On Searsmont’s Quantabacook Pond in May/June 2022 When From Durham to Tehran came out in 1991, I had been keeping journals for thirty years, edited 1986 and 1989 entries therein used to produce the book’s chronologically ordered contents. Then came From Classroom to Courthouse in 2008, which made use of journal entries from the early 2000s. In the meantime, I had been visiting Searsmont (ME) as much as possible in the summers and researching Mother’s forbears, who had arrived from England to Readfield, on the other side of Augusta, in the 1760s and had moved to Searsmont in the early 1830s. In the back of my mind lay thoughts of a final autobiographical narrative called From and to a Village in Maine. A score of visits to Readfield Historical Society, Searsmont Historical Society, and Belfast Free Library, trips to Montana to find Grandfather David Lincoln Craig (1970-1937) in his twenties and early thirties, and to California Gold Country and Eastern Oregon to find Great-uncle Charles Augustus Craig (b. 1832), who officially has never died. Then have come perusal of scores of local histories, records, newsletters, and newspaper clippings, walks through a dozen cemeteries, compilation of a dozen PowerPoint shows on ancestors, Searsmont, Searsmont’s RiverSide Cemetery, Bartlett Stream that runs into Ruffingham Meadow, continues as Bartlett Stream into Quantabacook Pond, becomes, among other names, Anderson Stream, passes under Schoolhouse Bridge in Searsmont Village, where I fished this morning and caught fish for dinner several nights ago, then joins George’s River, and eventually ends its southerly course in the Atlantic Ocean.
From and To a Village in Maine Michael Craig Hillmann
2023
Long story short, back in Austin this spring, it struck me that it would be time this year on rainy, early summer days at a camp by Searsmont’s Quantabacook Pond, to weave notes and journal entries penned over the years and relevant Facebook and Twitter posts since 2010 into From and To a Village in Maine. These slides are the visual record for a 2022 installment of the story.
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And here I am. The first night at the camp, thunder and lightening livened things up right after I went to bed, my first thought–and a thought that told me I was in the right mood for the task at hand– was that I was seeing and hearing things that Grandfather David Craig (1870-1937) had heard in his teen years in Searsmont and from his thirties onward after returning from Montana, which is its own long story. A second thought was of symmetry–and symmetry in poetry, painting, and life has always appealed to me– as I was drifting off to sleep a mile-and-a-half from where greatgrandparents, grandparents, and parents are buried and where I’ve told Sorayya and Elizabeth I’d like my ashes sprinkled from the south side of Schoolhouse Bridge into the river and where, from earliest memories to early high school, literally idyllic and metaphorically cloudless summer months passed by. No Fern Hillish worries about future loss in it either, because I have gone home again time and time again, my fishing happier than Eliot’s because I keep hooking and feasting on symmetry. The walk or drive up Pond Road leads from asphalt to dirt, and then comes a right turn onto a treelined path to the lakeside camp. I walked down its mile-and-a-half to the Searsmont General Store for breakfast this morning, then caught two bass below Schoolhouse Bridge, and walked back to the camp in the rain. So far, today is proving as exciting, eventful, evocative, and easy on the eyes and ears (not to speak of the day’s assonance!) as days get in these parts, the accompanying photos serving in lieu of the thousand words each would take to defamiliarize and describe.
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2022
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Searsmont General Store, May/June 2022 My Chevrolet Equinox rental car from Portland JetPort, $200+ in gas for 22 days! But, worth it because driving on Waldo and Knox County country roads seems like saiing with wind at your back and views right and left and in front.
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Breakfast at Fraternity Village General Store, early June 2022. Searsmont’s store got its name from the title of a collection of short stories by novelist and sometimes resident Ben Ames Williams (18891953).
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Fraternity Village General Store
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Jim’s Summer 2022 Exhibit at Fraternity Village General Store
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Breakfast at Fraternity Village General Store
Jim’s Sculpture at Searsmont Community Center http://jimhillmannart.com
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Jim’s Appleton Ridge triptych
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I feel about Searsmont pretty much the way Malcolm Cowley’s speaker feels about his “own country” as he leaves it.
“The Long Voyage” By Malcolm Cowley Not that the pines were darker there, nor mid-May dogwood brighter there, nor swifts more swift in summer air; it was my own country, having its thunderclap of spring, its long midsummer ripening, its corn hoar-stiff at harvesting, almost like any country, yet being mine; its face, its speech, its hills bent low within my reach, its river birch and upland beech were mine, of my own country. Now the dark waters at the bow fold back, like earth against the plow; foam brightens like the dogwood now at home, in my own country.
