Fresh Tracks

2024:2

Ned had bigger boots on so he headed down the snowy path first and I tried to repurpose each deep footprint like a stepping stone without my socks getting wet. Do you think it’s a bobcat? Ned sounded concerned as we looked at the tracks in the snow leading from the scrubby sumac-covered hillside to the gaps under the barn’s sill beam. Ned consulted his phone for Maine animal tracks, illustrations for curious kids, and concluded: it might be a cottontail. We are not what you might call expert naturalists.

Our first September at the Tiller Project, just before an early frost, Wendell surprised us by cutting a rough path around the northeastern corner of the lot, down the woodsy slope toward the river, to a little clearing under a giant balsam fir. We call this little clearing “the room” and perseverate over its proper development: tent platform? river-fed hot tub? writer’s cabin? Christmas tree farmette? croquet court? How delightful, I thought, Wendell sees the clearing’s charm, just like we do!

Years later, during deer season, Wendell was in the middle of detailing his recent pursuits when he paused. Question: You don’t have a problem with hunting, do you? Our gun collection includes just a glue gun and a nail gun and from what I’ve heard, hunting involves a fair amount of sitting still and being quiet, so no: we are not what you might call hunters, either. We crash through the snow and dry branches, yammering on about animals we don’t understand and whether we could improvise some grooming equipment to turn the Project into a teeny nordic ski center.

What I had been thinking about as Wendell recounted his season, though, was whether I could grow my own juniper to be used in venison stew. Answer: We like to be hunting adjacent.

This year, Wendell and his brother got a deer at our place, and Ned got to admire it, in the back of William’s truck, on its way to the weigh station, and texted me a photo. I took a weird kind of pride in this trophy, from my perch at the laptop in the city home office. (Question: What was I proud of, exactly? Staying out of the way?) And then I thought about the path Wendell cuts every fall to the little clearing. And how, seasonally, Wendell keeps a hunting camera, strung from a tree, right near the little clearing. And only then, years later, did it slowly dawn on me: Wendell is not pondering the charm of the little clearing, nor debating writer’s cabin v. river-fed hot tub; he cuts the path for deer season.

Storms have been raging across Maine, rains and snows and winds and all. The power was out for a week before Christmas at the Project; no hardship to those of us, yet to winterize, who had already emptied the fridge and unplugged, but freezerloads of game were lost, maybe even Wendell’s. Near the city perch, streets have been flooded, beloved ancient fishing shacks swept out to sea, coastline eroded. The forces of nature are hard to miss, even for immature naturalists such as us. People are digging out, cleaning up, assessing the damage, planning to rebuild, helping each other out. We can’t complain: we’ve mopped up, run dehumidifiers, returned neighbors’ recycling bins to upwind starting locations, and uncovered the bones of this post in the flotsam of my draft file, started and abandoned years ago. Question: could I revive it?

Recently, Wendell did us a solid, plowing out the Project so Ned could meet with a guy about pouring a slab in the cellar. The dirt basement floor has served this little farmhouse for 168 years. We know concrete won’t guarantee another 168, but maybe it will help keep some of the damp from making its way to the joists.