Exploring Baxter State Park with Led Zeppelin

My latest camping adventure found me in Baxter State Park this past weekend.  For those of you not familiar with Maine geography, Baxter is a huge tract of land in the very center of the state, like a large hole in a donut.  Its 200,000+ acres contain some of the most wild, untouched lands in the state, including Maine’s highest mountain, Mount Katahdin.   The park got its start back in 1931 through the personal generosity of Maine Governor Percival Baxter. The governor stipulated some pretty strict conditions for the park, including no new roads were to be built, and the existing roads were to remain unpaved and not to be widened.  He wanted to ensure it would be “forever wild” in his words.  There is no electricity or running water anywhere in the park.  Motorcycles, ATVs, and pets are not allowed.

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If you want to know more about Baxter State Park, for pete’s sake go to their website here: http://www.baxterstateparkauthority.com/index.htm.  It’s certainly not my plan to give you a full tutorial on the park.  What I want to do here is fill in some of the blanks with some handy tips I learned while on my trip.

Theme Music:  Whenever I go on a road trip, I like to have an artist or genre of music that I listen to predominantly while driving.  For example, whenever I head to the coast of Washington County in Maine, I like to listen to the 70s & 80s pop band The Cars.  When I am headed to extreme southern Maine, it’s 90s alt-rockers Pearl Jam that get my ears.  For this trip, I decided that Led Zeppelin would be my soundtrack.  I put together a killer mix CD and was good to go.  While it is certainly not a requirement, I suggest that you also choose some theme music for your drive to and from Baxter.

*Led Zeppelin song for Theme Music tip: “Rock and Roll” because, well, Led Zeppelin does.

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Speed Limit:  Throughout the park, the maximum speed limit is 20 miles per hour.  While this sounds excruciatingly slow, it really isn’t.  The roads are narrow, winding, and unpaved, and there is no shortage of wildlife, from sassy little red squirrels weighing less than a pound darting out in front of you to huge bull moose weighing nearly as much as some cars doing the same thing.  Good reasons to keep the velocity to a minimum.  Personally, I found that 20 mph was more than adequate, especially if you are hoping to spot some wildlife or see some of the other spectacular sights.  It seems like a waterfall or mountain peak shows up around every corner.  Additionally, you never know when you will need to stop suddenly because someone is coming from the other direction, in which case you and they will need to negotiate who will pull to the side so the other can pass.  It’s a tight squeeze.  Granted, it does take some time to get from point A to point B in the park with a 20 mph speed limit, but if you must take it slow, what better environment in which to do it?

*Led Zeppelin song for Speed Limit tip: “Ramble On”, because just rambling is the best thing to do in your car at Baxter.

Gassing Up:  Have a full tank of gas before heading into Baxter State Park.  The park is huge, and you are going to want to see a lot of it.  You just can’t do that all on foot.  There are no gas stations or stores of any kind in the park, so if you are out of gas, you are out of luck.  Gas up in Millinocket if using the south entrance to the park or in Patten if using the north entrance.  There are plenty of helpful people around, both park staff and fellow visitors, but advanced planning is much easier.  (Some fuel for yourself, food, is also something to make sure you plan in advance, because a “quick trip to the store” will be anything but quick in Baxter.) 

*Led Zeppelin song for Gassing Up tip: “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You”, because that’s what you are going to be saying to your car if it runs out of gas in and you have to walk for help.

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Cellphone & Wifi: Cell phone reception is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent in Baxter State Park.  If I were you, I wouldn’t count on having any at all.  Whatever your plans, don’t make your cell phone an integral part of them, unless you are going to use it as a flashlight when making your way to the latrine.  And Wifi in Baxter State Park? Hahahahahahahahahhahaha! No.

*Led Zeppelin song for Cellphone & Wifi tip: “Over the Hills and Far Away”, because that’s where you are, and there isn’t any reception there at all.

