Walking the Woods and the Water

It is inevitable that someone would re-trace - seriously - Patrick Leigh Fermor's journey across Europe.  Nick Hunt has done it in Walking the Woods and the Water:  In Patrick Leigh Fermor's Footsteps from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn (Nicholas Brearly, 2014).  I think I have to read Fermor's third installment first!

Between the Woods and the Water

It has taken me months - months! - to read the second installment in Patrick Leigh Fermor's mesmerizing travel trilogy about his trek across Europe in 1934.  But ultimately, Between the Woods and the Water (NYRB Classics, 2005) has been worth the effort, and if I slowed down a bit on the Great Hungarian Plain, so be it.  This volume ends with a stunning note that will make you put the book down and stare into middle distance as you try to comprehend what you have just been told.

It starts, however, exactly where A Time for Gifts left off - crossing the Danube into Hungary - and ends also on the Danube, but far far away at the famed Iron Gates.  The great river bookends Fermor's travels in this volume, which mostly occur inland through Hungary and Romania and other countries that were created by the Treaty of Versailles and the aftermath of the First World War, denuded in the Second World War, then isolated and destroyed by the Cold War.

But for the most part, Fermor avoids looking back, and stays in the present of his memories.  A central piece of this part of his trek is a throwback to a 19th c. way of life - travelling from one country house to another, visiting with counts and grafs and vons and zus who all have marvelously shabby but graceful country homes filled with artifacts and vast libraries and charming, cosmopolitain guests.   His innate British upper crustiness - read, impeccable manners and good education - combined with his genuine curiosity and good humor help him to fit right into this golden world of summer picnics and exploring and shooting and and riding and dressing for dinner with the last Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and cocktails on the terrace and bicycle polo.  The owners of these idylls are all fascinating, well-educated, mostly polymaths who share Fermor's love of history and natural science and local tradition, and are perfectly willing to help him along his way, particularly if he stays for a few days.  Fermor has great affection for the many characters he meets, and describes them with humor and sympathy.* I could quote endlessly from his adventures here, which truly embody summer of a kind that few experienced then, and none will now.

Maybe this passage will do to give you a sense of the delights that awaited a young Englishman making his way across Transylvania in 1934.  He is near Arad, which had  been Hungarian but became Romanian after WW1.
  "During the hot midday hours, iced soda was splashed into the deep golden wine I keep mentioning.  This has a barbarous sound, but it was delicious - Spritzer the called it in German, and, in Magyar, hoszu lepes, 'a long step,' one of the many terms for the degrees of dilution.  Generically, all these wines were unmistakably from that particular region, yet each one seemed to change with the roof under which it was to be drunk.  it was ready for drinking from the moment the vintage had settled from fermentation, and after years in cool cellars it was beyond praise.  At dinner, decanter on decanter was emptied, undiluted now, by the light of candles in tall glass tulip-shaped shields.  Jas liked sitting late after dinner when rash and varied talk ranged far into the small hours.  When he lifted a forefinger, we would fall silent and listen to the nightingales for a minute.  A restless geometry of fire-flies darted about under the spatulate volume of the chestnut trees, and getting up one nigh to go to bed, we found emerald-coloured tree-frogs smaller than threepenny-bits clinging to the leaves like miniature green castaways on rafts."  (107)

But of course, you simply can't read Fermor's stories without the shadow of what is to come hanging overhead.  Where are all those houses now?  What happened to the people?  Here's what Fermor says:
  "Every part of Europe I had crossed so far was to be torn and shattered by the war; indeed except for the last stage before the Turkish frontier, all the countries traversed by this journey were fought over a few years later by two mercilessly destructive powers; and when war broke out, all these friends vanished into sudden darkness.  Afterwards the uprooting and destruction were on so tremendous a scale that it was sometimes years after the end of it all that the cloud became less dense and I could pick up a clue here and there and piece together what had happened in the interim.  Nearly all of them had been dragged into the conflict in the teeth of their true feelings and disaster overtook them all." (110)

