The Most Beautiful Nephew In the World

and his favorite yoga mat, my brother Ben

"I'm leaving now to go to the hospital and meet him," said Mom, "but I already know he's the smartest, most beautiful baby in the whole world."

Of course he is. He's related to us!

We Didn't Mean To Break the Boat

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Boats and Beaches

The wind was up, the boats were in the water, and it was warm enough not to worry about an accidental tip-test into the lake. My friend Stephanie had come up with me from New York for the holiday weekend, and I don't think she had ever been sailing. "Don't worry," I said, "I'm a certified sailing instructor. I can teach you in an hour." It's true, I've done it.

Still, it had been a few years since I had been sailing on my own. Last summer, I let my brother Ben do all the actual sailing when we went out briefly on the Sunfish, because I wasn't sure I would still have the feel for it. So before I put Stephanie on board, I took the Sunfish out for a spin on my own. It turns out that sailing small craft is like riding a bike -- actually, better, because I falter an awful lot more when I haven't been on a bike that long! After a quick jaunt out and back, I ran aground on the much shallower-than-expected lake bottom, picked up Stephanie, and headed out to "sea."

Meanwhile, Dad was having a great time on his "new," "free to a good home" Force 5 sailboat. The father of his old high school buddy had this boat sitting around that he hadn't used in a long time, and he recently gave it to Dad. He and my brother had to re-fiberglass some large sections of the hull, and the missing top third of the mast had to be mail-ordered, but now it was ready to sail, and Dad was more than willing and able!

Stephanie and I launched at about the same time in the Sunfish. A few fishermen out in a small boat shouted, "Great sail!" across the water before powering quietly out of our way. Passing Dad, I shouted an old family favorite, "Swallows and Amazons forever!" He was definitely having a great time, heeling up on edge and flying over the water. We couldn't get going nearly as fast in the fickle wind of the small lake.

After awhile, Stephanie and I brought the Sunfish in, and I hopped on the Force 5 with Dad to try his new "go-fast boat." It certainly gave the feel of speed, the wind in my hair, the heel of the boat. We were hit with a particularly strong gust of the inconsistent wind, and I felt sure we had reached that critical angle that you can't recover from and were about to flip her over. As the sail inched closer to the water, I braced my feet under the lip of the cockpit opposite and leaned back as far as I could manage.

Then, all of a sudden, the hull was flat in the water, so was the sail, and Dad was gone, flown off into the water behind me. The mast had snapped clean off near the hull where someone had redrilled an extra pair of holes to reattach the boom. It only proves what Dad always says: "A free boat is the most expensive kind!"



For dinner, we went out to the sea in Portland for lobster. It was a great weekend away from the city, everything the Swallows might have wished for!

From Boats and Beaches

2 Wilderness Memoirs

Brooklyn, NY, USA

I'm working on two major writing projects right now: a set of novels about wilderness conservation and wolf preservation in Montana, and what finally seems like a successful attempt to write a memoir of my Peace Corps service. One morning, perusing the popular East Village McNally Jackson Bookstore, I found myself in the memoir section. I spotted some phenomenal memoirs I had already read, like human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi's Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope. I walked out with two memoirs I could consider "research" for my current projects: Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout by Philip Connors, and Here If You Need Me by Rev. Kate Braestrup.

In Fire Season, Connors leaves the urban jungle of New York City journalism for a short vacation with a friend serving as a lookout in the Gila National Forest, and quickly finds himself with a new career: fire-spotting by summer, bartending by winter. I picked it up because one of my novels takes place mostly in a fictional disused Forest Service cabin like the one Connors spends his summers in (except mine is in Montana), and I thought I could pick up some good atmosphere. I did that. But along the way, I got absorbed into his world, seduced into the idea of a long, golden summer alone on a mountain peak, a man and his typewriter and his mostly-loyal dog.

I live in New York, as Connor did, but I grew up in the countryside. I appreciate the yearning for the open trail, of wilderness and wild as far as the eye can see, as I experienced it backpacking the Appalachian Trail with my Girl Scout troop. Even in the depths of the Central Park Bramble at midsummer, you don't get that. But like Kerouac and the college kid who was supposed to be Connors' once-a-fortnight relief, I don't think I would last. I found myself envying Connors' ability to be completely alone with himself and not lose himself.

From April Flowers

I think Kate Braestrup's world is far more manageable, though it emerged from tragedy instead of ennui. I bought Here If You Need Me because I'd heard her speak on the WNYC program On Being. When her husband, a Maine State Trooper, dies in a car accident, she takes up his dream of becoming a Unitarian Universalist chaplain, eventually becoming the chaplain of the Maine Warden Service. What started as following her husband's dream turns out to be exactly what Kate needed for herself. As she writes about waiting with families, accompanying wardens on their rounds, and locating the occasional body, she learns what it means to be present. Being a chaplain, she finds, is only sometimes about praying together or confronting grief. Sometimes it's just about listening with an open heart. It's not about making sense of the world so much as being in the world and really seeing it, feeling it, appreciating it.

Kate's book is about grief, and I did cry. It's also about finding humor, and I laughed more than I cried. Most of all, it's about living a life of faith that is gentle and nonjudgemental, that opens the heart. When she references scripture, it is to bring the text alive in new and unexpected ways, lending it direct relevance to the simple things in life. She writes in a free associative style that should be confusing, especially after the more traditionally linear narrative of Connor's Fire Season. Instead, Braestrup's Here If You Need Me flows from scene to backstory to scene to theology and back to scene so seamlessly that I had finished the book much faster than I was ready for it to be over.

