The Birth of Foley's Crack

Photograph by Chris Engles

(Dennis & Heather - Boat Ride to Manley Island - Sept. 2006)

The story goes something like this...

On the North side of Manley Island in Forest City, Maine there is a natural docking area for visitors of the Snow family camp to moor their boats. It is a superb landing as it is greeted by a thin, woody path that inclines up and over a gentle slope leading directly to the back door of the cabin's kitchen space.

Unfortunately, the inlet's near perfect parking spot had been 'interrupted' by a rather large and ungainly stone that prevented any straight approach inward. During the winter months East Grand Lake inevitably freezes over. The shifting of the lake ice would jog the rock precipitously closer to blocking off the entire ingress entrance with each colder season passing. Come after the thaw if a boat were to coast in awkwardly or unawares it might risk severely denting the hull, if it were metal, or breaching it outright if made of wood.

The Sunday afternoon after our wedding (September 2nd, 2006 at Wheaton's Lodge) Heather's father, Bruce, knew a good thing when he saw it: several strapping young ceremony attendees that would make for one mighty entourage to help move the dreaded boulder out of harms way.

Members of the stalwart crew included my brothers, Michael and Stephen, close family friend and fellow island inhabitant, Peter Morley, Heather's cousin, Chris Snow, her childhood best friend, Sonja, family friends, Mike Huber and Carolyn French, our friend and photographer, Chris Engles, Heather's dad and supervisor(!), Bruce, and of course, the Happy Couple.

Now that's alotta people!

The christening name, "Foley's Crack", was actually coined from a misunderstood remark made by Sonja once the rock had been thoroughly bested, "Just think I was actually here to witness the historical making of 'Foley's CRAG'!"

What everyone else heard was ... well, you know. (insert already been told jokes here)

Our wedding photographer, Chris Engles, was capturing the entire event on film as it unfolded that day.

He has created this wonderful video montage using black and white stills set to piano music (giving it that old-timey feel) to tell the story.

Enjoy.

Owed to Winged Rodents (September 14th, 2007)

In the Southern part of Texas we have a real ugly and invasive menace called the Asian Tiger Mosquito (imagine those plastic vampire fangs popular around Halloween time, painted black with white stripes, and equipped with wings ... you'll get the picture pretty easily).

They're real small but when they bite ... they're real BIG.

Austin has some means of defense against the little bast ... ahem ... buggers, chemical assault being the most common, but there's a far safer & effective 'method', too:

The Mexican free-tailed bat.

These excellent little winged-rodents 'congregate' under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Downtown Austin. Hundreds of people line the bridge every warm summer evening around dusk to see these critters explode into a spectacular flight en-masse as they go out defending the front lines against the Asian Tiger scourge.

Many of you may be squeamish about furry-fliers and slithery-slitherers. I, for one, am a big fan, having nothing but gratitude and admiration for them, and not just for their natural bug-eliminating service to the 'civilized' world either.

If there ever was a rodent one could effortlessly 'anthropomorphise' (nee 'Disney'...) it just might be the bat.

Let me explain.

My wife's family has a cabin on a small island up in the deep woods of Forest City, Maine. Every summer we go up there to 'suffer' the indignity of a cell-phone free environment, marshes-gone-wild with blueberry bushes, gentle wafts of pungent forest pine, the absolute brutal aural punishment by hordes of melodious morning song birds, oh, I could go on and on about the horrors we brave but I digress... (I won't even get into all the crazy loons up there!).

Two summers ago our good friends, Beth and Glenn, came up for a visit to stay for a few days and enjoy the Manly Island retreat (aka - 'Camp Snow'). One chilly morning, while waiting for coffee to brew and eggs to fry, we settled in by the fireplace (its hearth constructed from hand-crafted, kiln-fired bricks collected from a crumbling wood-pulping mill in the region long ago by Heather's great grand father).

High above in the lodge's rafters, we noticed a small *family* (note this 'foreshadow-y' word) of bats that had made its roost in a slender soffit-like area between the upper chimney and the roof. You could hear them all squeaking their jovial little chirps right before they were about to settle in, or when they were nearing their nightly rounds of 'skeeter' eating. Occasionally, you would even get 'punk'd' by one of their guano-gifts if you were within striking distance... one of the minor drawbacks, I suppose.