It is not only war that destroys this way of life, but "progress."  Fermor's final weeks of this passage are spent on the Danube, near the Iron Gates - an area that was completely flooded in 1970 by the construction of a great hydro-electric dam in the late 1960s.  You can read about all of this on your own, thanks to the miracle of the internets.  But here is an example of what was lost not to war but to improvement.  Before the flood (I think that Fermor would like that biblical allusion, except he'd use antidiluvian or something far more polysyllabic) there was an island in the Danube, called Ada Kaleh that was still populated by descendants of the Turks who made it so far into what is now Central Europe.  Fermor spends a night in this perfect place.
  "Balconied houses gathered about the mosque and small workshops for Turkish Delight and cigarettes, and all round these crumbed the remains of a massive fortress.  Vine-trellises or an occasional awning shaded the cobbled lanes.  There were hollyhocks and climbing roses and carnations in whitewashed petrol tins, and the heads and shoulders of the wives who flickered about among them were hidden by a dark feredje - a veil pinned in a straight line above the brown and joining under the nose; and they wore tapering white trousers, an outfit which gave them the look of black-and-white ninepins.  Children were identically-clad miniatures of the grown-ups and, except for their unveiled faces, the little girls might each have been the innermost of a set of Russian dolls.  Tobacco leaves were hung to dry in the sun like strings of small kippers.  Women carried bundles of sticks on their heads, scattered grain to poultry and returned from the shore with their sickles and armfuls of rushes.  Lop-eared rabbits basked or hopped sluggishly about the little gardens and nibbled the leaves of ripening melons.  Flotillas of ducks cruised among the nets and the canoes and multitudes of frogs had summoned all the storks from the roofs."  (246)

It sounds lovely, but if you want the full picture, including the marvelous image of the men in the coffee house smoking hookahs and drinking coffee and raki, you'll just have to read it yourself.

*There are more personal connections this time.  Fermor makes a great friend in Istvan, the scion of one house, and takes a lover, Angela, for a few brief but charmed weeks.  And there's that romp in the hay after a naked swim, which is never detailed but sure sounds like a bit of whoopee. (137)

Maine 2015: We Took to the Woods - But Stayed at the Hotel

I really wanted to write another journal about our second trip to the idyllic Lakewood Camp on Lower Richardson Lake in central Maine.  And I will give you some highlights, so stay tuned.  But if you really want to know what it is like up there, you should just read Louise Dickinson Rich’s We Took to the Woods (Grosset & Dunlap, 1942), which is a memoir of her life in the very same woods – just a couple of miles from Lakewood Camps (which she refers to, jokingly, as the hotel) – albeit in the 1930s and 40s.  Rich’s wryly affectionate tone fits so perfectly into the piney Maine woods that you will never want to leave.  She makes it sound simultaneously kind of awful (no indoor plumbing) and perfectly marvelous (characters and adventures and warmth and humor, all delivered in a kind of friendly Katherine Hepburn style).  While we aren’t driving around the place in Packards, or lunching on endless canned goods, Rich’s tale will do more to lure you to the area than my little notes ever will.

5/22/15

We are pretty excited to be returning to Lakewood Camps for our second annual “fishing” weekend with our friends the Kafka-Gibbons.[1]  Boy let me tell you that it is a totally different drive to Maine when the sun is out.  Last year, (some) fear and trepidation and (lots of) clouds and rain.  This year, rainbows follow us in the launch’s wake, boding well for the weekend . . . except for an unusually stiff wind that makes our trip across the lake longer than it should be, and causes the flags at camp to stand straight out in a stiff salute as we arrive.  After our crossing I feel like I have eaten 500 York Peppermint Patties. 

It is pointed out to us but even we flatlanders can’t miss the unusually low level of the lake this year.  Maybe they didn’t have any spring rains, or perhaps there were a couple of hot days already that just made the snow evaporate rather than melt slowly into streams.  Whatever the cause, there is new rocky shoreline to explore, and the dock rides so high you could take a stand-up paddleboard under it.  (Not that you would want to – the lake temp is about 50 degrees.  But you get the visual.)

But o you cruel sun, you mocked us with your light and shallow warmth, so quick to dissipate as you set.  Now my fingers are so cold I can barely type. 

The thing about going to a camp like this is that it is exactly the same every year, even when it is not, and that is just how you want it to be.  So dinner is chicken parm and apple pie, as last year, but the lake is low and the dock looks different.  A little change is good, but pie for dessert should remain forever and always.

Another thing about going to a camp like this where everything is exactly the same every year is that you still wrestle with the big decisions, even if you’ve made them before.  Do we fish tomorrow or hike?  One-day or three-day fishing licenses?  Bag lunch or lunch in the lodge?  Will there be molasses cookies wherever we end up?  It takes forever to sort out these details, but that is the point. 