From Lake in Maine

Leaving Maine in the Morning

My Parents' House
S. Bridgton, Maine, USA

Maine Miniatures

S. Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Winter Miniatures

Last night's wind reshaped a lot of the snow around here. It also brought down a tree along my parents' property line, narrowly missing the neighbor's house.

I went out to photograph that, but had much more fun playing with my camera's macro function.

From Winter Miniatures

Let It Snow!

Bridgton & Denmark, Maine, USA

From Let It Snow!

I love coming to Maine in the winter! Especially when it snows, which hasn't been nearly enough in recent years. But today there was enough snow for downhill skiing, snowmobiling and other tourist draws in Maine. So Dad and I took our cameras out to see what we could capture.

We started in Pondicherry Park in Bridgton, Maine, where a new covered bridge went in along a new footpath through the bog in the middle of town.

We checked out the north end of Moose Pond in the shadow of Shawnee Peak ski area.

Then we drove down along the lake, through the middle of downtown Denmark, Maine, a classic New England town.

From Let It Snow!

Ben's Boat

somewhere near Freeport, Maine, USA

From $800 Boat

After a bit of a set-back in which his car died, my brother now has a new truck to go with his fix-'er-upper boat. The truck probably cost him several times what the boat did, but the truck is immediately roadworthy, and the boat.... Well, what do you get for an $800, 29-foot sailboat?

On one hand, you get a mess. The hatches are dry-rotted splinters, the port berth (above) is completely unusable, there are holes in the hull.... He hopes to live on this boat in the spring, but it needs a new electrical system, a toilet, a stove and ... well, everything! On the other hand, he also has an opportunity to redesign the living space, like inserting a chart table into that port berth. Follow his progress on his blog, $800 Liveaboard, because despite the mountain of work ahead of him, this is one happy man!

Independence Day

Bridgton, Maine, USA


It's been a long time since I had a traditional American Independence Day celebration. I was in the U.S. this time last year, but I didn't really celebrate, because I didn't yet have the friends in New York I now have to celebrate with. This year, in contrast, I had to choose between celebrating with my friends in New York, a friend with a front row balcony to the fireworks in Boston, or my family in Maine.

Family in Maine was an excellent choice!


Last night we joined mobs of other tourists for fireworks at the local elementary school, and contributed to some of the fundraising efforts of townies (like a band trip to Montreal). We took my cousin's son to the parade in Bridgton, where he was an enthusiastic scavenger for candy, but the firetrucks' loud sirens sent him cringing in his Grammie's lap.

Then we had an awesome beachside lobster picnic, thanks to Grandpa who paid and my brother Ben with the new job slinging fish and lobsters at the docks in Portland.

I love my life of travel and adventure, but sometimes it's true ... There's no place like home!

From July 4, 2012

Maine!

S Bridgton, Maine, USA

It's so nice to be in Maine for vacation!

I went swimming in our little pond....

I took pictures of Grandpa's amazing flowers....

I practiced flower close-ups like the ones I so admire by Jennifer Khoury Photography....


And I played around with a unique way to get a photo of the house I've vacationed to in Maine all my life....

This is what vacation should be!

From Lake in Maine

Winter, At Last!

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

Naturally, we got beautiful snow the night before I had to leave....

From Real Snow At Last!

One of the things I was most looking forward to in moving back to America was real winter ... especially after living in Cairo! Maybe it's symptomatic of global climate change, or maybe it's just bad luck, but once again this is a terrible winter for snow!

Sure, I saw snow in the White Mountains on my way to Vermont. I mean, when there's no snow in the Kancamagus Pass, then global warming is a serious problem! But it wasn't the same as having snow at home.

I wish it had come sooner, so I could spend more time in it than the 20 minutes it took to snap these photos, but it was so wonderful and refreshing to see the world blanketed in white!

From Real Snow At Last!

Winter Waves

Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA

From Winter Waves

Mom and Dad have this regular circuit they like to make with guests, a circuit of the homes of the rich (think Pebble Beach, California, with colder weather!) and the rocky beaches of Cape Elizabeth, south of Portland, Maine. Not only do they take guests, but they also go themselves to practice the delicate art of wave photography.

They've been telling me about it for more than a year, and I was even doing a little wave photography of my own in Egypt. It's a challenge to get the sense of scale, the feeling of movement, and frame it all in an interesting way. But the waves I was trying to capture on the Red Sea and the North Coast had none of the scale and excitement of the ocean swell on the Maine coast.

Not only was the swell bigger, but there was a strong wind blowing offshore. As the waves broke into the wind, the spray would curl back over the froth in a plume. It was incredible, and good quality fun with the folks! Clearly, Dad thought so, too!

Christmas In Maine

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Christmas Eve, Christmas Day

After 3 years of "celebrating" Christmas in the Middle East, I managed to make it home to my parents' house, the family home in Maine. With Grandma and Grandpa living across the road and Nana, Auntie Di and my cousin Pete up from Massachusetts, it was a full house for our annual waffles-with-raspberry-sauce-and-whipped-cream Christmas brunch.

In the afternoon, Auntie Viv and George showed up from giving Christmas Sunday services up north, and there were more gifts to open. More importantly, Auntie Viv had brought half of Christmas dinner with her, and it was soon time to sit down for more food and merriment.

Merry Christmas!