Elysia Pearl
Elysia Pearl
I’D BECOME OBSESSED WITH FINDING SCHOOLHOUSE POND, which my old U.S. Geological Survey map—a tattered gift from Bob Kimber—plainly marked as the source of Temple Stream. Impatient, I waited for our babysitter’s next shift, which would come on the first of December. Headwaters Day; I called it for fun, a solo mission.
Years before, in our first Temple spring, just meaning to fish for trout in Schoolhouse Pond (which I’d heard was stocked), and following an old fishing map torn from a guidebook, I’d been up there and failed to find any pond, just a game path pounded into the forest floor by moose and deer and fox and coyote. I’d ducked through and come out suddenly at the foot of a long, curving basin, a quarter mile of glorious meadow maybe a hundred yards wide, lit golden in low October sun, the million blades of grasses and sedges glistening, milkweed and cattail floaters gliding overhead near and far like unmoored stars, large old cedars leaning at the inside of the bend, three boulders rolled there like marbles—that would have been the place to camp, if I’d been looking. At the outside of the slight bend, across from the cedars and the boulders, a spooky stand of dead spruce lurked, weathered gray, branches drooping, a hundred small trees in skeleton, all coming to points.
Clutching the fishing map, I’d followed the moose tracks further in, pulled up short at the edge of a defunct beaver canal, just a soggy track ending in a mud hole backed up by the remains of a rotted seven-foot-high beaver dam breached low with a section of ten-inch pipe: someone had intentionally drained the pond. (Why fight the beavers there? More acreage for tree growth?) In the mud around the large puddle before the defunct dam the animal tracks were as extensive as at some African watering hole, as if this were the last water on earth.
If this was Schoolhouse Pond, Schoolhouse Pond was dry. So much for my fishing expedition. I doubled back on the bull-dozed logging road I’d come in on, stood over an urgent brook I’d seen earlier, studied the fishing-guide map—nothing quite right—decided by a kind of triangulation of faith that this sweet gurgle passing under the road through a galvanized pipe into watercress and cattails must be Temple Stream.
Later I told Bob Kimber that Schoolhouse Pond was dry. He barked out his distinctive laugh: impossible! Why, he’d been up there dozens of times, if not lately. He said that the logging roads shifted all the time; the maps couldn’t keep up; that’s all: I’d been fooled, gotten turned around. That watercress brook was just one of the many that come down off Day Mountain. He pulled out one of his old U.S. Geological Survey maps, showed me the correct Schoolhouse Pond at the top of the settler road, marked both road and pond, traced the blue stream coming out of the blue pond with the tip of his pencil, and without ceremony gave the map to me. As it happened—life intervening—I wouldn’t follow up on the problem for years.
Headwaters Day: I parked the old truck where the pavement stopped at the end of the Temple intervale, let the dogs out, and, clutching Bob’s survey map—I’d saved it carefully, consulted it often—hiked in on the old settler road, carrying my trusty rucksack. The air was clear and quiet and the shadows still carried the deep cold of the night. The dogs leapt and raced, paused over each excrescency, marked every hummock, urged me forward at speed. We passed the shy man’s wrecked house, passed the turnoff over the stream to Ted Enslin’s, kept going, burst through the abstraction called the Avon town line, and, with not so much as a sonic boom, left Temple behind.
A mile more and we crossed over a substantial brook on a steel-deck bridge dropped in place by loggers. This subtraction nearly halved our stream, but couldn’t change its character. Soon again we crossed over the Temple on a bridge made of thick spruce trunks covered with heavy boards. Wally dove down the rocky bank, crossed through the water: never take a bridge. The stream switched sides, accompanied us now on the left, falling through boulders, pushing at snags of fallen timber, making ice-edged pools, mesmeric eddies, charmed isles no bigger than Pleistocene beavers. The trail climbed, the tracks narrowed. I pictured settler carts climbing behind horse teams, great loads of apples, children following cheerfully.
To our right, east, a dark hemlock forest grew on a high, steep bank, a hundred feet nearly vertical, old trees clinging. I stopped to inspect a curious hump, a diagonal ridge on the diving forest floor, slowly realizing that it was the huge trunk of a fallen hemlock, much decomposed, barely holding its former shape, looking like someone enormous sleeping under a thick quilt of needles. The tree was all but soil, and the soil it had become held the tree’s old shape but vaguely. If it had been lying there seventy-five years (likely, according to Drew Barton’s later estimate), and if it had been alive for two hundred twenty-five (a conservative guess given its softened girth), then it had been germinated around 1700.
