Report From Lake Megunticook

Harrison Owen owenhh at mindspring.com
Wed Sep 12 16:02:18 PDT 2001


It could be Lake Wobegone -- but that is just a fiction. But Megunticook is
for real, and it has been the one place in the whole world that I have
always come back to. Ungrammatical as usual. But none-the-less, Megunticook
is a beautiful Maine lake, just 2 miles from the Bay, and close to the
small village of Camden. We have lived here (in the summers) for 50 years.
My toys are still in the closets. As are the toys of my children and
grandchildren. The place has history. 15,000 years ago, ice almost a mile
high sat on top of us, as the glaciers moved south, carrying large
boulders, smoothing mountains, bringing pulverized rock South to create
Cape Cod and Long Island.  As I say the place has some history, at least in
the short time frame that us humanoids understand. And over night it
changed -- one more time.

When I was a child, what you noticed most was the silence. No cars. No
people. No --- nothing. You could hear the Loons calling at night . An Owl
or two. But mostly silence. And then in the 60's we had the first Jets.
Camden is on the main route for transatlantic traffic coming into and going
out of the US. Starting at about 10 in the morning, the con trails appeared
in the sky as the first jets from Europe came over on their way to JFK,
Dulles, and beyond. And in the afternoon, it all started again as the Jets
went North to ride the Great Circle Routes to Europe. And underneath it all
was the dull rumble of distant thunder -- 1000's of hp and gallons of jet
fuel denoting the "modern age." When we had a Cold War -- the commercial
jets would give way to the B-52s flying high. silent -- almost. White
Bellys to protect the crew (supposedly) from the   Atomic Blasts they might
be called upon to set loose upon the world. Gave you Goose bumps every time
they went by. 'Cause it could be the last time. But somehow we
escaped.  And the B-52s went to wherever such birds went... and the Jets
came as always. South in the morning. North in the evening. Silent con
trails, but with a distant rumble. The modern world, I guess.

9/11  or was it 911? -- the world changed. Again. And for two days, as I
sit by the lake in the warm Sun of a mild September -- it is  Silence once
again. No con-trails. No rumble. Silence...

And in that silence, I can hear the gentle lap of the lake, talking to the
shore as it has for 15000 years since things thawed out. I can also hear
the screech of an American Eagle (Bald Eagle) chick -- sitting in a tree
and begging for dinner. The parents are looking on, wondering how they
raised such a teenager. But mostly it is the silence...

ho



Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-469-9269
fax 301-983-9314
Summer Phone 207-763-3261
Summer Address
189 Beaucaire Ave.
Camden, ME 04843
Personal website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh
Open Space Institute website www.openspaceworld.org
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
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