Bibliography — Tom Baldwin

I had not lived long enough in Maine to write an epic of its ways, though in the seven years of summering there, I had learned why Maine had been so beloved by my parents, and equally, by my Maine-born relatives who have consigned their entire lives to living there. In my own quest for sanctuary, I had chosen Maine as a welcoming respite—therapeutic to my injured spirit from too many years of lingering sorrows and regrets. Yet the peace I sought would become elusive, when I was to learn to my dismay of how parochial can be the human nature that thrives in a rural hamlet; as, to my great amazement, I was to be confronted by the oddest of local characters, who became far more confrontational than I had ever encountered in all my prior experiences. Whether this peculiar nature relates directly to those Maine folk who possess a proclivity for personal solitude and an unfettered independence, who observe with a rural outlook, any intrusion outsiders who come from elsewhere as an invasion to be stifled by whatever means exists.

The Township of Denmark, Maine and I first became acquainted with each other during an extraordinary summer Saturday in early September of 2002. Only once in a while, at some place on earth, does dawn awaken to a special morning at exactly the right time—one so nearly perfect in all its aspects, so invigorating to the spirit, so uplifting and intoxicating—that it infects one’s very soul with an overwhelming sense of well-being—when you can actually sense the stage has been set for an irrevocable and promising change in your life.

You can sense an optimism in such a morning, when the air nuzzles you lovingly, when it is extra-specially bright and clear, the humidity low, the temperature adjusted to elegant, when you strive to immerse yourself in the pure exuberance of it all—especially when such a day blossoms unexpectedly in concert with time and space conjoined, forming up just suddenly as an enveloping sense of serene well-being—like a blanket of inspiring tranquility.

Such a day materializes as a coincidental moment, dawning as that perfect blend of sublime temperature in harmony with a listless breeze, allowing an almost hushed presence on the lake, its surface tension intact and mirror-finished, unscathed by winds, so smooth and glassy that the skyscape—delicately painted out with wisps and billows of clouds—is as upside down as right side up in its reflection. If you are in an opportune spot, its placid expanse will be punctuated occasionally—by a rising bass, by the wake of a meandering loon, by a noisy flight of startled mallards.

On this particular morning, as we launched our kayaks onto the pond from the public launch area there, we were scarcely away on our first one hundred feet of paddling when a bald eagle swooped downward to just above our heads, so swiftly that instinctively we ducked down when we heard it’s wings; and actually, I saw clearly only the receding white of its tail as it flew off into a dense pine stand and vanished.

Whew! Wasn’t that a sign of a good day coming!

Giving voice to an inanimate wonder of Earth…

No beach-loving person, no beachside home or coastal resort should be without a copy of this upcoming album—In Conversation with Sand—a collection of fifty reflective poems illustrated with dramatic interpretations— intended to be placed casually apparent on a coffee table, or facing outward from a bookshelf, or on bedside tables—offering moments of pleasurable recollection or enhancing the anticipation and awareness of anyone who either soon or has already felt grains of sand give way beneath their toes—grains that once were mountainsides and palisades—and watched their footprints trailing behind them being erased by the Sea.

In Conversation with Sand is sure to awaken your inner spirit, perhaps deepen your appreciation of the awesome presence of our beach lands and what happens upon and within them…and without them.

It is a warm day in late July. We are on a fishing hike in an increasingly sultry midmorning heat when,

The trail we have cleared begins near our lakeside cabin and runs through the forest to where, like a protective arm, it wraps around the nub of Turtle Cove, a shallow indent tucked away in a tranquil recess of Chogabunk Pond, in the quaint rural hamlet of Paradise, Maine. It is a beautifully quiet cove, shallow, with water so clear that its rich population of lazing sun turtles basking beside belching bullfrogs and, here and there, a solitary pickerel mingling with hovers of speckled trout and hunky bass, are as easy to observe as peering downward, into an aquarium.

Today, I am guiding for my fishing squad: my four grandsons—Ashton, Corey, Drew, and Wyatt. Each boy is armed with a baited spin rod. All are carefree about life and care not a hoot about woodland lore. Each boy is anxious only that the biggest fish in the pond will soon bite his hook, but never, not ever, bite a hook of his siblings.

Although usually upbeat and gleeful, Drew has been first to turn glum. He'd landed a good bass earlier on his very first cast from a rock ledge that juts far out into the cove. In his haste to set his hook during a second strike, he's just lost what he's certain was another keeper.

"An even bigger one!" Drew complains. The loss has darkened his mood.

Corey too, is in a pout. Corey hasn't had a single nibble. Upon hearing Drew griping, Corey has become agitated and gone sour. The fish are against him! Like always!

"It isn't fair!" Corey cries shrilly, blinking a tear as he flies into a tantrum. For sure, he'd picked a bum lure.

"Gramps, you made me choose the wrong lure!"

"When we choose, that choice is ours," I reply, advisedly. ‘When you choose, the choice is yours. Besides, isn't that the very same plug you caught two keepers on, only yesterday?"

Corey refuses to be baited, preferring to wallow in his moment of misery. He stomps his feet in frustration and scowls at me until his face turns red.

Ashton has only made matters seem worse for the other boys. He's anticipating his third catch after his sixth hit. "I always catch the biggest and the most!" He taunts. "Dad says I'm a natural fish catcher." Despite his bravado, Ash has just snagged a dead tree limb with an errant cast that will cost him his favorite lure...a lemony white-spotted minnow...that now dangles like a holiday bangle from several feet of monofilament fishline, far above anyone's reach.

Resourceful as always, Ashton has brought with him extra lures in a metal tin, but after pondering his stash, he asserts he's left the only lure right for present conditions in his main tackle box, under his bed, way back at Camp.

"Will you go get it for me?" Ashton asks me craftily, testing my devotion.

"There's more to fishing than fish!" I counsel. "It's how you fish that counts most, not what you're fishin' with."

A good boat doesn't come about overnight. It is seldom, if ever, the brainchild of just one man, and it might take decades of experimentation and change to evolving a boat that is able in any weather or sea.

For the professional fisherman, fortune and destiny depend greatly on how well his vessel responds to the capricious moods of the sea. And many a salty gentleman, while wrestling with the helm of a ship engaged by an angry squall, has cursed the presumptuous designer. who had thought to tame the titans of nature with a slide rule and mathematical formulas...