Deer Isle, An Almost Perfect Winter Getaway

Come February in Maine, people start praying for sun and signs of spring. Those fortunate enough actually get to escape the wintry north for  a week or more to head to the warmer climates of the South or West (and then post pictures on Facebook). But then there’s those poor bastards who get left behind, who grumble about the 5 feet of snow on our doorsteps, shovel our cars out for what seems like the thousandth time, all the while muttering “I’m so over this!”

And while I too wish for warmer weather, I chose instead to spend my winter vacation further north, headfirst into the storm, to the small island of Deer Isle. About 3 hours north of Portland and an hour south of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, Deer Isle is connected to the mainland by a big scary bridge  and the town all but shuts down in the winter. Perfect for spending a long weekend, and here are my reasons why:

1. 80’s DJ Night at Marlintini’s. Deer Isle has only one real bar (actually located in Stonington) which is only open during the summer season, so during the  winter islanders are forced to drive 2 towns away to the nearest bar. The joy in this is that by going to bar in another town, no one knows who you are most of the time. And if you’re like me and hardly ever frequent bars anymore, you lose all inhibition before you even have a drink, therefore you can dance like you just don’t care and showcase some of your best mom dance moves. Also, $2 PBRs.

2. Staying with parents. Say what you will, but I love going to stay with my folks. It’s free, there’s unlimited food, I don’t have to do my own laundry and they love to watch my kid, leaving me to feel like the teenager I once was when I lived with them. For 30 to 60 minutes anyway, until child wants her mommy again.

3. Peace and quiet. For an island, Deer Isle is pretty large acreage-wise, so there are a lot of woods and countless trails to explore, either with snowmobiles, skis or snowshoes (I prefer the latter.) When the only noise I hear are birds singing and my own labored breathing, I’m liking it.  

4. Snowmobiling. As mentioned above, lots of trails to ride on. However, since it was only my second time ever maneuvering one of these things, I stuck to laps around the field behind said parents house. 30 mph is really exhilarating! (And so is getting stuck. Whoops.)

5. Breakfast at the Diner. Though it didn’t happen this time around, the Diner is the place to have breakfast, especially on a Sunday morning. The food itself isn’t outstanding, but its the only restaurant open year-round and you’re guaranteed to see someone you know, making it a nice social gathering spot. And on a weekday in the middle of winter, there’s no wait for tables so you and your company are free to sit and have coffee for 2 hours. Plus your kid can run around and everyone will think its cute.

6. The ocean views. Enough said. 

7. Very, very quiet downtown. Deer Isle-Stonington is a tourist destination, so in the summer main street Stonington turns into a one-way street, only with traffic in either direction and parking on two sides of the street and people (tourists) cluelessly walking in the middle of road. It’s quite the mess to navigate. So in the off-season, it’s nice to drive leisurely through town without feeling like you need to flip someone off or the fear you might run someone over.

8. Bumpy roads= good gas mileage. Okay, I’m not sure if frost heaves every 50 feet will help increase gas mileage, but it does make you slow way down (if not, you may end up leaving half your undercarriage laying in the road.) And its fun to say “Wheee!” with every bump to entertain your toddler in the backseat.

9. $3 gym sessions. No kidding, $3 a day to work out (or better yet, $35 a month for a membership.) On the days when its -10 with the wind chill and you just cant bear to suit up for a brisk run outside, there’s nothing better than breaking a sweat on a treadmill while watching cheesy Hallmark channel movies starring Cameron Diaz.

10. It’s pretty. Even with all the snow and ice and frozen everything, with the bitter cold and colder ocean breezes, Deer Isle is pretty. In fact, all of Maine is pretty and the perfect place for a vacation, summer or winter.

 

I’ve spent a lot of time wishing I were anywhere but Maine (as I’m sure some people feel about their home state as well), but in my olden age of the late 20s, I’m starting to come around. And I think you should too! Because Maine is The Way Life Should Be (just look at our Welcome signs.)

Valentine’s Day Visions

Happy Valentine’s Day weekend from Maine! It’s snowing (actually blizzarding is the correct term) yet again, surprise, surprise so we’ve been stuck inside for the majority of the weekend. Which leaves lots of time for entertaining a toddler and pondering the near future. Fun!