On this particular morning, while absorbing the fire's warmth and listening to our stomachs rumble, we were startled by a small 'thud' on the cement floor near the fireplace.

'Oh, look!' exclaimed Beth, 'It's a baby bat!'

Indeed it was. Tumbled from the community heights above. Pink. Fur-less. Floppy-winged, clumsy and blind. Very blind. As in 'no truly developed eyes yet'. It was so small, so helpless. Completely at the world's mercy. And, you know how that can go... And with all that lump-in-the-throat-inducing peeping sound it was making we just had to do something.

'Don't touch it, don't touch it.' I kept saying while grabbing some found piece of flat, wooden slat to gently scoop it up with, 'We'll put it up on the mantle away from the fire.' ... all the while thinking to myself 'but it will probably die.'

Oh, ye of little Faith.

We sat there watching the peeper's progress for a spell making sure it didn't fall back onto the hard floor when suddenly we heard several desperate sounding chirps from above us. Lo and behold not before long a small, brown mother bat was cautiously making her way down the chimney facade right towards her kin. The meticulous paw-by-paw pivoting motion that propelled her along made the leathery little creature look like a wind-up mechanical toy.

Every so often she'd stop momentarily on a seeming whim one suspect eye raised towards us. Move forward again. Stop. One quick-eyed glance up once more. Go. Stop. Sniff the air... go, and onward she went in this manner.

There was a constant chittering going on between the two during the descent, as well, punctuated by our own huddled crew's hushed imaginative commentary on how their back-and-forth bat banter might translate:

'Stellaaaa-Luuunaaa ... where are you!? Are you okay?'

'Yeah, over here.'

'What-in-the-belfry happened??'

'Uh, I fell...bat-go-boom.'

'Stay right there! Mummy's on her way! You sure you're all right now?!'

'Yeah, Ma, sheesh, I'm okay already! (And it was a helluva fall) Just come get me, though, huh? And, hurry before these dopey lookin' hairless bears eat me...'

The entire episode took about fifteen minutes to play itself out but in that space of time the mother bat made her way to the 'newbie', took it in her mouth by the scruff and hoisted, huffed and 'hurrumphed' her little package all the way back up the 2 story high chimney face and into the safety of the group's nest again.

Wonderful.

We humans all sat there in a silent sort of awe and disbelief at what we just took in. But, really now, such a display of grace from one of the wee-smaller arena's of the animal kingdom? Nobility, sense of family, courage, love(?) whatever 'values' words you may want (or not) to apply to this little creature in its rescuing of her lost young.

Regardless, we were pretty stunned and, honestly, had been instilled with a new profound sense of respect for the common 'little brown bat'.

So, thanks, you 'winged-rodents' - and, to the rest of you in your various shapes and sizes - for the lesson in the great lengths you'll go for each other (be good by doing good, right?).

Now, about those Tiger Mosquitoes ... FLICK! ... Much better.

Happy New Year,

Dennis

City Of Trees (July 8th, 2007)

Thankful for a great vacation-week in Forest City, Maine (waaaay up North) where you can fall asleep to the cries of loons, where a small brown duck can fly into your island log-cabin to waddle about for a spell, where a fish-filled-lake makes for your front "lawn", where the night stars are brighter than the the halogen beam lamps of most cars, where there's no electricity, cellphones, computers, or television sets (amen), where red squirrels are so bold they'll eat cashews from your hand on the first offering, where bats chatter in the chimney rafters after nightfall and swoop down close enough to feel the flaps of their wings brush your hair, where you can see more species of birds flit about your forested spot than you can count on both hands and feet, where people are so dependent on community because in such isolation it means not just friendship but survival, where someone carrying a gun is the farthest thing from a criminal or a cop, where 'Billy & Nan' are a local legend of two island bound lovers, where a rickety old wooden canoe makes for a great wild-blueberry harvesting-float, where "typical Maine weather" can vary from a sweltering 90 degree heat to quarter-sized hail stone storms in mid-July, where a moose sighting is as common as seeing your neighbor's dog, where bear cages cover every dumpster, where SUVs actually serve a purpose(!), and where every sunset is a major event.

And, of course, dragonflies. Tons of colorful (mosquito-eating!)
dragonflies.

Dennis