Despite firing up our Franklin stove before dinner, it is almost dead when we return because we lingered over the first of what will become a raging post-dinner Yahtzee habit.  So we stuff as many logs as can fit into the stove, put on more pajamas than we’ve ever worn in our lives, and try to sleep.  At least we won’t be hot. 

5/23/15

If you like a cool pillow and sheets, Lakewood Camps is the place for you.  If you stick your face out from under the sheets it gets very cold.  But under the sheets you are treated to a faint air de mothball.  

I think the sun came up beautifully this morning but it was too cold to go outside and see.  Word is that it was in the high 20s last night.  Paul, who may at times be a saint, brought me coffee.[2]  

Even the lodge is cold at breakfast.  That is cold.

We have moved up in the world because Delmar Cabin is pretty fancy.  The living room area is a little bigger than Welly, and it doesn’t tilt quite so much. And the porch roof is new.  Best of all, it is in a little enclave on the far side of the lodge, away from the other cabins, with just the K-G’s cabin, Trail’s End, next door.  It is like our own little compound which is pretty great.  There are even rustic street lights to show the path at night.  Before 9:30 of course.  After that, you'd better have your flashlight.  If you don’t remember all these details, check out last year’s journal for the deets.

In an effort to warm up, several of us take a very long walk this morning, while Paul just plunges in for a long fish down by the dam.  On our walk back we passed lots of fishermen hiking out to their cars with nary a fish.  Paul fished all day but Peter noted that the tranquility of his day was not disturbed by fish.  The boys are full of bon mots this weekend.  Paul says that there are no bad adventures, only bad planning.  He was careful to point out that he himself did not say this (what an excellent example of academic integrity!).  Nevertheless, this is why he has six sets of base layers for waders.

After that exhausting morning we nap outside under the blue sky wrapped in blankets not really sleeping but unable to form coherent thoughts or words and our eyes are most definitely closed.

If you are really lucky or maybe just in the right place at the right time, Whit will slip you a molasses cookie.  If you are really nice you will break it into small bits to share with your family.  But you could also just not tell anyone and eat it yourself. 

Patty takes me and Peter down to cast some flies after our nap and cookies.  It is quite beautiful but the river is indeed low.  And the wind wreaks havoc with our lines.  (Lines?  Sheets?  String?  In fishing, each piece of equipment has a special name.  I don’t remember many of them, although I am immensely proud of my new waders and ginormous wading boots.) 

Tonight's meal is another winner, from the popovers to the blueberry pie (prime rib in between).  Maureen stops by the table après to share news of former guests but I concentrate on pie.  

5/24/15

The stove had me worried last night but it is behaving now and finally starting to send out some heat.  Although it is more comfortable this morning than yesterday.  Possibly even 40!

Bill notes that there are any number of charming details in our cabin.  Like the light in the bathroom that you turn on by tightening the bulb in its socket.  (Turning it off is trickier.)  And the many chairs that have "give "which is a euphemism for torn and sagging seats.  The bureau drawers that require two hands to open because they are so old and swollen and have spent years in cold and damp and heat and dry.  And those mothball-y blankets.  This all provides an excellent visual/sensory background for We Took to the Woods. 

Today was the kind of day (mostly) that you expect to have at camp in Maine. Glorious blue sky, warm sun, a touch of breeze to make the trees talk to each other.  Paul takes me and Bill fishing in the morning and Izzy clomps along cute as can be in her waders and oversize sunglasses, to splash around and keep us company.  

She courted the muse of the river and spontaneously started creating original poetry.  Here are her favorites:

You splish and splash but don’t get wet

You see a flash, and then you fret

Because that bass you did not get.

Whit’s cookies are delicious!

And so are all the other dishes.

No electricity at night makes me superstitious,

But when I see the generator, I’m not suspicious

In the day, you can catch lots of fishes

My only wish is

            To go back to Lakewood Camps

After this she simply starts narrating the entire fishing process in a sort of epic form, with heroic language like  "the fish gigantic" and so on.  It is hugely entertaining.

Another morning undisturbed by fish (for us – Paul caught one later in the day) until Bill caught . . .himself!  He took a tumble in a rock and managed to hook his pinky.  Since Paul was scoffing at the local custom and fishing with barbed hooks, this presented a bit of a challenge.  But if you run a fishing camp you have to be prepared for this sort of thing and it turns out that Whit is also an expert at removing hooks from body parts.  His says that his secret just to pour as much betadyne as possible over the wound, but in fact the removed the (what kind of fly) painlessly and efficiently.  (Although he did tell Bill not to watch at one point.) Anyway, now we have a story to tell and any pain was dulled by roast beef sandwiches and homemade chocolate pudding for lunch.  

