Into the North Woods

Chapter One

From Away

He stood facing her. His brow sank into the shadow beneath the brim of his faded Red Sox cap. Ronnie Atwood’s eyes narrowed and locked with hers, as he shook his head in disagreement.

Ronnie, just listen to me, Lily pressed on. That highway project will drain us of our ability to protect our water. They will come in, suck us dry, and leave us with a road that no one will maintain. That’s what they do—come, take, and leave. Her warm, chestnut eyes glistened with resolve.

Ronnie’s jaw tightened as he sucked in and chewed his lips before he spoke. Everyone cannot live on nuts and berries in high-tech huts, Lily.

"Well, then maybe they shouldn’t live here," she said. She gestured to the mountains around them and then at the lake in front of the inn. She wanted him to really think about this. She shifted her weight, hand on one hip, a sheaf of fliers in the other.

Ronnie, people who want convenience and city life should go live in a city. Don’t you understand? She began to sway a little from foot to foot. "We have the last great tract of wilderness in the Northeast. These north woods are very special; someone has to protect them. And that someone is me." She nodded her head for emphasis as soft auburn tendrils fell from her loose ponytail.

Ronnie removed his baseball cap and ran a hand across his close-cropped head. Beads of sweat ran from his temples. His blue T-shirt and khaki shorts stuck to him in the humid, late summer air, along with bits of grass and dandelion fluff, from mowing the lawn that morning in front of the sporting camps. He had grown up here in these woods, and could not understand how anyone could be so completely misguided about how things worked here. This wasn’t Ronnie’s first sparring match with Lily this summer. She had been talking to all of the local families since she arrived in June to organize against the new highway. Despite Lily’s politics, Ronnie had begun to develop a summer crush on her. He knew that she was from away—and those kinds of things never really worked out—but he couldn’t help himself. She had such energy. Such conviction. He took a long sip of cold, unsweetened iced tea as he stood on the porch, looking at Lily in her cutoffs and sandals.

She handed him a fact sheet from the sheaf of fliers in her hand as she continued. This special town meeting isn’t about big government, I hate government. I mean, aren’t you even a little mad they use your tax dollars to do stuff like this? I want the people to stand up and protect what they have. Do you think a big superhighway of trucks running along the side of the lake won’t impact you? Do you know how noisy it will be down here?

She gestured to the back side of the family’s property. The inn and camps at Umbagog sat on the east side of Umbagog Lake, surrounded by state park lands. They were unreachable except by boat in the summer, or by snowmobile or snowshoe in the winter. The crystalline reflection of the spring-fed water danced across the decks of the inn, onto the whitewashed-cedar clapboard siding. Four separate log cabins, each accommodating up to six people, formed a semicircle on either side of the historic 1800s residence inn. It was the only year-round residence on the lake that remained.

All the other historic inns built in the hey-day of logging in Maine had burned to the ground—too far from any fire department to save. Most of the original families had not rebuilt their homes. In the 1960s, following a chimney fire in the main inn, Ronnie’s father Bobby Atwood cut trees and milled lumber on site to rebuild the main inn, and also added the smaller, family-sized log cabins. The present descendants of the Atwood family, who ran the inn and camps at Umbagog, represented the last of the dyed-in-the-wool, original pioneer families in Maine. The inn maintained its small following of annual visitors, but otherwise remained a closely-guarded secret, as the Atwoods ascribed to no advertising than word-of-mouth. Aside from the few adventurous fishermen who put in at the state park ramp, and Lily with her community organizing visits, Ronnie enjoyed a late-summer peace that remained unbroken, except for the plaintive calls of the loons and endless mosquito thrumming.

Ronnie mulled over the inn’s history in his mind. He couldn’t begin to explain it to this girl from away. She would never understand that this place, as remote as it looked, had always been a part of industry and the technology of its time. The inn had flourished in the early days of the logging boom, with wily woodsman floating logs down the lake into the river to the mill.

Ronnie exhaled slowly and said, "Well, I know a new road would change things. Have you considered that maybe we are ready for a little change? We hardly get much business here anymore, and maybe having better access to a road would help us keep going. The guided trips we do here are about all there is for business. Maybe, if we had a road, someone would open up a new gas station, and maybe even a real restaurant, like a Dysart’s. Who knows what might spring up?"

Exactly! Lily said. Her eyes blazed with the energy of an oncoming lightning storm, "See, Ronnie, you do understand that things will sprout up and grow uncontrollably, just to support the traffic. But that won’t help local business. Those folks will zip right by on the highway, and never even know you are here. But they will dirty your clean water with run-off from the road. And the truck noise will drown out the loons. How does that help you?"

