Rescue human
Letter from Away — August 20, 2024
A Saturday evening in early-August found me in the Black Fly Beer Garden at Ironbound. I have driven by the restaurant and inn, on Route 1 in Hancock, a bunch of times in the 11 years Leslie Harlow has owned it. Life’s conflicting priorities have kept me moving by, but this time I planned the stop, at least as much as one can plan, when traveling with a friend who could have easily gotten off the bus in Rockland, so road weary as to want to crash on my couch and start the next long ride in the morning.
Fortunately City Mouse was game to head right out from the ferry landing where Concord Coach left him, and we texted down the coast with a reservation request. The weather — clearing skies and freshening breezes on the balmy edge of Hurricane Debby — made for a beautiful drive, and along the way I told City Mouse about the circumstances that brought Ironbound to my attention.
My palate’s first encounter with Leslie’s work came during what my former spouse and I refer to as our honeymoon — three weeks raking blueberries in Cherryfield. We would rise at first light and, after breakfast from the camp stove, pack some peanut butter and honey sandwiches and head to the fields to sprinkle exceedingly fresh, dew-washed berries between the gooey slices for our lunch. We raked from dawn until about 2 p.m., with a break to eat those sandwiches, and then headed to a place where the fast-moving Narraguagus River flows over moss-covered boulders, the earth’s own jacuzzi and a place of beauty and pure physical delight. As I grow closer to my final fate as a mortal being, such moments occasionally rush across my consciousness.
Weekends, on that working vacation, we drove into Bar Harbor to spend our wages; one time on a very memorable dinner at the Town Farm restaurant. I take good food seriously enough to have asked the restaurateur’s name and to remember it along with the smell of roast duck and the sensation of a smooth and light mousse of some sort. That was in 1983 and the chef’s name was Leslie Harlow.
According to etymonline, a website that provides word origins, the source of the word “weird” is the Old Norse “wyrd.” While the simplest translation is “fate” wyrd also indicates what we become as life’s winds blow us inexorably in directions which we may or may not control. In the Norse traditions from which the word derives, three fates, or Norns, sit at the foot of the World Tree, Ygdrasil, carving and weaving human destiny. These mythic power brokers became known in 13th century Middle English as the weird sisters, and remain prominent in our culture as the three witches who nurtured the seeds of hubris in the mind of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
My wyrd is tied to a personal and familial history of political activism that leads me to knock on doors, talk to strangers, and serve on committees; in my middle years it found voice in writing. In 2004 it brought me to Boston, as a delegate for Dennis Kucinich, to the Democratic National Convention, the one where we were introduced to Barack Obama.
Get Shlomit Auciello’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Being a delegate to a national convention is a bit like moving into a dorm your freshman year of college. People connect quickly and with the potential for creating long-term bonds. That crowded arena, and the smaller conference rooms that led up to it all that summer, was where I actually met Leslie. Since that time our contact has been mostly digital and very intermittent — we follow one another on the boss and sometimes comment on what scrolls by. Ironbound’s response to my reservation request a week or so ago came from Leslie, who also remembers that week, in that other August, that eventually brought City Mouse and me to the Beer Garden where we sat, at the start of this letter, sharing an exquisite selection of appetizers, another meal to surface someday from memory and remind me how good life can be.
A few weeks ago, I entered a small storefront in Rockland to ask about a product. An office door opened and a worker came out, rapidly preceded by a small barking dog that attempted to climb my legs using its hard little claws for purchase. I raised my hands and backed away as the worker made ineffectual attempts to call the dog and grab its fast-moving collar. As another worker tried to explain that the dog was a rescue, the hubbub of barking and excuses blended with a rush of adrenaline in my ears. Faced with millennia of my own breeding and informed by experiences woven into this lifetime, I backed out the door.
I was a poorly behaved child, often raising my voice or using my body to take up space or garner attention. Those who know me well have no trouble understanding what I mean when I say, I am a rescue human.
It has taken me all of my 71 years to learn that it is better not to enter a room talking and to keep my mouth closed while chewing, and I still don’t have those down. Kicking my grade school principal in the knee or somewhere north of there, a great many years ago, showed a lack of control I hope never to exhibit again. I am threading self-discipline into the path the Norns have woven and am eternally grateful for the mother who recognized her responsibility in my personal growth. I will never forget being left home from a family trip to the beach, because of an absurd refusal to do 45 minutes of homework that was weeks overdue. Those long, boring hours on a perfect summer day, without benefit of TV, let alone a cell phone or internet, helped me value my time and that of those who were bringing me up to be human.
A rescue dog is not the same as a rescue human. Canines have much shorter lives than ours. Like some undomesticated humans, a dog cannot read the sign at the trailhead that says it must be on-leash, under voice command, or not on the path at all. It will not “hold it in” until it gets to a proper place to poop and it will follow its nose, off the trail if that’s where it leads, to track a delicious scent across fields or woodlands where its mere presence could disrupt the even briefer life cycles of foxes and trout lilies, butterflies and sparrows. It cannot understand that shouting, whether at strangers or friends, in its language or mine, is rarely helpful and often ramps up the tension.
On our third day in Canada, City Mouse and I went for a walk on one of Prince Edward Island’s many extraordinary trails. We were pleased to see the sign at the entrance, including a reminder that dogs must remain on leash, and were surprised to encounter a small, loose canine along the trail, followed by a human. I stood to the side as they passed, suggesting to the human that it might be a good thing to read the notice by the gate, since the dog obviously had not. I may have mentioned the $125 fine (about 90 bucks in greenbacks).
“I don’t mind,” the human said. “I live nearby and use this path all the time.” Unburdened by any visible restraint, dog and human continued down the trail woven for them by the ladies under the tree.
Today, weird is used to describe that which is odd, uncanny, or supernatural. An online search for information about the Norns brought responses for the word “norm,” pretty much the opposite of weird.
When I was in my 20s, a friend told me I wasn’t as weird as I thought. Maybe she meant it as a compliment but, enjoying my self-image as unusual and a bit eccentric, I took it as an insult. I’ve worked hard to keep my weird alive against the ever present push for normal, which dictionaries define as “conforming to the standard or the common type.” Having lived outside many norms, I find name-calling kind of — well — childish. In the politics of 2024, it is far too common. Insults may help some candidates garner attention, and might seem funny to the tosser, but the tribe of tolerance is ill served when its proponents throw epithets. Cheap shots don’t belong in civil discourse, no matter who the target is.
Shlomit Auciello is a writer, photographer, and human ecologist who lives in Midcoast Maine. Letter From Away has appeared online and in print since 1992.
