Written in Geneva, 15+/- yearsago...

Spring has come to Geneva, with the blazing yellow colza already giving way to the soft waving pale green of young wheat. The “jet d’eau”, the fountain which fires up from Lac Léman almost 300 feet into the air against a backdrop of a distant Mont Blanc, has been turned back on. To the North, the Jura are speckled with budding birch and maple, light between the dark evergreen hemlock below the tree line, the barren fields above still dotted with recalcitrant patches of white. The tulips in the Botanical garden were splendid, again, and passed. The banks with their neon headbands never changed.

In Tuzla, in Dushanbe and how many other places around the globe Spring may be unfolding different glories, different hopes and births and rebirths. What joy such renewal must bring, even if it is only to color the graveyards with fresh blooms. But is there joy and wonder left in those places which continue to bear winter’s scars long past the Spring thaw? Here in Geneva, the miracle is only noted with remarks of how early or how late, passing like a Spring storm.

Yet Geneva is often where great matters of state are cussed and discussed by concerned people who live their day to day in this splendid basin, where humanitarian concern takes shape and form, and where promises kept and unkept nudge the future of man along one path or another. Can bureaucratic council, nestled in comfort and ease, anesthetized in fog between Alps and Jura make such weighty choices? Who are the people entrusted with the play in the fields? What are their qualifications, their license, their duty, and how can they bear up and shoulder the weight? Do they have the mettle?

It’s a long way from Vern Ricker’s vending machines in the mills up and down the Androscoggin, or taking care of dave Berry’s pigs and roofin’ in the winter, or pullin’ traps with the Cooks or doin’ post-and-beam. The comfort and slack of Geneva may be part of the problem. It seems all too often decisions are made by those who have never had to go downstairs in the morning with a propane torch that won’t start until the umpteenth try in order to thaw the pipes at four a.m. so they won’t burst before before six and the first cup of morning coffee fresh from the woodstove in the early dark. Or, once the tongue burned and the house cozy, have to step outside into a biting north wind to try to start the reluctant hard-oiled buggy, and to scrape a patch for view on the inside of the windscreen. Or, even with the warm rush of May, to put up with Nature’s Airborne, small but mighty, unstoppable in their persistence and ability to inflict.

It seems in retrospect that there could have been no better preparation for the Diplomatic Corps than getting by in Maine for ten years in the seventies. Lessons of sharing, of pain and joy, living on the edge of have and nave-not, but always coming down on the positive side, pushed to learn new skills, to face hardship and change, always change, always the same. I said to a colleague the other day that I thought one winter in an old country house in Maine was worth two at a European University. He laughed, and so did I: he thought I was making a joke; I knew I was underestimating true value.

I haven’t run into too many Mainers in the course of the past few years. The stretch of international diplomacy seems to fall short of Portland for the most part. But there’s no doubt in my mind that extending that reach could bring a dite of uncommon sense to Geneva, and maybe even a touch of DownEast wisdom.

November 8

It was gorgeous today – sunny and light with a soft Southerly that kept things unusually warm all afternoon (the morning still held on to the frosty chill). I was out raking yesterday’s mulch production into piles to spread on the garden and enjoying the orderliness of it all - the lawn has never looked so kept (I am not a raker as such) but at the same time thinking that it was a day for regrets – the options were too numerous, the possibilities too inviting - there would be many thing left undone. So my thinking turned – what would I regret the most? Certainly not a few piles of potential mulch – some oak, ash, cherry and apple leaves let uncollected. But a chance to take the canoe and discover a new pond, a small and inaccessible one, not too far but lonely…and to do it with my son, all too immersed in his own inaccessible world, and perhaps too our young Labrador, so exuberant and vital – this would be regret defined.

So I asked Pierre to join me on an exploration, and after some prodding, he agreed (the Lab needed no encouragement) and off we went with our faithful vessel tightly bound in the back of the pickup to find The Bog Pond…We found it, didn’t paddle (access to it was a long portage and the day was fleeting), but did walk out to the water’s edge – it was beautiful, isolated, with floating weed growth near the shore that looked solid but undulated like an underfilled waterbed when the Lab leaped to it to chase a stick before plunging on into the deeper water. It was a lovely discovery and a place to which we will return.

But what struck me most in all this was the realization of the potential of regret. To have a choice, an opportunity (which one never really knows will materialize), a vision perhaps, and to not seize it. Regrets – chances not taken, opportunities missed, lips not kissed…I am glad that we left the leaves piled for tomorrow, maybe…

November 1

It’s a new month, a full moon and a new time zone all at once – as well as being Sunday night, the beginning of a new week and the opening of deer season at daybreak. That’s a lot of beginnings! November is not my favorite month, in spite of all the good family time around Thanksgiving that will have all six of us here, plus Justin and Merlin. It is usually not cold enough to stiffen the ground, nor warm enough to eat outside. Ticks are still here, and abundant in their second profusion, even if the mosquitoes are gone. You can’t really enjoy the woods, for fear of the errant hunter, and the Bay is not only chilly but often whipped by the wind as it turns its course northwesterly.

It should be a good time to set back and write more, though, especially as winter preparations are well advanced: the wood is well stacked and high, the gardens well spread with manure and turned; the garlic is in and bedded down; the garage space is clear and clean for Régine’s car – ready for December, and yet November is there, present and gray, to be endured. Maybe I am too harsh – there will be days of surprising sunshine, and unexpected cold. And that long stretch when Mandoline joins us from Paris.

So this November, rather than enduring, I plan to take advantage of being as well prepared as I am (and this is really unusual!) to use the month’s lack of defining character as a good space in which to explore without distraction what might emerge in January as a new direction. And to advance Mainestreams, not more (after the first month’s experience five days a week would be a more fruitful and realistic pace than daily) but better…And of course to play with Merlin…