But first, in toddler news, Friday was Josie’s last day of daycare. Bittersweet of course, but she ended on a high note: she had a face full of boogers and had been up since 5 am (cold season is just lovely) but the school was having a Valentine’s party so she wore hearts and a tutu and looked super cute. Plus she came home with a bunch of sweet cards and snacks (to share with Mommy I assumed.)

To celebrate my last day of me-time, I took the dog for an absolutely frigid walk on the beach and moped around for the rest of day. I was feeling sad for Josie, not for myself, to be done with daycare. I know she benefitted from it, but at least now I know that she can handle school and days without Mom just fine. She is such an independent little… person. It blows my mind sometimes. Anyway, I’m looking forward to round 2 of Mommy & Child time and have lots of plans for us. It would just be helpful if the snow melted before, oh… July.

So we’ve made some changes to our Wonder Drive vision. Instead of spending the summer (and our savings) tooling around the country, we’re taking a more sustainable approach and working to get a web series Tyler and a mutual friend started a few years back off the ground and running. If it’s successful (which I have no doubt it will be), traveling will be part of the job, plus we’ll be making an income while we do it, which is key. It’s very exciting, but of course, this could take some time and a lot, lot, lot of hard work. I’m not intimidated by that, as it coincides with my vision of working from home, being self-employed (eventually) and homeschooling my little babies (when the time comes!)

What does intimidate me, or rather what I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around, is whats happening with our Wonder Drive idea. I don’t want to say we’re doing the web series instead of our trip, because we’ve been discussing how to do both possibly, from maybe just doing little micro-adventures throughout the summer or waiting until later in the year. The details and logistics trying to achieve both are messy and convoluted and makes my head hurt.

All I do know is that Wonder Drive is a dream of ours I’m not willing to let go. It may be rash and irresponsible and silly to drive and camp across the country with a little kid and live off savings. But it’s not silly at all to make a dream a reality; if we wait for the perfect time, or even a better time, we may not end up doing it at all. I’ve pushed many a dream of mine to the back-burner because I thought I didn’t have enough money, or I worried about the details, or didn’t have the confidence, or worried about what other people thought, or just life got in the way. There’s a million excuses out there why NOT to live a dream; but all it takes is one reason WHY you should or just one person believing in you to make it happen.

I believe if you have that nagging feeling, that gut instinct, the little voice saying go for it, you have to listen and just give in to it. I’ve learned that by not following your intuition, bad feelings are created and they’re hard to get rid of. Makes sense on paper right? But following your instincts can be a hard practice when there’s a million external voices and reasons telling you otherwise, plus the ol’ voice of reason in our own heads. I go back and forth with my decisions all the time, but I can’t shake the feeling that I really just want to live the life I envision and stop waiting for it. I want to play a larger role in my own life, live deliberately and have fun doing it!

Maybe creating the web series is the vehicle for traveling across the country; maybe we should just go for it and forget the rest for a little while. Maybe we should just go live in a yurt in the woods and become hermits and kill our own food and raise our child among the wild. (Actually, now that I’m thinking about it…) What I’m getting at is that choosing a fork in the road is scary and hard, but its better than not doing anything at all, or doing something that doesn’t feel right.

To quote Emilio Estevez’s character in the film The Way:

You don’t choose a life. You live a life.

Maine Winter Magic

I finally got my snowshoes out of hibernation to enjoy the 6 inches of fluffy fresh powder. Hiking with B at Ferry Beach State Park.

Hitting the Sylvan Trail on a frigid -7 degree morning.

Though we live in the fairly flat area of southern Maine, the Saco Bay Trails group maintain “a permanent network of easily accessible, well-maintained, well-marked and well-known trails through the Saco Bay Area that are used by a wide range of people with a broad range of abilities.” http://www.sacobaytrails.org

My furry friend waiting for treats. Who knew a Georgia peach could be such a snow bunny?

And last but not least, my little person enjoying the fluffy white stuff.

Winter’s Trials and Errors

I think there’s a swing set in there somewhere.

