Fiddleheadin'

On or around the spring weekend nearest my Mother's April 27th birthday we drive the sixty plus miles to the home of my youth in rural Somerset County Maine for the express purpose of picking the vitamin packed, river fed, curly topped fiddlehead. There are, of course, other earlier harbingers of a Maine spring: the first tissue delicate crocus; the infamous creeping sludge of our fifth and unheralded season...mud season; and the gorged, greedy, Maine Street swallowing rivers.

For me, more important than switching jeans for capris, Bean boots for sandals, and my wool coat ( the seeming weight of a small bear cub) for a light trench, is providing my parents with their first plate of butter dabbed, vinegar doused fiddleheads. Fiddleheads thrive along the banks of rivers, streams and brooks. There must be some super fortified growth inducing agent in the waters of the Carrabassett, a tributary of the mighty Kennebec, because this humble ostrich fern grows in clusters of profuse abandon on the patch of river bank near my Mom's and Dad's home.

In years past Mom and Dad accompanied us as we carefully crossed the busy North New Portland Road ( a thoroughfare to Maine's renowned Sugarloaf area ) that separates their property from that of the good neighbors who let us traverse their access path to the river. We never know when the dynamics of a treasured tradition will be altered. Our daughter and her friends, along with two pent up black lab mixes, were once fellow foragers. A "green" girl from the womb, she pointed out vernal ponds, exclaimed over mushrooms, hoped for a glimpse of toads, snakes, or turtles, and teetered way to close to the beaver bog.

We would take plastic grocery bags to hold our dietary treasures; we picked enough for that evening's meal, some to blanch and freeze, and some to take home and share with friends. I associate fiddleheads with sunshine, although we must have weathered cold and showers at times. There was always the pause by the twin trout ponds, a stick or two thrown for the dogs to swim and retrieve. Sneakers would be tossed and toes aired and watered in the river when the current was slow and the water low. We smelled of sunscreen and Avon's Skin-So-Soft, a passable bug repellent. My Dad quizzed his grand-daughter's knowledge of tree varieties; my Mom taught her the names of wildflowers.

We live entwined with the seasons in Maine. Our activities, our gastronomical sustenance are influenced by the earth's rotation. I will reach for that perfect apple in autumn, but the baby once riding on my left hip is now in college. We will savour the carrots, squash, potatoes, and pumpkin pie, bounty of Mom's and Dad's own garden, but the huge plot of my childhood is replaced by the tiny patch that suits their diminished strength, but undimmed enthusiasm. We will make a summer shortcake of scarlet berries once plucked from a Dresden, Maine farm, but the little berry plucker with the Josephina doll is working in Boston this summer, a trip to a fruit stand or farmer's market will suffice.

For me the humble fiddlehead represents majesty; the grandeur of Maine, the character of my family as a unit and as individuals, the blessedness of life and the desires to live it well, and to adjust to life's seasons as well as New England's seasons. My Dad uses a walker now. My Mom cannot safely navigate the terrain to the river. We were accompanied by a neighbor boy, T.P., who could not be closer to them than if he were a grandson. It was a joy to hear about his class trip to Washington D.C. and to discover he likes to write. I don't know who will make the trek to the clean waters of the Carrabassett with us next year, if God willing we are able bodied, but as long as we have my parents and they have a yen for fiddleheads... the river calls.