Sue and Quan near the solar panels at their home in Maine

Our Sixtieth Year On This Good Earth, Part 4

Sue and Quan near the solar panels at their home in Maine
The solar panels at our dome house

Home Again

I think we always knew we’d come back to Maine. We’ve lived here twice, once in the Rockland area and, later, in the Ellsworth area. We, both of us, love everything about the coast of Maine. Our new house is a geodesic dome on 18 acres on Great Pond in Franklin. We have about 800 feet of shoreline on the lake including a sand beach and a floating dock. The lake is somewhat shallow so there won’t be speedboats, mostly just people fishing. And, yes, we plan to participate in the fishing activities!

Quan is adjusting very well to his new home. We closed on this house in late October , flew back to Alabama and closed on that house the day we flew in, and left Alabama about two weeks later. We all left on the same day, Jim driving with two dogs and the cat and me flying with Quan.

I spent the first night at a hotel in Birmingham, worked out of the hotel the next morning, the VA OI&T Field Office that afternoon, and got on a plane at 4:00 PM. I spent that night in Detroit – don’t ask – and checked into the Bangor airport hotel at lunchtime the next day. I had lunch that day in the restaurant in the airport where the movie, The Langoliers, was filmed. I was part of the crew of that movie almost exactly twenty years ago!

We all arrived at the new house within an hour of each other – an achievement! Although Jim drove right through Bangor on his way, there simply wouldn’t have been enough room for me, Quan, my suitcase, and three laptops. So I took a cab. The driver was getting pretty nervous after we had been on our private road for a mile with a blind girl giving him directions – but we got here in the end.

I’ve never been so pleased to walk in the house and sit down before a fire!

Yesterday I did my first long walk by myself. We’ve done shorter walks together in different directions but, yesterday, I just took off and kept right on going. It’s going to take a while to get the hang of the nuances of the various routes here but it’ll be fun doing it!

We’re generating most of our electricity ourselves with a combination of a windmill and solar panels. The only room in which we have to use energy other than that we generate ourselves is my office. But the office has three south facing windows which pretty much take over with passive solar energy by mid-morning.

The next chapter of our lives on this good earth begins… And it begins in the place we love best with my beautiful, calm, brilliant Quan at my side. Thank you, Seeing Eye.

 

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