Vehicle GPS: I’m not sure why exactly, but GPS signals can be very wacky in Baxter State Park.  If you rely on GPS in the park, you will end up parked at the bottom of a lake or in a black bear’s den somewhere.  My advice is for you to pack maps made of…wait for it…paper!  Yes, paper maps still exist!  The Baxter State Park website has some excellent ones that you can print out for use.  Do not try to navigate the park without any maps at all, relying on that “instinct” that many of us typical men have (or think we do). It will fail you, just like your GPS will.  While using a paper map, I turned my usually-reliable GPS on just for kicks, and at several points it told me that I was currently driving underwater or off road in the deep woods, when I most certainly was not.

*Led Zeppelin song for Vehicle GPS tip:  “Communication Breakdown”, because that’s exactly what your GPS will experience in the park. 

Radio: One thing that still works well in most parts of Baxter State Park is radio.  If you are in the southern part of the park, you can get the station out of Millinocket on 94.9 FM, and in the northern part you can pick up the Houlton station at 100.1 FM.  You will need a decent antenna, mind you, and do not forget fresh batteries.  Having a radio is vital for getting local weather updates, since Mother Nature can change her mind on a dime in Maine, even in summer, and sometimes that weather can be dangerous. Personally, I am not a fan of being on top of a mountain in the middle of a lightning storm.   I also find that listening to a Red Sox broadcast beside a campfire in the woods is a highly relaxing activity, and both the Millinocket station and the Houlton station carry Sox broadcasts.  By the way, don’t count on your SiriusXM satellite radio, since a) reception is spotty with all the tall trees and mountains and b) they do not carry local weather, which is really the most important reason to have a radio.

*Led Zeppelin song for Radio tip: “Fool in the Rain”, because that’s what you won’t be with a decent FM radio capable of picking up local weather updates.

Activity Limitations: There are lots of fun things to do in Baxter State park, with hiking, canoeing, and fishing among them.  That said, know your limits!  Do NOT bite off more than you can chew.  Some of the hikes are on long, isolated trails, and help will not be easy to come by, to say the least.  The mountains are high, even the smaller ones.  As they like to say at the park, “Going up is voluntary, but coming down in mandatory.”  Most hikes require planning in terms of your fitness level, the supplies you will need, the weather, and the time you will need to start in order to be back before dark.  If you are going canoeing or kayaking, remember that the upstream paddle is much harder than the downstream one.  If you are out of shape or inexperienced, stick to a nice calm pond.  And again, watch the weather.  Remember that park rescues involve a lot of people, equipment, and money.

*Led Zeppelin song for Activity Limitations tip: “Good Times, Bad Times”, because, depending on your degree of planning and common sense, you will have either one or the other at Baxter.

Critters:  Baxter State Park is full of amazing animals in their natural habitat.  During my brief weekend trip, I saw a somewhat arrogant but nonetheless impressive juvenile moose hanging around on the road, a family of black bear in a big hurry to get somewhere that my car and I were not, and a really cool beaver swimming around a swollen brook and slapping his tail on the water for the better part of a half hour.  And I can’t even begin to describe the variety of birds I saw and heard.  Remember, you are in their house, so be respectful.  Never get too close, do not try to coax them toward you, and do not leave anything out that they can get.  Bring your binoculars and cameras, for sure.  Unfortunately, I was either too slow or did not have my camera on me for my animal encounters on this trip.

*Led Zeppelin song for Critters tip: “Trampled Under Foot”, because that’s what you’ll be if you get too close to a moose.  An alternative song would be “In My Time of Dying”, if you get too close to a black bear mother with cubs.

