground, abundant wildflowers and fungi—all ok. I gathered flower specimens to identify and press between wax paper and heavy books: New England Asters, Joe Pye Weed, Queen Anne's Lace, Black-eyed Susans and Butter-and-Eggs. But the Gentian and Trillium flowers, and any delicate wetland species like Indian Pipe or Yellow Lady Slipper: I went on mini-expeditions with Audubon experts just to glimpse them. And when I learned about the reasons for their increasing demise, I became not only amateur naturalist, but a stereotypic hippie-esque environmentalist--a Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging, vegetarian anti-consumerist-culture bleeding heart for the Earth. This was my new religion. The outdoors was my sanctuary, Thoreau and Ginsberg my ministers. I yammered on a lot about reducing and reusing to my college roommates. But to make up for being an enviro-know-it-all, I acquired the Moosewood cookbook and regularly made them lentil and barley soup from scratch. Now, in my forties, environmentalism is simply a given, a mandatory responsibility especially for us highly-consuming Americans, and not a fringe movement of granola-eating, back-to-the-earth radicals.

That first time I identified a Red-Headed Woodpecker, I wanted to know all the birds' names; I wanted to know their calls without having to see them. When I started to find some more unusual wildflowers, like the puppet theater of a flower called Jack-in-the-Pulpit, or the quaint laundry line gem named Dutchman's Breeches, I was hooked. I was born again and started a long walking pilgrimage along woody paths and stream sides, looking at the ground and in the trees for the bits of life teeming all around.

I am still walking, setting out as often as I can down toward the Kenduskeag, first looking to the sky's hue and temperature for a gauge of my inner climate. My eyes rake and roam over the terrain, shapes of leaves and colors of petals giving way to names, and with each name I honor its owner. With each step of my walk, I slough off the burdens of house and home and take stock of life outside of walls.