American Pie: You Can Go Back
...The trip was sweetened by the expectation of staying in our friends’ beautiful house, set in the Connecticut woods, and by other friends’ promise of clamming on the Rhode Island shore. Just the very word “clamming” evokes a New England that, without realizing, we had missed. Just the very idea of obtaining food without expending anything but energy is appealing...
John Merchant and his wife pay a return visit to New England, their to acquire a memory to store in their special box of experiences.
Last year, my wife and I cut the umbilical cord that had bound us to our sailboat and the Connecticut shoreline for over 20 years. Though those years had brought us wonderful experiences, and showed us a world apart from our busy lives ashore, we felt that, in the words of the cynical cliché, we had “Been there and done that.”
Our new life as Florida residents is full of new experiences, a different lifestyle, and a kaleidoscope of new images everywhere we look. The daily routine is more laid back than the more urban pace of Eastern Connecticut.
After being of a mind not to return to New England, last winter we received an invitation to spend time during the coming summer with friends who live near our old marina.
Surprisingly, it didn’t require much deliberation on our part to say yes. So, despite our growing aversion to making the 1300 mile drive, August 2 found us on Interstate 95, heading north. We could have flown of course, but our distaste for present day air travel outweighs the tedium of the drive.
The trip was sweetened by the expectation of staying in our friends’ beautiful house, set in the Connecticut woods, and by other friends’ promise of clamming on the Rhode Island shore. Just the very word “clamming” evokes a New England that, without realizing, we had missed. Just the very idea of obtaining food without expending anything but energy is appealing.
In the early dawn of our first morning in Connecticut we were awakened by the noisy gobbling of wild turkeys. Through our bedroom window we could see four fat beauties; a sight intrinsic to New England. As the dawn brightened, the call of many songbirds accompanied it, which is a novelty for us because South West Florida is devoid of them at this time of year. All that day the rain fell straight down. “Like stair rods” my mother would have said.
A couple of days later we were excited by the thought of going clamming. Our friends in Rhode Island live about 90 minutes away. We’d been to the Island before by boat, but we were not prepared for the deep woods where we were headed. Once off the highway we began driving through a maze of narrow roads, with tall trees on every side.
The lack of a visible topography, or any features other than trees, which all looked the same, soon had us disoriented, and for some reason we never thought of consulting our GPS, which was sitting uselessly in a glove compartment. When we eventually arrived at our destination, with the help of our hostess and our cell phone, normally an object of derision on my part, but now redeemed, we were greeted by a beautiful clearing.
Bob had purchased 8 acres on a dirt road in 1973, and had worked wonders with it: clearing deciduous trees and replacing them with fir and spruce and other evergreens. Rhode Island is notoriously rocky, and he has taken full advantage of this, framing the now groomed lot with stonewalls that are so remarkable they have been featured in articles in the local press.
Our friends’ house stands well, on a slight rise, around 200 yards back from the road. In 1973, it was just an unfinished shell, but with more hard work by Bob and friends, and latterly Marsha, his wife of 12 years and an artist, it is now a cozy, well-maintained home.
Sipping cocktails on the deck, we were entertained with a constantly changing wild-life cabaret, featuring a variety of small, colorful birds – finches for the most part, and frenetic chipmunks gleaning the droppings from the bird feeder. Humming birds buzzed us like angry bees, on the way to their feeder. Considering the admission was free, it was quite a show.
The following morning found us on the way to the beach, equipped with stout shoes, clamming rakes, and net bags to contain the bushels of clams we were sure we would harvest that day. Following a path through the trees, we found ourselves on a rocky strip of deserted beach, just before low tide. The timing was critical so that the water was shallow enough to wade in.
Unfortunately nature had other ideas, and low tide turned out to be not so low. Undeterred, we plunged in, sometime neck deep, feeling with our toes for the clams that might have been unearthed by our rakes. It was slow going, but an hour or more of raking produced enough clams for that afternoon’s barbecue.
That afternoon we enjoyed a quintessential New England treat – home-made burgers and clams on the barbecue, with picked-that-day corn, under a clear blue sky. A memory to store in our box of special experiences with good and generous friends – and we will be back.
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