You feel a bit indulgent, almost shamefacedly so, when you have lunch in the dining room on a nice day.  Shouldn't you be out building character?[3]  But of course if you were, you would miss chocolate pudding and that would not be smart, and you might just lose a character point for stupidity.  That is something you can ponder on the way to your post-prandial nap.

Quite a bit of canoeing and kayaking also happened today and Peter had such a good time fishing with Paul that he stayed down at the river after Paul came back up to give the girlies a lesson on the dock.  You surely know the saying that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day but if you teach him to fish he will eat for a week. Paul and Patty have taught us all how to fish so how come I am still doing all the cooking in our family?

We don’t hear as many loons this year (they are probably too cold) but while the girlies and I are out paddling we actually spot one that might be swimming with a chick.  It gives our flotilla a wide berth.

We have achieved the state of relaxation where conversation happens more in fits and starts as we sit on porches gazing out at the lake, and includes random comments like “hel-lo dead mosquito in my drink” from Izzy.  If you realize that this state of mental melt, not lots of fish, is the desired result of a visit to Lakewood Camps, then you have achieved true understanding.  Character, schmarachter.

5/25/15

It is always a good idea to get up early one morning and sit on your porch to see the day.  Of course, it has to be warm enough that a blanket and pajamas will do, which today is finally the case.  There are lots of birds twittering - there always are here - and a little bit of ripple on the lake, and a motorboat speeds by in the distance.  Who is up and out so fast so early?  Someone anxious to get a fish, no doubt, therefore possibly someone who has not achieved mental melt.  It is overcast this morning, which doesn't bode well for the day but makes for a lovely pastel sunrise over the lake.  

This is my favorite part of any day, watching the water wake up.  Another boat makes its way across the far side of the lake, and swings in a wide arc toward the camp’s dock.  Who is arriving now, and why?  Who is leaving early, and why would you do that?  Whit comes down his apron to bid those unlucky breakfast-missers adieu, and brings the cart up for the next unlucky souls.

Dinner last night ended with pumpkin pie which was difficult for me, but if that is the hardest trial I have to bear here I think I will survive.

Here's how hard a winter it was up here.  The ice has been out of the lake maybe 15 days.  When Whit and Maureen arrived the first week of May, there was still ice between the cabins.  Some of the south-facing, sheltered daffodils are blooming right now, but more are still just thinking about it.  The flowering trees have buds but that's it, and the rest of the trees have that misty early spring green, but nothing particularly robust in the way of leaves yet.  Maureen tells us that when they get up here in early May, they have to brace some of the buildings to stand up straight, because the snow and ice made them all lean so much.  The ground under our cabins is still frozen, so they won’t actually settle until later in the summer, and then, says Maureen, “We’ll see what we’ve got.”  That's just how it goes in Maine when the winter is hard.  

Next year we might come over Labor Day weekend, which would be splendid because then we could swim.  Paul swam this year, and claimed it was manageable.  But he did put on a lot of clothes for dinner that night.  In any case, we are glad to be planning our return to “the hotel,” even if it is more than a year from now.[4]

My city jewelry hangs cold and heavy as we motor back across the lake to The Outside.

---

[1] The K-Gs are down one teenage boy (Gabe) but up one super-friendly sister (Cathy), so while the overall amount of food consumed has probably decreased, the chat factor is increased exponentially.  She's a talker, warned Patty.  This is an example of the pot calling the kettle black. 

[2] At Lakewood Camps I drink coffee because tea feels too refined.  Plus which, I expect it might be a challenge to get a decent cuppa.

[3] Another reason to love Louise Dickinson Rich:  she feels that living in the Maine woods, particularly with no plumbing, in the winter, builds character.  (17)

[4] Richardson describes it as follows:  “Middle Dam is quite a community.  There is the dam itself, a part of the system for water control on the Androscoggin, with the dam-keeper and his family, Renny and Alice Miller and their three children, in year-round residence.  Then in summer the hotel is open.  We only call it a hotel; it is really a fishing camp.  In winter it is closed but there is a caretaker, Larry Parsons, who stays in with his wife, Al, and a hired man or two.  So the permanent population of Middle Dam hovers at around nine, and that is comparative congestion.  We get our mail and supplies through Middle, and it is the point of departure for The Outside, so its importance is all out of proportion to its population.”  (16)