Ronnie enjoyed these spirited talks with Lily. She was smart and hard to corner. He felt like he was hunting a wily doe; he had to wait her out. He thought, Give her time and she’ll come around. She just hasn’t lived here long enough to understand how the north woods really work. He had met her type before, college summer interns coming in from some suburban city with big ideas of saving the great north woods. They all eventually returned to their big cities to live in fancy condos and make big money, while everyone here worked three jobs to try to make ends meet. If a person can find three jobs, that is, his mind interjected. Ronnie felt that he and the other locals were treated like servants by the big-city high rollers, when they arrived to visit their protected wilderness. He wondered if Lily felt guilty for growing up in a city, and this was her way of managing that guilt. Must be some kind of green guilt, like they used to talk about white guilt, he thought. Or maybe she was just another city kid doing penance in the woods to assuage her gluttonous college lifestyle. Ronnie didn’t think the people from away were stupid—just uneducated. He had respected, loved, and cared for these woods through his entire life. In fact, his life and livelihood depended on his care of them. How could some city person begin to think they knew more about his big back yard than he did? Arrogant, his mind editorialized about Lily. Admittedly, he did like that she was a little arrogant. And she was certainly strong-willed, maybe even difficult. He held all of these thoughts in his mind, gently turning them over while deciding what to say. After a moment, he pursed his lips out and sucked his bottom lip in before he spoke. When he did, he had the edge of a smile in his voice.

Okay, I’ll put up one of your fliers. And I’ll give my brother one to post in town, when he goes in to get supplies. I do believe in free speech, even if I don’t agree with what you have to say.

Lily grinned back, her honest exuberance radiating like the summer sunshine, Thanks Ronnie. You won’t regret it. Make sure you come and bring your family. The special town meeting is at 2:00 p.m. next Saturday.

Okay, Lily. I’ll be there. And my mumma never misses a town meeting.

Ronnie knew from experience that town meeting was about the only way a person would see most everybody, and get caught up on everything. A town meeting in Upton was more or less like a family reunion, because not many folks lived in this township, and many of the families had married, divorced, and remarried each other through the years.

Ronnie looked out at the lake, as a light breeze rippled and bounced along the surface. You know, he said, I could tow the canoe back across the lake for you, if you’d like. Save you a bit of energy? As he asked he lifted his eyebrows and gestured to the dock, where his boat gently rocked.

Lily shook her head, I like to paddle. Gives me time to think.

Ronnie shrugged and nodded. We’ll see you later then, de-ah, he said, as she turned and walked down to her waiting canoe and climbed in. He watched her shove off. Her tan shoulders and white tank top accented her wavy hair, which was casually pulled back in a loose ponytail. She wore a red bandana, tied for style or sweat—he didn’t know. She had paddled before, he could see. He saw her ease with the motion as he watched her cross the lake. He liked that about her, too.

Lily enjoyed every aspect of canoeing. She loved the rippling sound of the paddle in the water. She loved the weight of the draw on her shoulders as she pulled the wooden paddle backward. She was deeply aware of the cadence of her stroke, as she eased into the center of the lake. She breathed in and felt as much a part of the place as any other living thing there. Her thoughts fell back to Ronnie. She knew he didn’t agree with her. She also felt that taking the time to come out here and meet each and every land owner on their own turf would make all the difference at the town meeting.

One person at a time, she said aloud to herself. She was determined to help them understand what they had—determined to stop corporate greed from invading it. She liked Ronnie Atwood; she felt refreshed by his direct answers. Many of the older locals had brushed her off without much of a discussion. But Ronnie had at least talked to her. She guessed he was a few years older than her. But not many, though. It was hard to tell. Lily looked much younger than her twenty-nine years. After graduation from Boston College, she had packed up and moved west, where she found work as a grass-roots organizer for a local water-rights project out in Wyoming. She had been out west for a few years when this new community organizer position in Maine, for the North Woods Coalition, had caught her eye. At the time she had seen the ad on the Internet, she had been focused on how to educate people about the threat to drinking water from the new fracking industry. In her year in Wyoming, she had seen gas wells pop up like dandelions.

Lily had lived alone, in a little row house she rented from a rancher, just outside of Cheyenne. But in her heart, she had wanted to come back east; she missed the trees and the rain. When she had accepted the new job and moved back east, her parents and older sister in Massachusetts had been thrilled. She had gotten over her western gypsy episode, as they had referred to it. Her family’s derision about her work and her travel grated on Lily’s nerves. Her suburban Massachusetts parents were like so many people she had talked to while organizing: They just didn’t understand the precious gift of water that they had here in the east. Living in the west had made Lily acutely aware of the scarcity of water—and her duty to protect it.

