On the Hard

Dawn asked me the other day what I meant by 'On the Hard' and I thought I would take a post to explain. It is a term I first heard on the Furled Sails podcast. Each week, Christie and Noel talk to and about the 'sailing lifestyle'. That is, builders as well as cruisers . . . . weekenders and well as live aboards. . . . Ship captains and boat sailors. They always end their podcast ' see ya on the water'. One of their guests referred to his time on land as the opposite of on the water - on the hard. So here I am.

It's not like I came from a long line of watermen. Certainly most of the men in my family have been pretty earthbound - farmers and cattlemen. My uncle was in the Navy, but he returned to Aroostook and has never left. In Maine there are several dichotomies. There is the Maine south of the "FBI " in Freeport and the 'real' Maine. There is 'The County', which is the northern third or so of the state, Aroostook County. And there is also a strong dichotomy between Maine as a maritime state and as a wooded, mountained farmland - the last frontier before the West. There was a huge argument about the Maine State Quarter because it was set on the coast and didn't (to some minds) sufficiently emphasize the lumbering and agricultural heritage of the State. )

I come from a long line of farmers, the last time a Boutilier spent a significant amount of time on a ship it was on their way from France to Nova Scotia. We are a family of homestead and the 'Prairie Farm' (My great grandfather's farm, confiscated during WWI to serve as a listen post on Germany.) Even now, I refer to my own boyhood home just as The Farm (as in, "I'm going over to The Farm to help Dad get the chains on the 520.") although it has a name and a heritage. When my father and mother finally leave the land, it will no doubt be "the Boutilier Farm" or Maple Lea Farm (its registered name), just as my parents live on the Duncan Farm, and to some always will.

I remember as a kid going with my Grandfather over to "The Homestead" where he grew up to check on his garden. We would hike across overgrown fields and light forest back to his garden. We would eat sun-warmed cucumbers off the vine before returning to the house where I would shyly stand around the kitchen with the slate sink and the handpump while he talked with his bachelor brothers. On my paternal Grandmother's side, there was the dairy farm with its milk rooms and attics filled with trunks and old equipment and World War I uniforms hung from the rafters. And of course, My maternal Grandfather's farm in Westfield. The smell of grease and chickens and the cold, baleful mountains of potatoes in the potato house where I would climb to the tops of the bins and watch the people sort and bag far below me. So here is my Grandfather in March of 1960, out on the land. What were his thoughts then? Or was he just appreciating the beginning warmth of Spring after five months, the smell of the mud and the promise of a better harvest? I wonder if he felt he owned the land or the other way around?

My introduction to a body of water was Mattawamkeag Lake, fishing with my grandfather Boutilier and something just clicked. Maybe it was riding up in the bow in the dark, coming back from the Lower Lake, crouched down trying to stay warm as the hull thrummed with the sound of water rushing by, a quarter of an inch away? Or the smell of the lake permeating the air or the lap of the waves against the shale beach rocks at night?

But I feel the same way about the sea as well; the swell and movement, the smell, the power of the water. The glorious indescribable blue of the Stroudwater cove in the hard, bright light of winter?

As much the water, I am attracted by the economy of a boat. Everything in its place. Nothing kept that is not useful or required. Simplicity and complexity. I have been lucky enough to have spent a few glorious afternoons on friends boats and relive the moments over and over. What can compare to the heel of a boat in San Francisco Bay? Or the beauty of Long Island sound? Or making way under Portland Head? So here I am, on the hard . . . . for now.