Bugs: This last one is a biggie.  The mosquitoes and blackflies (known as gnats in some parts of the world) are ferocious at Baxter State Park.  I am talking biblical plague proportions here, people! A ranger told me that it is not unusual for unprepared visitors to cut their trips to Baxter short because they are just overwhelmed by the mosquitoes and blackflies.  I cannot emphasize this enough: you WILL need to have some plan in place for fending them off.  Before I made my trip to Baxter, I used to smirk at people who wore those head-to-toe mosquito nets.  Now, I might just be in the market for one myself.  There is no shortage of insect repellants on the market as well, with varying ingredients from all-natural to borderline nuclear.  Personally, I think your best bet is to use something with the ingredient DEET in it, which I’ll admit is a pretty harsh chemical.  It works though, and it works as well as anything, though no chemical seems to give complete protection.  There are certainly other options, but you will really need at least something.  Also, citronella candles and/or torches are helpful around the campsite for helping reduce the numbers of insects, and dressing in long pants and long sleeves can help make matters more tolerable too.  Avoid anything that is too perfumey smelling, and realize that mosquitoes and blackflies like the smell of sweat and the carbon dioxide you breathe out.  Since you can’t stop moving or breathing, it can be tough to keep the little pests away.  On the upside, ticks are not a major concern at Baxter State Park, though you would be wise to do regular check of yourselves and your compatriots anyway.  At the very least, it might be the start of something randy, if your compatriot is the right person.

*Led Zeppelin song for Bugs tip: “For Your Life”, because that is what you feel like you are fighting for if you are not prepared to face the bugs.

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Baxter State Park is truly a treasure, and everyone who lives in Maine really ought to visit it at least once in their life.  If you are from another state or country, Baxter is definitely a place to put on your “to see” list when coming to Maine.  The website I cited at the start of this has extensive information on the park, and this ridiculous post fills in a few of the gaps.  

A Drinking Problem

I drink a lot.  Of water, that is.  I always have.  I’m just a water-drinking kind of guy.  Oh sure, I’ll have some coffee in the morning, and an occasional soda or alcoholic beverage when watching sports, but water is the mainstay of the liquid side of my diet.  I keep a bottle in the car, have one going at work, and usually have a glass nearby at home.  As habits go, it is probably one of the better ones I could have.  Beats the heck out of sticking silverware into electrical outlets, which is a habit no one sticks with for long.

Okay, maybe I don't drink this much, but close.

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Water drinking is not a habit without its downsides however.  Off the top of my head, I can think of two negative side effects, one minor and one not so much.

The minor one is when I go out to eat at a restaurant.  I always order ice water with my meal, since that’s just what I like.  It’s what I drink with meals at home, so why wouldn't I have it when I am out? The thing is, I can’t help but feel like the server, deep-down, must think I am just another cheap bastard not ordering something for which I would have to pay.  I’m sure that if I had a few beers in me, I’d probably get up the courage to address this perceived issue with my server, maybe going to far as to encourage them to stop by my home any evening at mealtime to see that I really do indeed have ice water with all my meals.  Of course, if I had a few beers in me, the whole point would be moot. So I just leave a generous tip, more for the sake of my own conscience than anything else.

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The more problematic side effect of drinking a lot of water involves making trips to the bathroom.  The human body can only make use of so much water after all, and what it does not need has to come out at a certain point. Biology 101, right there.  Fortunately, I am rarely in a situation where I am not able to make a quick trip to the restroom.  There are, however, times when I really don’t want to, like in the middle of attending a live event or while trying to sleep.  It’s that latter issue that really causes me problems.

As I get older, I find that nocturnal sojourns to the loo are a more frequent occurrence.  On a good night, I don’t need to go at all or maybe only need to go once, but sometimes it can be more.  It wouldn't be so bad if I was a sound sleeper, but alas, I am not.  It always takes me a long time to fall asleep, and I do not sleep very deeply when I do.  If I get up to go to the john, it wakes me just enough so that it can take upwards of an hour for me to get back to dreamland. If I've stubbed a toe, tripped over a cat or two, or run into a door, all of which are not infrequent happenings, it can be even longer. 

Some nights, I can totally relate.