While Lily paddled and thought about her travels, she felt the light wind shift. The breeze carried the sweet scent of balsam and fir across the bow of her canoe, muddled with deeper undertones of fern and moss. She breathed in deeply. Here, in these woods, she felt for the first time in her life that she was in the right place, working on the right project—one through which she could actually make a difference.

Lily felt she had come home.

Chapter Two

Town Politics

From his seat in the back row, up against the windows of the Upton Town Office, Calvin Black cleared his throat and banged his cane on the hardwood floor. What exactly gives you the right to come in here and tell us how you think things should go? he asked. He stood up and leaned on his dark walnut cane, which he seldom used unless his weathervane knee, as he called it, started to bother him. As he stood, his old, faded, dark blue work pants draped his large lanky frame. He had lost twenty pounds or more since spring, and now everyone in town thought he had cancer, which he didn’t. It was simply that his doctor had told him he was getting fat, so he had given up drinking his Allen’s Coffee Brandy and milk each night after supper. But not a soul in town would believe that if he had said so. So he hadn’t said anything. The audience fell silent, every eye on Calvin.

In all of my years, I have never heard such rubbish, he said with a shake of his gray head. He swallowed and surveyed the whole room as he spoke. People pressed themselves into uncomfortably tight rows, on metal folding chairs, and stood shoulder to shoulder against every wall of the meeting room in the small town office.

When I was a boy, people tried to stop the motor boats from coming in, saying that they would ruin the place. They haven’t. They said that the snowmobiles would pollute the air so bad none of us would be able to breathe. That hasn’t happened, either. So, why should I believe you when you say this one little road is going to scare all of the fish away and ruin our lake? Many people clapped when he finished, most of them also in their sixties or seventies. But a few younger men and women, including Ronnie Atwood, also applauded.

The front two rows sat silently, waiting for a response from the moderator at the podium. Calvin noticed the front row was full of summer people. He guessed that a few of them came to the north lakes region on high-dollar guided sporting trips. He recognized another handful of vacationers who owned camps on old paper company leased land, down towards Bethel. He didn’t dislike the folks from away, he just had noticed, over the years, that they wanted to come back to the woods and see them as their grandparents had seen them a hundred years ago. Calvin felt that they expected everyone who lived here to also live in the past. He had difficulty being nice to people whom, he felt, compelled him—along with his children and grandchildren—to live in relative poverty, while they sped around on their fancy boats, and expected the general store food to be better than what they ate at the finest restaurants in Boston.

Lily nodded as she stood at the podium, acting as the emcee for the meeting. Her gaze centered on Calvin. She had that way about her that made you believe she wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. Calvin held his ground, his head tilted, waiting for an answer, knowing that no answer she could have would change his mind. Lily spoke carefully, her voice level and more measured than when she spoke to each resident, one on one, in the community.

I can see why you might think that, Mr. Black, Lily said. She previously had met Calvin Black and several others, who regularly sat at the breakfast counter at the Umbagog General Store. Lily had discovered their impromptu town-selectman meeting at the general store quite by accident. She had stopped in to get a few provisions before camping in the state park, in the place where it abutted the proposed road expansion. She had met Calvin and other respected longtime residents that day, and learned they gathered there each morning for coffee and candid talk about local politics.

After discovering that, Lily made it a point to go there each morning. While she drank coffee, she visited and blogged her road-activist reports from the breakfast counter at the Umbagog General Store. Her new bosses at the North Woods Coalition thought this was a brilliant move. She had spent her entire summer getting organized for this town meeting—the one in which the order for the new highway expansion had to be approved. She hoped all her work would pay off today, as she collected her thoughts to respond to Calvin and the other local residents.

Lily smiled and said, I can see why you might not trust someone like me, Mr. Black. Someone who hasn’t lived here as long as you and many others. Maybe it would help you to hear from someone else who lives here? Someone who feels that the big new road might not be all it’s cracked up to be?

She looked around the room, with an inviting smile that swam below her more intensely focused eyes. Lily locked her stare on Roland Atwood. He blinked at her and involuntarily nodded over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. Roland was a hybrid of woodsman and college professor. He was eleven years older than his brother Ronnie. From his boyhood, he had clear memories of Calvin Black logging with a horse team, out on the far side of the lake. Roland remembered the honest smell of the sweat of working men and the horse team, rimmed with the zesty tang of the freshly felled pine. He remembered the acrid chainsaw exhaust and the warm, buzzing sound through the trees. He remembered the way it was before the machine pickers came in and doubled the size of the twitch trails and changed the woods forever. He hardly ever heard chainsaws out here anymore. They had been replaced by the whine and crush of those god-awful mechanical pickers.

