Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [30]
But still we couldn’t get traction. Paul and I could not seem to find a weekend in October or early November when we were both free for cabin work. We would need to go up together to lay out the foundation and begin digging the holes for the piers. I was chair of my department at the university, which required me to be present for weekend events, and Paul had commitments at home and church.
Paul’s involvement with the church had begun with my mother. She had moved to Portland to be near Paul and me in the early 1980s, when our children were small, and she had become an active member of the city’s Greek church. If a building issue arose at church—peeling paint, lack of air-conditioning, crumbling steps—she volunteered Paul. “My son is in that work,” she would say proudly, as if she were making a donation, which of course she was. Paul would get a call the next day from someone on the parish council. “Sure,” he would say. “I’ll have a look.” He solved problems and saved the church money. He knew contractors and inexpensive work-arounds, and he got discounts on materials.
But my mother had operated in complex ways, and she rarely had a single agenda. She was also eager for Paul to baptize his children in the Greek church. Slowly and inexorably Paul was drawn into the church; in time his children were baptized there, and Paul became a member. My mother got her way, and Paul took to it without complaint. He was social and reliable, and soon he was on the building committee, the festival committee and then the parish council. He was also helping some of the old ladies in the church with their homes. He would drop by to examine a wet basement or to fix rickety stairs. The priest saw in Paul someone who had street sense, as well as someone with whom he could talk privately about the people and politics of the church. The priest was a theologian, more comfortable with ideas than with people, and he often grew frustrated with his flock. He and Paul would talk over a situation, and a solution would emerge to whatever issue or conflict the priest had found intractable. And in this way, over the course of about fifteen years, my brother, who had evinced not a single religious sentiment that I can recall in all the years we were growing up, became a pillar of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church.
Until we could get started, I found ways to slip away from campus for a day at a time. I threw jeans, old shoes and a jacket into the car. Faculty e-mails, lamentations and jeremiads would have to wait. The pull of the hillside was too strong to resist. I did not mind the three-hour drive. The prospect of a walk in the woods or around the pond made the time in the car worthwhile especially then, in autumn, the best of seasons. I listened to music on the radio and witnessed the reds and yellows of the leaves become more brilliant as I drove north. October is a lazy month, a kind of dreamy sleepiness falls over the woods. The sun is warm, the air is dry and the cicadas are buzzing in the tall grass. The spicy tincture of wild apples floats on the breeze. No one understood the time of year better than Keats.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun . . .
There is the sharp scent of wood smoke in the mornings as stoves take the chill off country houses, and the happy sight of leaves racing in crazy funnels in the wind across dry open fields. These were delicious sensations. Each time I arrived, I felt as drunk as a horse that has gorged on wild fruit. I was happy to be at the hillside even if there was no work I could do on my own. There is a lot of idle looking and learning that goes into cabin building, too, and I was absorbed in the surroundings and the season whether I had a