Which gave me something to ponder as I tumbled back onto the road, more of a track at that spot, rocky and washed over in frequent floods, the strongest incline on the stream. I pulled out the survey map and calculated that from the Sandy River, eleven stream miles away, the Temple gained only about a thousand feet of elevation. In the final mile or so, ahead, it would gain nearly half that again. The map clearly showed dogs and man climbing onto a plateau under Mount Blue and Spruce and Day mountains. My eyes, by contrast, showed us climbing through late-autumn trees into high winter and the life beyond that.
And though I’d gotten a late start, and though daylight would end at four, I took a little detour, acting on a hunch. The dogs leapt ahead, bound for Schoolhouse Pond, but I started up a muddy twitch road that showed recent tire tracks. The dogs raced back, chagrined, always wanting the lead. Ten minutes up the shoulder of the mountain in truck-tracked mud, we reached a carefully obscured access road skidder-graded into the hillside, rudimentary, rough, three deliberately placed boulders as guards. I snagged Wally by his collar. Desmond, better trained, I simply ordered to heel. And the three of us slunk up the tracks quiet as hot air rising, crested a little hump on a turn, found ourselves gazing at a large clearing, bountiful sunshine, a small log house at the far end all adorned with moose antlers, maybe a dozen pair. Earl’s truck wasn’t there, nor his skidder, but I could see where both had been parked, and a titanic pair of overalls hung from a peg by the cabin door. The orange bandanna tucked in its rear pocket was a trademark of the man.
The clearing opened out over hundreds of birch stumps (that might explain my latest load of firewood) and straight to the edge of a steep drop, leaving a view of Mount Blue, frosted white, imposingly close. He’d recently cut the woods around the house, and cut them well, lots of good forms left in place, many species. Back behind the cabin I could see a huge garden plot bounded by the old granite sills of the barn that had once stood there, cornstalks fallen every which way, long line of leeks still in green, tomato stakes still stout and upright, plants quite dead, enormous compost pile on the far side crowned with the stiff arms of broccoli plants recently pulled. Around the corner of the house pecked a large red chicken, followed by several more and a rooster. The early December light was dazzling, slanting across the opening Earl had made in the forest, lighting the rough grasses of the clearing orange, highlighting the few stumps he’d left, the tidied stone wall, the old orchard cleared on the other side, a dozen of the venerable apple trees already tended to, cut way back, raw pruning wounds glowing white. Earl Pomeroy had reclaimed a settler’s homestead.
I crept closer on the far side of the wall, drawn by Earl’s presence, the sense of some secret to be found there. The house looked well made, hand fashioned. The door was a chain-sawed slab from a massive tree trunk, no more than that, with what looked to be moose hide for hinges and a chunk of deer antler carved to serve as latch and handle. The windows were reclaimed, sashes of the same type in my house, the same type in all the old houses, two tall panes each, bubbled and streaked.
Suddenly, the door opened. A woman came out, oblivious of me, long wool dress, oversized fur slippers, deep in her thoughts. I held Wally’s collar tighter, p
ut a hand in Desi’s face: quiet. The woman—Dunya—trundled with a curious hop to the outhouse, pulled the door open, stepped up awkwardly, pulled herself inside. I tugged Wally by the collar and gave Desi a sign and we three backed away. I didn’t want to be caught skulking. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to restrain Wally if Earl appeared: Wally loves an acquaintance. We hadn’t gotten far when the outhouse door swung open again. Dunya used the door for support, let herself down the single stair, and I got a brief sight of the unmistakable off-pink of a prosthetic leg. At sight of her, Wally gave a short bark. The woman stiffened as if shot and hopped to the house in a hurry, no slight look in our direction, just rushed to the cabin and inside.
