His given name was not Chick, of course. It was Charles. But I never met anyone who called him that. Maybe the IRS, if they ever had reason to contact him, which I seriously doubt. Maybe God, although it’s hard to imagine that would be the case. His friends and anybody who had ever volunteered alongside him knew him as Chick.

            He worked extensively with the poor and homeless. He helped open a center where they could be welcomed and warmed. Perhaps all this came from a troubled past of his own; I’m not sure. And he smiled, eyes crinkling. That was, I think, the main thing he did in life. It was a kind smile, and a little jesting, and above all, loving. It instantly said, “Hello! I see you. Welcome into my life!” Each time I met him, I went away feeling—better, yes, but more than that. It was as if I’d just brushed against someone who exuded all I wanted to nurture within myself. For a while afterwards, I’d make an effort to see the people around me, and to connect with them in some positive way.

            One beautiful late season afternoon in 2020, in the heart of the pandemic, Jeff and I hiked up to an open ridge overlooking the vast forests on the north side of Baxter State Park. We’d been in Maine a bit less than two years, and this was our first trip into the famed North Woods. We’d come off season; no one else was around. Seated on a rock with an abundance of time to relax and gaze, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing:
            Nothing but forests stretching into Canada. There were a couple of distant antennas, one to the north, one west, but otherwise we could see only nature. Spiky firs and spruces, round-topped oaks and maples, ashes and birches and scattered others, all spread across the undulating hills and mountains.
            What was it like deep within them, these forests so eloquently described by Thoreau? I wanted to explore them, to come to know them well, to learn about their histories and the plants and animals they sheltered, and maybe the people they helped support.
            As I would soon discover, it is not a pretty story.

The little cabin sat beside a sizeable pond, in a valley of forested hills and a rocky cleft we hiked through one afternoon. Mornings the low sun briefly cast ghostly shadows of tree trunks across the water’s icy-snowy surface. It was familiar territory but like the best special places different this time, as with each time we go.
            This was my fifth stay in the Midcoast Conservancy’s Hidden Valley Nature Center, and my third with this group: six or seven women on a weekend sabbatical from husbands and children. Most of the others had been coming on this trip for years. I was a relative newbie—and I almost hadn’t come.
            Face it, I’m nearly a generation older than the others in this group. I feel good: spunky, sassy, eager to step out and explore the world. I have a friend who insists that 70 is the new 50, making, I suppose, 60 the new 40, or maybe 45, and on down. I’ll take it. 

My neighbor Julie gave us two baby American chestnut trees. They were adorably small, just twigs, each with a few tiny branches. And they were special, bred to be resistant to the blight that killed the great chestnut forests of the eastern United States. The American chestnut was said to be the perfect tree: strong, straight-grained, huge, and a prolific bearer of a tasty, highly nutritious nut. By the early 1900s an Asian blight had arrived in our eastern forests. Within 40 years it destroyed the native chestnut as a commercial species.

But now we had two, and the blight wouldn’t kill them! Unfortunately, something else well might. We selected a spot for them in our new yard, carefully planted them, and surrounded them with chicken wire fencing to keep deer from nibbling their little lives away. One succumbed anyway, just up and died for no obvious reason.

The second hung on.

“More coffee?”

            The waitress, a round, pleasant woman, was a bit bee-like as she reached in, reached out, and backed away to regard our table. She had a thick country twang and beautiful coloring: jet-black hair and café-con-leche skin. When she tipped the coffeepot to refill my cup, I noticed a thin tracing of ink along the inside of her wrist, a garland folded gracefully back on itself to form an elongated figure eight. An infinity sign. Each loop was adorned with tiny figures, but I couldn’t tell what they were.

            I sat up in my chair.