Story Info
Story Info
Polly Howells
Rangeley, Maine
2018
Type of Wounded Place
Story & Experience
The shore of our property on Lake Mooselookmeguntic in Rangeley, Maine, was ravaged this spring as the unusually cold winter left thick blocks of ice floating. As this ice melted and re-froze and melted and re-froze, a severe windstorm came up and smashed it into the promontory that leads from our land out into the lake. The rock wall that had been cemented there in the late 19th century to secure the point was destroyed and kicked up onto the land. The point was created to accommodate the mail boat which stopped there in the late 1800’s, before there were roads, when there was only a railroad that went as far as our land and the mail was delivered around the lake from there by boat.
No storm had ever torn up this man-made promontory before. It has stood there for 150 years. But nature is having her way with us, and we have to honor her moods, and give back to her with our creativity and love. My three granddaughters and I made a RadJoy bird offering to this land, to this water, honoring the unpredictability of storms in this time of climate change.
The shore of our property on Lake Mooselookmeguntic in Rangeley, Maine, was ravaged this spring as the unusually cold winter left thick blocks of ice floating. As this ice melted and re-froze and melted and re-froze, a severe windstorm came up and smashed it into the promontory that leads from our land out into the lake. The rock wall that had been cemented there in the late 19th century to secure the point was destroyed and kicked up onto the land. The point was created to accommodate the mail boat which stopped there in the late 1800’s, before there were roads, when there was only a railroad that went as far as our land and the mail was delivered around the lake from there by boat.
No storm had ever torn up this man-made promontory before. It has stood there for 150 years. But nature is having her way with us, and we have to honor her moods, and give back to her with our creativity and love. My three granddaughters and I made a RadJoy bird offering to this land, to this water, honoring the unpredictability of storms in this time of climate change.
Rangeley, Maine
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