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Getting back to sleep is usually a real challenge for me.  During those late night hours, my mind functions with all the calm reason of a teenage girl in the front row of a Justin Bieber concert.  It turns every little problem into a big one, and regrets from the past, particularly the ridiculous and trivial ones, are dredged up and amplified.  One night not long ago, for example, I tossed and turned and fretted for what must have been over an hour after a bathroom trip because I felt bad about taking a regular college English course my senior year in high school instead of the accelerated course my teacher desperately wanted me to take.  Did I mention that I graduated from high school a quarter-century ago?  And that I got into the college of my choice and the program of my choice with no problems, despite only taking regular college English?  In the dark of the night, not taking the accelerated course seemed like such a deep regret of which I should be eternally ashamed.  Come morning, it seemed like a monumentally stupid thing to waste my energy thinking about.

In the 80s, the Australian pop band Men at Work even wrote a hit song about this middle-of-the-night phenomenon of exaggerated thinking.  The song is called “Overkill”, and here are some of the lyrics, as written by lead singer Colin James Hay:

I can't get to sleep. 
I think about the implications 
Of diving in too deep 
And possibly the complications. 

Especially at night 
I worry over situations that 
I know will be alright.
It's just overkill.

(Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)

Video of "Overkill" by Men at Work from YouTube

At least there’s a little bit of comfort in knowing that it’s not just me who suffers mild temporary insanity in the middle of the night.

If dawn is approaching soon and my bladder is urging me to take a trip down the hall, I have been known to try to “ride it out” until I have to get up anyway, especially if things are not too urgent.  This rarely works.  First of all, I can rarely get comfortable when I have to go, so I toss and turn and generally destroy the bed.  Then, if I do manage to achieve some semblance of sleep, I almost always have the most outrageously stressful dreams, often involving being chased by something horrible and nasty, or being extremely late for something extremely important, like my presidential inauguration or something.  I have no doubt that these dreams are triggered in my subconscious by my body’s need to take care of business, and waking up after them is like returning home from a particularly violent war.  And of course, as official wake up time draws close, a cat or two always manages to make its way into the room in hopes of rousting me for their breakfast, and will invariably sit, if not pounce, directly on my bladder.

They know.  I’m not sure how, but they do.  This is no accident on their part.

I’m a solution-oriented person, but I don’t think there is a solution for this.  Stop drinking water after dinnertime?  Been there, done that, didn't work.  Talk to my doctor? Did that too.  Not enough of a problem to require medical intervention, I’m told.  And don’t even suggest wearing a diaper or some sort of contraption. NOT an option!  Not even maybe.

I guess I should be grateful that I am a light enough sleeper that I am awakened to deal with these requests from my bladder, otherwise I’d be doing a lot more laundry and probably not writing about this particular issue publicly.

It would probably generate a ton of blog hits though...

Hmm….  

I Hear You Knocking

A "glamour shot" of my vehicle that I found somewhere on the Internet a long time ago. (From www.autonet.hr, I think)

My car has a knock and it is driving me just about out of my mind.

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog already know that I am notoriously fussy about some things.  One of the things about which I am most fussy is my car.  I like it to be clean, comfortable, and in excellent working order at all times.  Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how I like to be too.

If a dashboard light comes on, I immediately stop and look into it.  If something is spilled inside the car, I will pull over to the side of the road wherever I am and clean it up.  While it is impossible to keep the exterior spotless during a Maine winter, I do hit the automatic car wash as often as I reasonably can during the winter months, and can be seen washing and waxing almost every weekend once the weather gets above freezing.

So, you can imagine my horror a month ago when a strange sound started coming from what sounded like the passenger side of the undercarriage whenever there was a slight side-to-side motion of the car.  Given the pothole quotient during spring in these parts, and the fact that my car is an SUV with a fairly high profile, I was hearing it quite a bit.  It was a gentle knocking sound, as though something dangling underneath was bumping up against something else.  The car, a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe with about 70,000 miles on it, has had very few problems in the two years I've owned it, so this was cause for concern.

