Every 10 days throughout the summer a tall, lanky guy, with whom we have only a nodding acquaintance, methodically scours the sands of Lincolnville Beach with a metal detector. He arrives before we do and is already at work when we pull up a little after 6 a.m. Sometimes he shows me something he’s found; often it’s a bottle cap or poptop, and he drops them in my little bucket. The more interesting (and valuable) items go into his pocket. I wonder where he plies his trade on the other days, what other beaches he crisscrosses so intently. The guy is one of those who see the world around him as his hunting ground.

Continuing the thread I approached in last week’s look at the musicians and artists in our midst, I’ve been thinking about the other people whose passions reach well outside the way they make their livings. The very world we inhabit – forest, rocky cliffs and bony outcrops, hills we call mountains, ponds, streams, and bogs, with a four mile boundary of sea shore – is enough to occupy every one of us for a lifetime. Overlay this incredibly varied topography with the detritus of a millenium’s worth of human habitation, and it’s more than one mere person can ever take in.

Now, I realize that not everyone living among all these riches appreciates them in quite the way I describe. My own mother, visiting us two or three times a year when our children were young, and who ended up spending the last fifteen years of her life here, quite honestly, hated the place. “Whatever you do,” she implored me once, “don’t bury me here.” She was a city girl through and through, and never ever saw here what I saw. Others are more or less indifferent to their surroundings, living their lives on a different plane than the natural world. The only trees they see are the ones that line the roads they drive, the mountains just a distant line of the horizon, the shoreline nice places to cool off on a hot day. This isn’t to trivialize their interests, just to say that their passions don’t include their physical surroundings.

Then there are the hunters, those folks who see the wildness all around and wonder what’s out there that they might find. Starting at the most literal level, we are in the middle of Hunting Season. Nov. 1-30, roughly, every year, the month when it’s open season on deer. Of course, there are other seasons on other animals, and specific times you can hunt deer with various weapons, but for the sake of argument, November is Hunting Season. Mostly men, some women, along with older children carry a hunting license and take to the woods. It’s the time of year you see pickups parked along roadsides for no apparent reason, dawn to dusk. The rules of hunting require the hunter to be out of the woods by sunset, and there’s no hunting on Sunday, although a hunter can go into the woods to track and retrieve a deer wounded the previous day.

Drive around town this month, and you’ll likely spot the results of the hunt, a deer carcass hanging from a tree in someone’s yard, prior to being cut up into steaks and roasts and stewmeat and popped into the freezer. People hunt for at least two reasons around here, and probably the first is for the meat. The other is for the love of it all – the gear (yes, the guns, often handed down in families, kept cleaned and oiled and ready for November), the anticipation of a chilly fall morning before dawn, the trek through woods to that favorite spot, the wait. I can’t go any further, and write about the thrill that follows when a deer appears because I’m not a hunter, I only live with one. But yes, I believe there is a thrill.

Hunting takes so many forms. People hunt with a camera. Wildlife cameras are set up to capture the image of passing animals, photographers patiently wait for just the right shot of a bird or a forest scene, of a sunset or a snowscape. Photographs can serve as models for a painting, brought home to save the memory of the scene. Neil Welliver, according to Wikipedia, “a modern artist, best known for his large-scale landscape paintings inspired by the deep woods near his home in [Lincolnville]Maine”, often painted outside in the woods around his Van Cycle Road home. “Painting outside in winter is not a macho thing to do. It's more difficult than that. To paint outside in the winter is painful. It hurts your hands, it hurts your feet, it hurts your ears. Painting is difficult. The paint is rigid, it's stiff, it doesn't move easily. But sometimes there are things you want and that's the only way you get them,” he wrote. Neil was definitely tuned in to the world that surrounded him.

              How about the mushroom hunters? I know a bit about this kind of hunt, the waiting for a favorite species to come into season, visiting the site where they’ve been known to grow weeks ahead (and keeping that site secret from other mushroom hunters), then at last, the harvest. See the photo gallery below of some of our favorites. The last of the season is always the oyster mushroom, which lasts through the first frosts. Try this with any you find:

Fried Oyster Mushrooms

Cut them into bite-sized pieces, dip in beaten egg, then dredge in a cornmeal-flour mixture that has a bit of baking powder and garlic salt or other seasoning in it, and deep fry. Mmmm!

Among those who live more broadly than their daily work routine would seem to allow, are the explorers. Yes, we have explorers living among us, those who set out into the deep forests that surround us (Lincolnville includes thousands of acres of protected and/or state land designated as Camden Hills State Park, Tanglewood, Fernalds Neck, and other Coastal Mountains Land Trust properties) trying to piece together our early history. Harbour Mitchell, a passionate and dedicated archaeologist, has pursued Native American finds in Lincolnville, and just this past summer oversaw a dig at the last home of Philip Ulmer, probably Lincolnville’s most interesting and illustrious forebear.

