Goats on a Surfboard

Forced into calculation, I would estimate that I have spent 70 percent of my daylight hours this summer either a) next to a goat or b) on top of a surfboard. While I have yet to teach Snuggles to hang ten on the seven-footer, it’s still impressive given I’d never touched either one until June. For me, it’s been a season of pushing the envelope, so to speak. And what better place to do it? The coast of Maine is a rugged, varied, excellently salty paradox of a place: hipster yet old-school, spacious yet crowded, wealthy yet rooted in blue-collar tradition. The farm and the waves and the wildness and the snatches of conversations I’ve overheard - “Cousin Billy? Yeah, he’s always splashed around in the shallows of the family gene pool…” - have molded me into the current version of myself, one that laughs with strangers, takes risks, trades goat’s milk for home-ground wheat flour, and looks around at the world in a generally jolly, steady, nosey sort of way.

For I’ve found that this state is a goldmine if you’re interested in the niche. Last month, I chanced to meet a stubbly, windswept boatbuilder-turned-cheesemaker who now owns 50 Nubian goats, some of whom are named Mona Lisa, Claire Danes, Honkycat, Manoush From NPR, Starlord, and Fergie. He’s trying to find common ground with the few Somali Bantu chiefs around but is struggling because he believes - warranted or not - that the animals suffer more under Halal slaughterhouse practices. “I don’t care who you pray to,” he rumbled, “but I care about my animals.” Another neighbor, one who shears 3,000 small ruminants a year, runs his family farm entirely on horsepower. As he pruned our lambs, he wove together the histories of Merino wool and Napoleon and explained how sheep represent freedom from tyranny while I wondered how his impressively medieval tools fit into his late-model Prius. Do they press against the windshield glass?

Even those two characters, though, have stiff local competition. Every October, the eccentrics up Route 1 in Damariscotta dress in costume, scoop out giant pumpkins, squeeze inside, and paddle them downriver in their world-famous regatta - this year, the livestream had 179 views. The announcers were emphatic that “If you ain’t rubbin,’ you ain’t racin’!” Teenagers behind me in a vintage store in another town vigorously debated the pros and cons of varieties of harmonicas and reached no conclusion. A few feet off the rocky shore, sea cucumbers cough up their respiratory trees and survive; on my kitchen table, a monarch caterpillar melts in his chrysalis but will remember all he knew before. If he’s this season’s fourth generation, he’ll soon head for Mexico. I’ve watched a juvenile osprey drunkenly leave the nest for the first time and found newspapers in the bindings of nineteenth-century books in a medical library. When the curmudgeonly state park ranger smiled at us and even turned to watch the sunset over the pines one night, we wondered if he fell in love. People are interesting; so are the stars.

I took a personality quiz recently and it told me that my top strength was curiosity. In college, I worked simultaneously at the campus preschool, adventure program, and study abroad office, mostly for the hell of it. Now, it’s a farm, an outdoor gear shop, a backpacking company, and the State Department. Will I ever choose? Since moving to Maine, I can’t stop seeing our planet as a mess of concentric circles, infinitely smaller rings balanced together, falling all around in shimmering, delicious layers. Each one - whether it’s horsepower, horticulture, or harmonicas - is its own universe, its own treasure trove of knowledge and tradition, and I can only hope to scratch the surface of a few. My favorite response to tough questions is “I don't know” - because how could I know? There’s too much to know. All we can do is keep learning and growing, finding the worlds within worlds that we adore. I had no idea that I would come to crave rolling my board in the waves, tipping endlessly into the frigid whitewash, the way I do. Or that I would someday depend on five dairy goats, the way they stare at me from the top of their picnic table every morning. It makes me wonder how many other great loves I will unlock, given time. And how many will you?

These past few months have also taught me that scratching those surfaces requires grit. Being out on a surfboard in the big blue is the most frustrating, humbling practice I’ve ever attempted. Among other things, it’s a crash course in patience, intuition, and resilience. Sometimes I choose the wave; sometimes the wave chooses me. Sometimes I see perfection brewing ten seconds too late. Sometimes I finally work up the nerve to paddle hard and then blow it, surfacing with scraped elbows to discover that my board has chosen to start a new life in Canada with a younger board it met on the beach. Out there, it’s hard to tell what’s important. I could sit in the waves forever, legs numb, neck cricked, and never surf. It reminds me of my terrestrial life, where I am often paralyzed by options, pathways, careers, and choices. What I’ve learned, though, is that no matter what, there is always - always - going to be another wave. They simply never stop coming in, never stop offering chances. In beer pong they call it redemption; in church they call it grace. Regardless of the company you keep, it’s forgiveness.

Ultimately, there’s not a whole lot we can control in this world. I believe, though, that like the ocean, the universe has a way of taking us where we need to be. If we bravely ride the waves, forgive ourselves, and trust that things will work out for the best, we can find grand adventures, from cheesemakers’ front yards to pumpkin regattas and everything in between. I choose to constantly push my limits, step into the unknown, and search for questions and answers. For now, Maine is my perfect place. However, I know I won’t be here forever. I just hope there’s a good surf beach - and some goats - wherever I go next.

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat’s blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

-The Shipping News

Sunset at Higgins Beach, Portland, Maine.