Frankly, I did not want to shell out a bunch of cash to a mechanic if I could solve it myself, which I hoped was the case here.  My vehicular mechanical skills are much like my computer troubleshooting skills: intuitive.  I don’t really know how to explain what is wrong or how to fix it, but I can generally dive right in and take care of it myself in many situations.  If I had to teach someone else how to do it or describe what I just did to fix the problem, I’d be totally lost for words (which would be really something for me).  I instinctively knew that this sound from below the car, while irritating, was not something serious that would impede operation of the car in any way.  The only way the knock would knock was when influenced by a side-to-side motion.  It was not, for example, a faulty CV joint, since I've been there before with a prior car, and my bank account has the scars to prove it.

I did the most obvious thing first.  I went through the interior of the car to see if something was loose and knocking around.  I crawled under the seats and looked in all of the storage compartments, finding nothing that would be prone to movement.  I don’t tend to store a lot of “stuff” in my car anyway.  Just to be sure, I took every single thing out of all nooks and crannies of the car, from the papers in the glove box to the spare tire and everything in between.  Then I went for a quick drive around the block.  The knock was still there.

So much for Plan A.

The next step was to jack up the car and crawl under.  It was still mud season at the time, so this was a miserable thing to do.  There wasn't really enough room in my garage to easily jack it up and have room to get underneath, so I had to do it outside in the wet, muddy driveway, where there were likely earthworms and God knows what else.

I didn't use the small emergency jack I carry in the car, since it was both flimsy and also neatly packed away again after the failed Plan A.  Instead, I got out the allegedly heavy duty hydraulic “SUV jack” (note the quotation marks), which I kept in the garage.  I had not actually used it on this particular vehicle before, though it had always worked fine on my previous vehicle, which was a lighter car.  There was no reason to think it wouldn't work on this one, since it was supposed to be a jack capable of lifting SUVs, and my current vehicle is indeed one of those.

Wrong.

I positioned the jack carefully and started moving the handle up and down, up and down.  This went on for several minutes, and I was starting to get a bit winded.  “Wow,” I thought, “the suspension on this thing must be terrific if it takes this long to get the wheels off the ground!”  Come to find out, the jack couldn't handle the weight of my vehicle, and all my jacking was for nothing.  I proceeded to cram the car, the jack, and myself into my tiny garage and tried the whole process again on a cement surface, but still nothing.  This “SUV jack” was just not going to jack my SUV.

Moving the car back into the driveway, I shimmied underneath it without benefit of a jack.  The undercarriage does sit fairly high off the ground, but it was still a tight squeeze for me to get underneath to inspect things and commune with the earthworms.  Every move required contortionist-like skill, which is no easy feat for a guy like me.  The idea was to muckle onto a few things underneath and gave them a gentle shake to see if I could replicate the knocking sound.  After slightly burning my hand on a still rather hot exhaust system, which had been the primary suspect, I concluded that it was not the problem.  It moved a little bit, but made more of a metallic sound. 

Every shake dislodged a winter’s worth of dirt, most of which landed on my face and in my hair.  Nonetheless, it seemed like most everything under there was pretty solid.  I was just about to crawl out from under, pick the squished earthworms off my back, and go shower for several days when I tried one last thing.  There was a conduit for what I believe is a brake line that seemed like a possible culprit. Sure enough, it did have a side-to-side movement and bumped slightly into some other thingy nearby.  It sounded like the knock I had been hearing, and so I thought I had found it.  With much effort, I maneuvered my way out from under and went to get some plastic ties to secure the conduit in such a way that it wouldn't bump the other thingy.  After doing so, I took a quick spin around the block in the car.

The car still knocked.

Dammit.

I crawled back under, carefully avoiding the now very hot exhaust system, and saw that the ties had come off somewhere on my short drive around the block.  Still convinced that I had pinned down the problem, I got some more plastic ties and fit them more tightly than the last set.  I didn't want to make it too tight, for fear it would damage the conduit.  Another trip around the block, and still the knock persisted. 

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.  In spite of that, I crawled under the car yet again and readjusted the plastic ties in such a way that there was no possible way the conduit could knock against anything.