The explorers are fascinated by the old settlements, the cellar holes and the abandoned roads that lay under the forest floor. Their interest can take them up into the hills on a rainy, cold fall day (you have to wait for the leaves to fall to really see what’s there). But just as much excitement was generated on a warm summer evening for a “meeting of the maps” when a dozen enthusiasts met at the American Legion Hall to share their knowledge of our town’s old roads. The mystery of a lone gravestone in a forgotten cemetery on an abandoned road has absorbed Corelyn Senn for years. “William Delano….died 1826….age 26”. She calls him Willie, has so far been unable to find any reference to him in any local documents, but feels she is getting close to a New Bedford, Massachusetts connection. I have faith in her perseverance; she’s going to find out who he was, and why he’s buried near the shores of Pitcher Pond, the only grave in a rock-walled lot.

Snow Plowing

            Well, what a surprise we got at about 2:30 this morning when a strange-sounding truck rumbled down the road outside our window – a snowplow! But not the familiar sound of Larry Thomas’ vehicle, a sound that’s heralded winter snowy nights for most of the 40+ years we’ve lived here. Town Administrator David Kinney posted this to the Lincolnville Bulletin Board last week: “. . . thank you to the Young and Thomas families (and their crews) for many, many years of dedicated service to the Town of Lincolnville with snow removal.  The Town was very fortunate to have these individuals working tirelessly for us.  Unfortunately for the Town no good thing lasts forever and both Bernard Young and Larry Thomas decided on their own not to continue with town snow removal operations. . . Last winter when word got around that Bernard and Larry would most likely not seek to continue, the Board [of Selectmen] discussed its concerns and its expectations for future contracts . . . After a competitive process and meeting with the Board of Selectmen, Farley and Sons, Inc. was selected as the best option for the Town.  [Farley has] put together . . . [a plan with] input from Bernard Young who remainsLincolnville’s Road Commissioner, Larry Thomas, me, the Board of Selectmen as well as Farley’s experiences in working for other municipalities and the Maine DOT.  Bernard has the contact information (both telephone and radio) for Farley.  The Waldo County Sheriff’s Office and State Police also will alert Waldo County Communications (dispatch) if road conditions warrant calling out Farley.

            This year’s Tree Lighting, Bonfire, Carol Sing and Community Party will be Saturday, December 5, 4 p.m. to about 6. If you’re new to town or to this fun event, families, singles, couples – everyone in town is invited – gather at Lincolnville Beach at 4 p.m.; it’s barely dark, but the fire, built under the direction of Andy Young, is roaring, and the children run up and down the Beach and have a great time. Song sheets are passed out and we sing Christmas carols and songs until 4:30 or so when Santa arrives on a fire truck. After that excitement everyone treks up the hill to the L’ville Improvement Association Building (also known as the Beach School) for a visit with Santa, cookies, sandwiches, cider and/or hot chocolate. The menu varies from year to year, but Christine Buckley, who is the current organizer of the party, sees to it that there are plenty of nourishing snacks along with the sugary ones. I always told my kids, when they were little, to eat up because “that’s your supper!”

            This is a party that we all can participate in: Andy Young needs help building the bonfire; he starts putting it together about 3, I think. His number is 323-1334. I know he’d appreciated hearing from some fire-builders. Christine Buckely can use help making sandwiches that Saturday morning and help serving and cleaning up during/after the party; her number is 763-4500 or email her. 

            United Christian Church is now offering Sunday School for children attending the Sunday service. Church starts at 9:30 a.m., and children stay through the opening hymn, the “children’s moment”, and the lighting of the Peace Candle, and then go to the Parish Hall at the back of the church. All faiths are welcome at UCC, a Congregational denomination.

Thank you, Mr. Cawley

            It’s fitting to remember the contributions Charlie Cawley made to Lincolnville, the town he’d grown to love as a boy, visiting his grandfather at Ducktrap. When in 1993 I was trying to figure out how to publish the book I’d written about that village, Ducktrap, I approached MBNA about a possible contribution. Mr. Cawley responded with a $5000 donation which made it possible to get the book printed. A few years later, when the Lincolnville Historical Society was raising money for an office addition to our Schoolhouse Museum, MBNA and Mr. Cawley again made a donation that put our fund-raising over the top.

And I wonder how many were at the June town meeting the year a small cadre of business-suit-wearing guys slipped in the back. We voters were facing a grim problem: our school had been condemned the previous April because of mold. The guys stepped up to the mic and announced that MBNA would build us a new school and promised to have it ready by Labor Day, a mere 2 ½ months away! The building was indeed done in time for school that fall, a temporary home for LCS for the five years it took the town to do all the work involved in designing, getting state funding, raising more funds locally (to which MBNA also contributed, I believe) and actually building the school that stands today.

Those are the public projects I remember, but Lincolnville was impacted by MBNA and Mr. Cawley in many, many other ways. It was quite a ride ….