I think the winter doldrums are starting to rear their ugly heads. Up here in the Northeast we have just been pounded with snow, with more on the way. Normally I wouldn’t mind the snow so much (snowmen! sledding! snowshoeing!) but it has just been so damn COLD that I haven’t even enjoyed it, or had the urge to go out and get some exercise. Out of sheer necessity to get out of the house, I’ve managed to get the babe and dog out in the yard for some fresh air but for no more than an hour, lest Josie get frostbite on her little extremities.

What’s really eating at me though (and I’m using the weather as a cover-up), is that Josie is in her fifth week of daycare and I’m already thinking of taking her out, not because she’s not enjoying it, but because of the expense. I hadn’t anticipated it would take this long to land a part-time gig, and the longer its taking, the more discouraged I’m getting. True, I do enjoy some alone time but at what cost? I’m not even sure what I could make part-time would cover the cost of her being in daycare 3 days a week. It may be a totally selfish thought, and the mother’s guilt is kicking in big time, but I have the nagging idea that if she were to stay home full-time again I wouldn’t have to be looking for these bullshit, temporary jobs and my stress level would go way down. Or at least we’d be saving some money.

What I have found in my endless job seeking and extended time on my hands, is that working online is a totally viable option. I started this blog as an outlet to write but have since discovered that I could actually be paid to write blogs, either my own or for others. Or if not that, there are a million ways to make money online. Maybe not earning a whole lot, but who cares? If I can be semi self-employed, work from home, or better yet, work from ANYWHERE, I’m in. Seriously, sign me up somewhere.

Josie, the ultimate stress-buster.

I guess I hadn’t really expected that finding a paying job after being out of the workforce for two years would be so difficult. I’m not sure if it’s the type of work I’m going for, the time of year, or my gap in unemployment, but man oh man. It’s hard. It’s easy to get pissed that stay-at-home parents don’t get the credit (or pay, honestly) to stay home and do the hardest job they’ll ever experience. But I try not to dwell on this too much. I know I’ve been sounding a tad negative, but I do know that the most important thing is my child and that in the end, this will all be worth it. Snuggling with Josie in bed this morning, listening to her giggle as we played, seeing her run into a room full of kids at daycare (probably so grateful to be out of the house!) my heart literally swells with love and whatever stress I’m experiencing just poofs away for a moment.

So maybe I should just suck it up, get a job, accept we’ll be losing a bit of money and let her enjoy and learn from her brief time in daycare. Or maybe not, I still don’t know. I wish I could end on a decisive note, but that would just not be my style. So I shall end with a quote instead by Cynthia Rylant, author of the lovely children’s book All In A Day:

” Underneath that great big sky the earth is all a-spin. This day will soon be over and it won’t come back again.”

Cynthia Rylant/Nikki McClure “All In A Day”

Trip Planning & Curve Learning

Amid the more than 27″ inches of snow we’ve been blessed with this week (ah, winter finally!), significant other and I have been elbows deep in trip planning, finances, and still for me, job seeking. Not too thrilling for the outside world, but for us, it is so exciting because it feels like we’re really moving forward.

Speaking of moving forward, the YMCA has been having a 2-week trial of free facilities, so while the rest of the world is caught in a swirling mess of snow, rain and wind, I have been luxuriously swimming laps in a 81-degree pool. (And by laps I mean swimming to one end, resting, then dog-paddling to the other end. I’m no fish but I love the water!) I envision swimming in oceans just as warm, frolicking on beaches with Josie and paddle-boarding the day away. With a few hours dedicated to work, of course. The more I see it, the more I believe it, and the more I want it! Of course, our trip will be across the United States with more hiking in forests than swimming in bath-water oceans, but you’ve got to let your mind go to that place when it’s in the single digits here in Maine.

Since the idea of our Wonder Drive sprouted, we’ve been doing a lot of research of families who have also hit the road, either for short or long periods of time. One site we’ve come across is Discover. Share. Inspire., a sort of how-to site dedicated to families who travel, specifically financing travel and what they call ‘world-schooling’ their 6 children. Our biggest obstacle yet in trip planning has been obviously how to fund it and this website is a great resource. It’s got us really thinking about what we can do, what we can learn and doing the nitty-gritty legwork like working on our budget (which in a weird way is kind of fun.) What better way to spend a cold winter day!