People were starting to look out their windows as I drove around the block for a third time, probably wondering if I was stalking them.  The crazed look on my face as I continued to hear the knocking sound in spite of my efforts probably only heightened their fears.

So apparently the brake conduit was not the culprit after all.  I was done for the day, and decided to just keep the radio turned up loud to drown out the knock until I could get a second opinion.  I was going to dinner with my brother not long after that, so I figured we would take my car and he could hear the sound for himself.  He didn't.  Claimed he didn't hear a thing.  Of course, he has two young children and a large dog, so his cars are constantly rattling, clanging, and bumping from all manner of detritus left behind by the youngsters and the pooch.  My car probably sounded like a sailboat on a glassy sea in comparison.

A few weeks have passed, and my delusion that the knock would just resolve itself miraculously has long since fallen by the wayside.  I've crawled under that damn car at least three other times in hopes of finding that which has eluded me for nearly a month, but to no avail.  The knocking persists.  As much as I hate to admit defeat, I think it’s time to make an appointment with my mechanic.

I can almost see how it’s going to go:  He’ll call to say the car is ready.  I’ll stop by to pick it up, and he’ll hand me an empty bottle of Ibuprofen or something similar he found rattling in some compartment I missed in my previous searches.  Then, with a smarmy grin, he’ll hand me a bill for several hundred dollars, and I’ll wish that bottle of Ibuprofen had a few tablets left.

I still have one plan left, although it might have a few flaws.  Since the knock can only be heard when the car is in motion, I am thinking that I can get someone to hang suspended by bungee cords underneath while I drive around on some rough streets.  The aforementioned “someone” would thus be able to pinpoint the source of the knock, and will then tell me what it is as soon as they are released from the hospital. 

Any volunteers?  Might be a free beer in it for you.

YouTube Video: A live version of the classic "I Hear You Knocking" by the incomparable Dave Edmunds. You have no idea how much I hate this song now.

Happy Mother's Day!

Me and my mother (expecting my younger brother), circa 1973.  Dig those groovy pants!

Me and my maternal grandmother, circa 1971

Me and my late paternal grandmother, circa 1979

Writing About Having Nothing To Write About

Lately, I've been going through a dry spell with my writing, which is not uncommon to many writers.  “Writer’s block” is the most often-used term, and I've got it bad.  My two works-in-progress are not inspiring me, and I am struggling to come up with posts to put on this blog.  Then, this morning, it came to me.  Why not write about having nothing to write about?

Contrary to what it may appear, I don’t just dash off whatever is in my head and post it to Wicked Awesomology.  Some bloggers treat their blogs almost like a web-based diary that the public is invited to read.  Not me though.  I treat mine like a regular column that I would contribute to a newspaper or magazine.  As such, I have to strike a balance in my posts between things I want to write about and things viewers will want to read.

That awareness of audience tends to be what stymies me the most.  Back when I was teaching, I constantly stressed to my student the importance of keeping your audience at the forefront when you compose a piece of writing.  I've seen 10 year-old-boys put together ten page stories about Pokemon characters that make complete and perfect sense to them, but without background information would make virtually no sense to most other people, not to mention be of limited interest to anyone but themselves.  When choosing a topic about which to write for this blog, there are certain things I try to avoid.

Complaining:  Writing can be cathartic, and there is a great temptation to sit down and rip something a new one just to get it off my chest.  And while it may feel good to put together a piece like that, I believe that readers will only put up with it from time to time.  After all, with all the whiners in the world as it is, who wants to sit down and read more whining for entertainment?

Repetition: There is such a thing as taking a good idea and beating it to death.  I've seen the statistics on viewership of my various blog posts, and noted what type of articles has garnered the most viewers.  In general, it has been my nostalgia pieces about my childhood and teenage years.  Those posts are fun to write, and serve a personal purpose for me in preserving my memories, but are not the kind of thing I would want to write and readers would want to read every single week.  The same applies to posts about my cats and my hillbilly neighbors.  While they provide ample fodder, you can have too much of a good thing in this format.

