Refilling the Well – or Falling Down it?
Edith/Maddie here, with some musings about taking a week off.
A few months ago, my son and his wife invited Hugh and me to join them for part of the week in August at a vacation house they’d rented in New Hampshire. We said we’d love to. We decided to extend the trip by heading over to the Maine coast for a few more days after that. Me, the constant worker, agreed to take a week off. (Go ahead and gasp if you’d like.)
We had a great time, eating and visiting and walking our way through the week. Here are a few pictorial highlights.
Allan, Hugh, and I at Pea Porridge Pond
Alison and Allan at the rented chalet in the woods
Alison and Allan at the top of Foss Mountain
Playing Bird Spotting Opoly one evening in the screen porch where we spent most of our time at the houseWe headed over to our Airbnb in Belfast Maine and started out with dinner on a family farm nearby where I know the owners.
At Toddy Pond Farm in Monroe, MaineHugh’s sister and brother-in-law drove over from their own NH home and we were joined for an afternoon by their cousin Ruth Lockhart, who lives in Bangor.
Mary, Ruth, and Hugh Lockhart
The Impossible Dream, a fully accessible catamaran sailboat, at dock in Belfast
Splitting seafood bisque and a lobster roll at Marshall Wharf Brewery
Walking at Moose Point State ParkIt was a great getaway, and I didn’t work at all except a little blog maintenance and Facebooking every morning. I definitely refilled the creativity well, and when we got back I set to work the next morning tackling hard revisions on a book I’d pretty much decided to give up on before we left.
But I might have mentioned in other posts here that I’ve always had an overactive imagination.
The woods in New Hampshire can be dark and remote. They made me think of how easy it might be to bury a body, or evidence.
Exploring Cathedral Ledge brought to mind someone being pushed off, or sabotage to one of the rock climbers’ ropes.
What? Who would throw things at the rock climbers? Oh, a murderer, maybe. Also, other areas on top weren’t fenced at all…An early morning solo swimmer at the pond could have come to his demise so easily.
Even this sunny mountaintop had rocks and potential dangers.
Foss Mountain, NHIn Belfast, we walked across the pedestrian bridge over the Passagassawakeag River at low tide.
Hugh, Mary, and Gene on the bridgeWe spied an abandoned scooter down below. Stories about its rider, thoughts of footsteps erased by the incoming tide, and other murderous ideas came to mind.
I gazed at the working shipyard with its giant hoists and huge hooks on chains and imagined more mayhem.
What if a weapon had been strapped to the bottom of a yacht? Or those sling straps got loose somehow?
If this all seems too gruesome for vacation, apologies, but I can’t help it. It’s the way my brain works, especially now.
This week of being away was all about falling down into the well of ideas and refilling it with the energy to return to my desk and make magic happen!
Readers: how do you refill the well? Where do you find ideas for new ventures?