I let Wally go, turned on heel, ducked full speed along the wall, followed by the dogs, then sprinted down the hill—mortified, foolish, spooked too, scared of Earl—sprinted in the mud all the way to the settler road, where I let myself walk again. I continued upstream, breathless. The road was rocks there, overwashed by Temple Stream in recent floods—the road had been the stream, briefly. Where the stream crossed the road next it had washed it away entirely—down in the woods a corrugated pipe lay twisted, loggers’ work undone. Further down, clay piping tiles were heaped in gravel: the work of settlers washed away long since. Why hadn’t I just walked up to Earl’s magnificent door and knocked like a normal person? Instead, I’d made a trespasser of myself, a ghoul, a stalker.
The dogs and I climbed, passed through a Maine Guide’s hunting camp—no one present, though it was still bird season. Deer season had been over for a week, happily. The dogs sniffed at the A1Vs in their open sheds, sniffed at the door of the plywood cabin, sniffed under the carcass tripod passionately, raced to catch me up as I forged ahead: the light wouldn’t last. As the road climbed, the stream—back on the right-hand side now—dropped down into the woods. I kept my eye on it; the stream would not mislead me, as roads and maps had done.
In dense forest the road dipped, crossed several brooklets and rills that left Temple Stream incrementally more diminutive, but still urgent. The nameless subbrooks left mud in the trail, and in the mud were deep moose prints, fresh. Down in the forest the stream was gone. I clambered lower for a close look, and in a flash of bright, bare, tooth-stripped wood, it all came clear: beavers. The dogs rushed to the water, sniffing avidly, leapt in and swam, drew my eye to the dam, sad and sagging but wearing a crown of fresh branches. The flowage, grown over in a new edition of popple, had once again been flooded. All those hapless saplings were already up to their thighs: beaver food. Several new canals worked back through flooded tangles of old alder. Nearly hidden in there was the lodge, all bright sticks and patted mud, and near it I could make out the tips of a submerged forest of sticks—feed for the coming winter. I started down through the woods after the dogs, stepped promptly into a wet plunge hole near freshly bitten stumps, fell hard on my butt and yelled in surprise. Hallelujah: a new pair of beavers had found this old place!
While the dogs assaulted me with their rescue tongues and hot breath, I struggled back to my feet, remembering the phrase keystone species. If frogs lived in this pond, and turtles, and fish, it was because beavers had made it possible.
And what did people make possible? Up the hill, light flooded the settler trail, and between stone walls a quarter mile apart the forest had been ravaged. An impromptu skidder road took the route of a brooklet, tearing its former mossy bed down to bare rock. The loggers had left the requisite timber standing—just enough not to qualify as a clear cut—but it was all stubs, scruff, bad forms, lightning-blasted yellow birches, trees grown in failed arches, large-trunked sugar-maple wolves full of cavities and bearing but one or two branches,1 a few blight-plagued beeches, two or three dwarfish, double-trunked specimens of oak: not a healthy tree in sight. The forest floor had been tracked and cratered and bulldozed everywhere. Thousands of birch saplings crowded inches apart had hardly found growth. No other species in sight. The loggers had followed the letter of the law, if barely: it would be twenty years before that stretch of woods would be productive again, forty before much diversity would return. Past the far boundary of that cut another logger had been at work more recently and responsibly—spirit of the law—had left a forest in place, seed trees and shelter wood, and already his cut was filling in nicely with diverse species. He’d taken some portion of his profits in the future of the forest, and not only board feet.
The dogs and I made the height of the trail, and there, as Bob had said it would be, was an eroded track leading down to a glint of water: Schoolhouse Pond. Wally smelled the H2O, raced down, and leapt in—second swim of the chilly day—and by the time I got to the edge, he was already climbing onto the single ice floe out there, an acre of ice in the three-acre pond. His kinetic energy sent the huge pan gliding. Quickly, it reached the far shore, Wally’s stop, apparently: he leapt off. Desmond, like me, doesn’t care for icy water, stayed hard by my side.
This was it.
My dry pond was nearby, not far to the east, a quarter mile: all those years past on my fishing expedition I’d been this close. Desi and I made our way around the high north end of the pond through white cedars dense in their bog, no outlet, no inlet. Over where Wally had disembarked from the ice shuttle the forest was mossy and old. Not even the settlers had cut trees there—their stone wall ended impressively in a six-foot buttress at a respectful distance from the water. A schoolhouse had stood here, somewhere—how the trout must have beckoned to the daydreaming kids, the cool swim, the skim on ice. Now there was nothing but a little tarpaper hunting camp hidden up there, left open, stack of hunting magazines neat on a bench inside, fireplace in the dooryard, truck-beaten road in. The dogs sniffed and clawed enthusiastically at comers: mice.