Sports: I am a huge sports fan, but only post about them on rare occasion.  Wicked Awesomology is not a sports blog, and many of my readers are not that into sports.  Those who are may not be into the particular teams, events, or athletes that I am.  As such, there is a risk of a sports post being a complete wash for a sizable segment of my readership.  That doesn't mean I won’t write about sports.  It merely means that I am choosy about the topic.   For those readers who do not care for the Boston Red Sox, be thankful for this.

Controversy: Some people write to be provocative.  I am not one of those people.  The purpose of this blog is to entertain and also to give me a forum for flexing my writing muscles.  I stick to that focus for a simple reason: In order to attract and maintain regular readers, I need to be providing a somewhat consistent product.  Going from a gently humorous reflection on an adventure I had with my grandparents as a child in one week’s posting to a screed on the gun control debate in the next is too wild of a swing for most readers, I feel.  Of course I have plenty of personal opinions about politics and current events, and sometimes share them in person and on my Twitter account.  Only rarely will I post about politics or controversial current events on this blog, and then I will choose my words carefully so as to state my case clearly while remaining respectful of those who do not agree.  That, of course, is a lot like work, so I usually avoid those topics.

Forced humor: One thread that runs through almost every post here is humor.  I don’t set out to be humorous when I write here, but my sense of humor permeates almost every interaction I have, so it comes through.  My posts are not too different from my personal conversations in that regard.  That said, there are some times and topics that just do not lend themselves to laugh out loud comments, so I either avoid writing about the subject altogether, or give it a straight treatment.  Trying to be funny when something just isn't a funny concept is a recipe for disaster.  A related issue is sarcasm.  I’ll be the first to admit to being a sarcastic wiseass, but that rarely comes across as I would like in my writing, so I have to put the brakes on sarcasm much of the time.

These self-imposed restrictions sometimes get in the way of finding a topic for a blog post, but they help maintain the quality of my posts, so they are not a bad thing.  I’d rather post nothing than post garbage.  I've had some ideas for posts lately, to be sure, but they've often fallen into the “complaining”, “controversy” or “repetition” categories, so I've nixed putting them on here.  

So there you have it: an entire post wherein I wrote about not knowing about what to write.  I've dealt with writer’s block before, and it never lasts, for me or for anyone.   The idea fairy will come for a visit soon enough and Wicked Awesomology will get back to my version of normal.  If she doesn't come soon though, I may have to resort to a slew of crazy cat stories.

Pray for Boston

Oh Good Grief, It's Spring Charlie Brown

“Charlie Brown, you're the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.” ~Linus Van Pelt in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

If you take the word “Christmas” out of that quote and replace it with “spring”, then Linus could have been talking about me.  The snow is melting, the sun is warmer feeling, and yet I am in the midst of my annual anxieties about spring. 

My spring uncertainties are not the same as those I usually get around the holidays.  I almost wish they were.  At that time of year, I get caught up in more specific concerns: finding the right Christmas presents, finding the money to afford aforementioned presents, attending parties without making a fool of myself, making time for everyone and everything, and the like.   No, the anxieties that creep into my head around springtime are lower-level and less-pressing, but no less stressful.

Some of them are not highly defined.  When it is 35 degrees, windy, and ice pellets are falling from the sky in April, I admit that at some deep level I begin to doubt that winter is really over.  Given the five months of snow and cold that have just dragged past at the speed of continental drift, one can’t blame one’s psyche for not fully buying into the idea that it really is over.  After all, there was 1816, the “Year Without a Summer”.  Temperatures were well below normal that year all around the world due to a volcanic eruption in Indonesia causing unheard-of weather and crop failures.  There was snow in Albany, New York and Dennysville, Maine on June 6 of 1816.  Even within my lifetime, in 1990, we had more than six inches of snow fall on May 23 here in northern Maine.  Winter in Maine can be like that shark in the Jaws films.  Just when you think it’s safe, the damn thing comes back to bite you.

