I Just Like the Sound of Meddybemps

Journeying west, the New Brunswick fog met with the Maine fog and we handed our passports to the U.S. border agents and continued on to the  last of our Irving gas stations - the one we always stop at. 

Robotically, we changed the dog i.d. tags to American addresses, got out our reserve of U.S. dollars, tucked away the last of our Canadian money and switched the car's readings from celsius to fahrenheit, kilometers to miles.  

We were physically here in the land of our birth, but it wasn't till somewhere around  Meddybemps, on Route 9, the old Rum Runners Road that my emotions arrived.

  

We had a grand summer in Canada and it's a spiritual home to me, but  

I also love my native U.S.A.

I think I'll just call myself a North American.  It's the perfect fit.

Continuing west, we helped celebrate the 375th anniversary of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist church while visiting brother Bob and sister-in-law Judy in Concord, Mass.  It was Henry David Thoreau’s home church and  Dr. Kevin Radaker ( a Penn State grad ) did a reenactment of a speech Thoreau gave to the congregants in 1860.  He was dressed as Thoreau, with a black wig , beard and astonishing eyebrows, and his material was rich and well-documented.

At the end of his talk, we were told by the current minister that we could ask questions of “Thoreau”, but they must be in the context of 1860 - nothing more modern than that.  The audience knew their history, and the questions and answers were enlightening.

I asked “Thoreau” if he could comment on his writing process.  “He” told me that it was Emerson who taught him to use journals, then reminded me that he (Thoreau) was a great walker and observer. Often, he said, he would wait to get home to write in his journals, but sometimes, he would stop mid-walk and think and write. “You know,” he said, “walking while outwardly observing nature is a part of my writing, but writing is a great inward process and I have walked a thousand miles within my self.”

 “Thoreau” made several references to places he called by name as swamps. At home, my brother got out a map of “Thoreau’s Concord” to show us that when Thoreau went walking  in one of his beloved “swamps”- the one he named that was  between his home and the church - it brought him through Bob and Judy’s back yard.