It is like happiness, when we are happy

Canadian bunchberry.

Notes on things I wanted to remember to write here:

Interstitial vs liminal *

Stopping with Isaac at a historic covered bridge, we saw a mail carrier pull up in her truck, get out and clamber down to the river, take off her shoes, and put her feet in the water. Someone called out to her, asking a question, and she responded, "No, I'm just filling in for her today. No way she's ever giving up this route!"

Mark and I spent one blissful night in Brooklin at the inn of my dreams where you barely have to see another person (room key left inside the front door, friendly list of information and instructions, breakfast and coffee waiting in the morning with a tray to take it wherever you'd like). I didn't want to forget the off-season Christmas tree farm, roadside lilacs, clouds of fog, tiny white forest flowers, farmers market in an empty fairgrounds, friendly plant people, the sound of someone practicing the French horn while we ate fried fish by the Bagaduce River, Matt carrying Clover down his porch steps, miles of blueberry barrens, dreamy Naskeag Point at dusk.

This week+ in animals:

SEALS, four or five of them sunning on a rock (I thought they were rocks themselves as I came up over a rise, low tide on Harriman Point), until they spotted me and slid off into the water, one of them leaping like a freaking dolphin. A couple of them hung around, bobbing around, their heads turning to look at us, for a long time.

That squirrel that Adam and I observed trying to scale the bird feeder, shimmying up the wet pole only to slide back down to the bottom (sound of a sad trombone), over and over again.

A fox I didn't see, reported by Adam and Jeannette ("Portland has such small coyotes!").

Great egrets on the Back Cove, as Melissa and I walked past in pursuit of ice cream.

Turkeys taking their own sweet time to cross the road.

Literal ants in my pants: I moved the compost pile to a new location, pausing to google "ANTS IN COMPOST" because there was some serious tiny ant action going on in there. After a while, I realized they were scaling my shovel and clambering up my pant legs, biting my feet, crawling inside my jeans. I squashed dozens. A treat for my neighbors: me dancing around, smacking myself and yelling, "Fuck you!" 

*No idea.