The general appearance of the outside in early spring is just a mess, which adds to the anxiety.  We have to pile the snow high here after storms, so while most of it has indeed melted, there are still huge dirty snowbanks in nearly every yard, slowly turning to water.  Even in a good year, some of the larger snowbanks can survive into May or early June in this part of Maine.  Trash, sticks, dog droppings and various other surprises lie around on the ground, left behind during the winter and now exposed by the melting snow. 

Where there are no snowbanks, everything is brown.  The grass and leaves have not dared to sprout yet, so the remains of last year’s dominate the view, dead and mired in the mud that is impossible to avoid.  Trees are still bare, and seeds under the ground have only begun to think about getting started.  It seems hard to believe that very soon, with some spring rains and warm sun, the green grass and leaves will soon burst forth, and flowers will be blooming.  At least, that is the plan.

One of my more specific worries this year includes the fate of my old riding lawnmower, which was literally limping toward the end of the mowing season last fall.  It had been giving me trouble all last year, and my only hope at the time was to nurse it along until the end of the season.  The old rustbucket threw a belt during the last mow in October, but it made it to the finish line.  Now I have to consider my options, none of which are good.  I can try to fix it myself, but frankly I am not very good at that kind of thing and will probably make things worse instead of better.  I could take it to get serviced, which is the most likely thing I will do, though that can be expensive, and loading a powerless riding mower onto a truck is a heavy job.  I suppose I can go without and just use my trusty push mower on the whole thing this year.  While the exercise would certainly be good for me, the extra time and work involved would be a real hassle, especially when it gets hot.  Sweating ranks right up there with cholera on my list of things to avoid.  Or, I could buy a new riding mower.  Let me know if you see the money fairy flying near my house, and I’ll flag her down and do just that.

I’m also worried about what I’ll find when I wash my car for the first time this spring.  My beloved chariot, as I refer to it, is caked in at least an inch of dirt and mud.  It has been showered with gravel and sand from driving on the interstate after storms, and was buried under snow several times this past winter.  I am bracing myself for the sight of the new dings and scratches in the paint job that I’ll uncover after that first wash.  Cars, like people, can’t stay new-looking forever, but I am going to do all I can to try to keep this car looking as close to how it did when I drove it off the lot two years ago.  I've got a bottle of touch-up paint on standby, and got a full kit of car cleaning supplies for Christmas just ready to crack open.  That chariot is going to shine, I hope.  Right now, it looks like something salvaged from the bottom of the Mississippi River, so it’s got nowhere to go but up.

My warm-weather wardrobe needs a serious update as well, since most of my best clothes from last year are really only suitable for use as rags when cleaning the aforementioned car or for dressing as a homeless person.  I've been milking them for a few years now, and they just don’t have another season left in them.  That means I need to shop for new clothes, which is easily one of my least favorite things to do.  I just don’t know what a guy my age (43, for those of you just joining us) is supposed to wear.  I do know what I am comfortable wearing however.  The former and the latter don’t always seem to coincide, unfortunately.  Plus, it’s getting harder and harder to find Nirvana tour t-shirts these days.  When I win the lottery, the first thing I am going to do is hire a professional fashion consultant.

In ancient times, the new year started in the spring, not midwinter like it does for us now.  That makes more sense to me, because a lot of what’s nagging at me at this time of year is the result of transitions, the new beginnings that are the hallmark of spring.  The old has passed, and the new lies ahead with all the uncertainty that comes with it.  All the little concerns I've mentioned here either falls under the heading of fear that the old has not really passed, or that there might be complications with the unknown new.

I know on an intellectual level that of course the hard months of winter are over and the beauty of spring is looming, but it still seems impossible at this point.  But it happens every year.  There will be robins.  There will be crocus.  There will be temperatures that allow us to leave our jackets at home.  It’s just a matter of hanging on and letting nature take its own time.