They followed me back down to the pond at a trot, and we explored the south end, another white cedar bog, beautiful old specimens with high roots forming knee caverns and grottoes, housing for elves. I looked for current, found none, followed one promising channel, then the next, but they all petered to nothing among old cedars. The dogs splashed, fully engaged in my search, whatever I might be seeking. And then the cedar bog simply ended. The land rose to a low ridge, dried out. I crossed back and forth twice, from elevation to elevation, but Schoolhouse Pond had no outlet, and despite its beauty and huge floe of ice and age-old cedars standing guard, this was not the source I sought.
Back on the settler road the dogs stuck close; dusk was upon us. Every scrabble in the leaves made me jump, move faster. I’d wasted too much time bog hopping and had achieved only disappointment. The trees were dark, the sky falling into deeper blue, first stars appearing in the cut of the trail, which was the only sky visible, a ribbon. Suddenly, Desi stopped in his tracks, Wally too, dead stop, listening. I stopped behind them. Shortly, there was a jangling sound off the road, down to the right, something hidden among the boulders and trees. The dogs didn’t bark: they only bark when they know they’re safe. And they didn’t bark even when the figure appeared, a man charging out from behind boulders, a huge form bearing an old-fashioned double-bladed axe on a long handle, a medieval warrior in thick clothing. He pulled up short and mighty, took a heavy stance, blocked the trail.
I said, “Earl.”
The dogs whimpered, edged behind me.
“So, it’s you,” he roared.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He bellowed: “Do you expect welcome in my home, when I am not welcome in yours?”
Now Wally barked, and that started Desi, and it was an awful lot of sound in the quiet that had fallen upon the forest. Brave Desi feinted at Earl, growling, barking sharply, but he didn’t want to take more than a few steps away from me. Big Wally stood safely behind, giving tight, fearful barks. My face was hot, then hotter, my legs light. I had no words.
Earl shouted: “Spying on Dunya!”.
“No, Earl.”
He shook the fearsome axe at me, brandishing it with one hand, enormous strength, admonished me in a low rumble: “You gave
her a wicked fright. She’s a daughter of war.”
“War,” I called, oddly calm, trying to sound soothing. “I know.”
He roared again: “I followed your yuppie footprints.”
Vibram soles, he meant. “I’m sorry, Earl. I was just ... cunous.”
“Curious!” He marched at me, oblivious of the dogs, who barked almost yipping, incapable of taking him on. I looked to the ditch at roadside, thought to leap into the stream, cross it, run into the forest, but I was frozen by the knowledge I’d be caught. Earl’s step quickened. I braced to be tackled, braced for an axe blow, turned my head, put my hands up to my face.
But Earl stopped his charge two long strides away, abruptly made a fighter’s stance, something relievingly histrionic in it. He wound up sidearm and swung his axe whistling in the air between us—two, three, four mighty passes. The dogs feinted, barked, were nothing to him. He’d chop them into pemmican, and they knew it.
“Earl,” I bawled. “Earl, please.” The woods had gone dark around us. “That’s enough drama. I apologize.”
“Drama?” he bellowed, but he’d sagged, just so. And then he backed away, step by step, slowly backed his way down the settler road far enough that the dogs stopped growling. He’d exorcised his fear, made me pay, yet he couldn’t simply walk away.
It was night, but the dark wasn’t dark. There was still a trace of sunset to the west, the million stars sneaking out above. Earl vaulted onto the verge of the settler road in the shadows under a large beech tree. He slapped the trunk with his open hand to make a gunshot, eyed me coldly. Desi rushed back to my side, Wally still cowering behind. Earl spat on his hands—theater, no doubt about it, but still my heart pounded—spat on his hands, fixed me in his gaze, planted his rough boots, lifted his woodsman’s axe, and swung it mightily, one chop down, flip the axe head, one chop up, flip it again, five sets of chops, loud, solid blows, the axe head spinning efficiently between, five sets only and there came a terrible cracking sound. One more down stroke and the huge tree lurched into the wedge he had made. Earl stepped back too casually, watched the mighty timber fall across the road. It crashed, shook the earth, bounced, settled.
Temple Stream Page 21