Roland had fished for brook trout in every stream for miles around. Here he had hunted grouse, deer, and even a few moose. These woods were as familiar to him as his own hands. Roland Atwood did not share his younger brother Ronnie’s feelings about the new proposed road, but until now he had kept his opinion mostly to himself.

Roland Atwood had returned to his childhood home at Umbagog Lake ten years ago, when he was in his mid-thirties. As a younger man, he had lived in a little Smoky Mountain town in North Carolina, following a four-year hitch in the army. He remembered being twenty-something, newly married, ten feet tall, and bullet-proof. He and his young, Southern bride, Shelly, had attended a similar town meeting back then, and raised their hands in favor of a new state highway bridge that would run across two rivers. He recalled that all of the big developers had made all kinds of promises then, too. Roland blinked, his memories of the Carolinas still floating in his mind’s eye. Then he cleared his throat and addressed the room, So let’s say they build this road, and then those gas trucks from Canada, with their fuel and their tar sands oil, begin trucking back and forth day and night. What happens when one of them hits a moose and goes off the road, and all of that tar oil leaks into the streams—or the lake even? Then what?

Roland remembered a scene of a tractor-trailer accident on one of the very bridges he had raised his hand and voted in favor of. He remembered driving over the bridge on his way to work, and seeing the rainbow of gas and chemicals spilling in a plume down the river. He remembered the news stories of the thousands of dead fish on the muddy banks, and of all the wells poisoned. He remembered the supposedly-clean tap water smelling foul for years afterward. He had told Lily this story over coffee at the general store one morning, so he understood why her heavy gaze had landed upon him.

Ronnie whirled around, to make sure that voice belonged to his older brother. He could not believe he had heard it right. Roland Atwood, the hunter? The same rugged Rollie who loved to burn gasoline and speed down the lake on his snowmobile? Roland was against the road? Unbelievable, Ronnie thought.

Before Ronnie could recover enough to speak, a woman in a smartly pressed, white dress shirt and pantsuit stood up in the front row. Her dark, charcoal trousers accentuated her height. She turned to face the crowd, her back to Lily at the podium. She ran her long fingers briefly through her chin-length, carefully dyed blonde hair as she drew a breath to speak.

What happens if you hit a moose on that back road, here in mud season? she asked. How easy is it for the local ambulance to get down there through and help you out? I know that just last April that the road out to your place, Calvin, was so bad it was impassable to fire trucks, and one of your neighbor’s houses burned to the ground. The crowd began to murmur. The woman paused briefly, waiting for the memories to impact the assembled community. Then she continued, her voice round and full,

And how about all the people who have been run off the road by logging trucks and hit a tree, because the road was full of snow and mud? She tilted her chin down towards her chest, and looked from person to person over her narrow, almond-shaped titanium glasses. In the back row, Calvin Black appeared as though he was studying the pattern of wood on the floor, avoiding eye contact.

"So I guess we could talk about the harm that has come from not having a bigger road. We could talk about the harm of things that have actually happened, before we get caught up in the fear of an industrial accident that hasn’t," she concluded, as her eyes continued to survey the room like she owned it. Jane Eaton didn’t look at all like her pictures in the paper. She seemed taller and more commanding in person. She finished her scan of the town hall assembly and looked into the now deeply sorrowful eyes of Ronnie Atwood.

Ma’am, you talk a good game, Mimi Atwood rang in over low murmurs from the assembled crowd. Abruptly the murmurs stopped, as people noticed Mrs. Atwood speaking. She hardly ever spoke up at town meeting, even though she attended them all. Now, from her seat near Calvin and her other former classmates, she spoke up again, her voice trembling and brimming with emotion, then steadying.

She continued: But, you can’t possibly know how hard it is to lose someone like that in an accident. You can’t possibly know what it’s like to wonder if maybe we could have done something more. She glanced over at her son Ronnie, then said more softly, As I wonder almost every day.

The crowd whispered to each other, hands held over mouths respectfully. Heads nodded as they all remembered the accident that had killed Ronnie’s fiancée five winters past on the same Woods Mills Road.

Mimi took a deep breath and raised her chin as her dark eyes drew back to meet Jane Eaton’s. She exhaled and spoke, "I wonder about this new big road, too—about how it will change