We just got our brand-spankin’-new Nat Geo Adventure Atlas today in the mail and I’ve also been strolling down memory lane looking at photographs I took while driving across the country in 2009 and ’10 (soon to be on the Prints page), so it’s easy to find the sunny brightness in all this cold weather. But ’tis the weekend and I fully intend to embrace the Maine winter: play in the snow with my toddler, dye some snowmen molds (Josie says thanks Auntie for the birthday gift!) and make snow ice cream with sprinkles. And then maybe hit the pool.

A Walk in the (Almost) Woods

Photo: Tyler Walker

Ahh, winter sickness. After more than a week straight of quarantine with Josie, we’re back into the world once again! She’s back to daycare this week and I’m keeping myself busy with job seeking and to-do lists. In fact, this morning I woke up to so many things to do today, I had to write everything down so my head didn’t literally explode. A free day! Must. Do. EVERYTHING.

But you know what, after I dropped her off at school I went for an impromptu hike, which was NOT on my list. The dog was in the backseat really needing to do her business, so I drove to a nearby trail. Clad in my pajamas and Bean boots, and it being a whopping 17 degrees out, we hiked almost 2 miles through the almost woods, as most of the trail paralleled I-95, Maine’s only major highway. Along with the cacophony of morning commuter traffic and semi-trailers, the dog and I crunched through the snow and ice, feeling the sun through the trees and following deer tracks. It was lovely.

With the idea of our cross-country trip taking shape, I have been inundating my mind with overwhelming thoughts of the future, jobs, careers, school, where to live, what do I want in life, even what’s the PURPOSE of life… It’s crazy and exhausting. Instead of letting thoughts come and go, it’s like they take up permanent residence in my mind instead of a short little vacation. Like building a frickin’ brick building instead of a week in a furnished cottage. But in the woods, hiking at a brisk pace (brr, chilly!), the thoughts are still there but not quite so loud. A friend of mine recently shared her experience of going to church and the positivity she felt from that, and I realized that maybe where I get my positivity from is the outdoors – the woods (even almost woods), the mountains, the ocean!

Just another reason to take a leap of faith and embark on our family’s cross-country adventure. I see us hiking (probably at a toddler’s pace) in beautiful forests, in the desert, camping under the stars, Beasley running free of a leash, putting her hound nose to work. I see Tyler shooting video and myself being inspired to write! Take photographs! Be silly with our kid! Really sharing the things we love with her. Having some real family adventure time!

In the meantime, I’m encouraged to take a pragmatic approach to life: working towards a goal, one step at a time. So, I shall continue my yoga practice with Yoga With Adriene (try it, she’s really good!), hike with dog in the winter, with child come springtime, and keep the overwhelming thoughts at bay.  After all, to quote Charlie Brown, “Life is like an ice cream cone. You have to learn to lick it!”

Sun Is Shining

Beasley and Josie take a stroll.

The child has an ear infection, I am severely congested with no energy, and the dog is antsy because she needs a walk, but the sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day. And that makes me feel good.

My goal was to post 2 blogs a week, but this week has certainly thrown me for a loop. Child has been down with the cold and not getting any better, so after a second visit to the doctor’s this week, it’s been confirmed she has an ear infection. A slight sigh of relief, since we didn’t know what was going on, but now she’s on the road to recovery, yay! But she hasn’t been to school at all (and it’s only her second week!) and now I have her cold, so I haven’t had the luxurious free time to write that I had last week. Ah, but it’s okay. I’ve traded free time for sick snuggles, popsicles and endless episodes of Curious George. 

So while she’s napping, which I should be also, I have a small window to write a bit. And drink more coffee.

It’s been a trying week, between staying inside with a sick, whiny child, getting sick myself, trying to find a job and having serious conversations with the man about the future. But while getting J’s breakfast ready at the crack of dawn this morning, we saw the most beautiful sunrise through the kitchen window and I just felt the stress sighhhhh away from my body.  All at once, I saw the 3 of us (4, with dog) experiencing sunrises like that all the time while we’re on our camping-across-America trip and it made me SO optimistic and excited for the future. Which is a direct contradiction to how I was feeling when having said serious conversation days ago. Whew.

If all it takes is a sunrise to make me happy, then bring it on nature.