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houses on Main Street up from the store
Veterans’ Memorial at the corner of Main Street and the beginning of New England Road, which continues 2+miles north to the Belfast-Augusta Road (Route 30
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New England Road up from the corner of Main Street
abandoned Grange at the corner of New England Road and Pond Road
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New England Road to the left, Pond Road the right
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George Sprowl’s antique car restoration business on New England Road just below Pond Road
George Sprowl in one of his antique cars in Searsmont’s Memorial Day Parade, 30 May 2022
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Oak Grove Cemetery overlooking Searsmont Village and Pond Road
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Pond Road, 2021 painting by Jim Hillmann
More Searsmont scenes on are display at Fraternity Village General Store. Also see http://jimhillmannart.com
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end of the asphalt on Pond Road
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Pond Road heading north… crowned with pot holes, crossing deer that momentarily stop and stare, small flocks of wild turkeys, large dive-bombing squadrons of Maine mosquitoes (the males buzz but don’t bite). Off my metaphorical grid. No radio or television. No Wi-Fi for the first week. Loons the loudest noise, voicing whatever emotion you’re feeling.
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horse farm on Pond Road
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Wall on Pond Road at what used to be a property called Whiting’s Woodbine. Grandfather Craig built the carriage house on the property, which Professor Bartlett Whiting used as his summer study. Jim and I fished and swam at the Quantabacook Dam on the property with our friend Jere Whiting.
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stream on Pond Road toward camp
tree trunk, moss, rod-and-reel
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path off Pond Road to camp
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camp and one-room separate building not in use
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camp living area, the stove accompanyed by a laminated description warning you that a mistake in turning it on could burn the camp and you to a crisp after it explodes.
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camp bedroom and in bed, dawn at 4:30 am
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kitchen side of camp living room and a camp breakfast and barbecue
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dock with canoe and kayak from kitchen window
woods back of camp from living room window
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My Saranac 146 Old Town Canoe, Jim’s 2022 birthday present to me.
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Eatable-sized bass caught in the Village at Schoolhouse Bridge, the camp dock, and north of camp in a marshy cove.
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lake view out front
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lake view north of camp
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lake view across and slightly south toward Vickery’s Corner on the other side. As childlren, Jim and I walked with Mother from Craig’s House in the Village to the Vickereys’ cottages to play with Carolyn, Tom and John.
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lake view south of camp toward the dam
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the dam at the south end of Quantabacook Pond, where Jim and I swam and I fished as children, walking to it down fields at Whiting’s Woodbine.
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view north from dam
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Walking up Pond Road beyond our camp to find Bartlett Stream on Pond Road North and then cross Route 3 and fish at Ruffingham Meadow, which used to be Bartlett Pond. Bartlett Stream empties into Quantabacook Pond, and Quantabacook spills over a dam into the river that passes under Schoolhouse Bridge in Searsmont Village, joins George’s Rivers, winds it way southward and eventually empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Just north of Schoolhouse Bridge, it passes under a hillside where RiverSide Cemetery, home to Bartletts and Craigs, is located. What appears to be a continuation of Pond Road South is a long driveway to a substantial shed and house on a 50-acre piece of land, home to a gentleman who bought the land seven+ years ago and built the two buildings, installed a bank of solar panels, and occasionally relies on a generator. Rabbits, deer, wild turkey, beavers in a nearby stream, fishable fish in nearby pond, produce, saplings, bushes, and flowers protected fences. We watched a porcupine Climb 50+ feet up a slightly swaying tree, presumably hunting for a bird’s nest full of eggs.
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I met a guy with his dog near the fork in the Pond Road that led left to the house in the previous slide and led to the right, according to this guy, to a pond, Bartlett Stream, the BelfastAugusta Road (Route 3), and Ruffingham Meadow. I took the path to the right until it was no longer beaten and came to a “meadow” with a notvery-sporting deer stand at its lower end and no visible trail at the other. I turned back, thinking I’d give it another try another day.
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Life in Searsmont can mean everything from Searsport to Rockland, including Ilseboro, on the Penobscot Bay and inland to Liberty, Washington, Hope, and Union.
Lincolnville Beach, McLaughlin’s Seafood Shack
Belfast Harbor
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Hiking: up and down Moody Mountain, Muzzy Ridge, Appleton Ridge, Gibson Preserve (Route 131), and Pond Road North in Searsmont, Haystack Mountain and Lake St. George trails in Liberty, Frye Mountain in Montville, hiking trails in Camden State Park, and up and around the Snow Bowl in Camden, up Ragged Mountain on Route 17, trails down George’s River on Route 105, and Belfast Rail Trail.
Belfast Rail Trail
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Fishing: Anderson Stream, Quantabacook Pond, George’s River, Lake St. George, Little Lake St. George, Stevens Pond, Sennebec Pond, Pitcher Pond, Levenseller Pond, Moody Pond, and Norton Pond
Quantabacook Pond
Quantabacook (or Anderson) Stream, Schoolhouse Bridge
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Lori’s Café in Liberty. Next door is John’s Ice Cream. Back on the other side of Lake St. George State Park is Wild Grace Farms Store. The only eatery in Searsmont (as of May/June 2022) is Fraternity Village General Store, which I first frequented in the late 1940s with a nickel or dime in my fist for a soda from its ice cold water tub.
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Searsmont/Liberty/Belfast, etc. PowerPoint Slide Shows by Michael Craig Hillmann mchillmann@qol.com, mchillmann@gmail.com http://academia.edu/michaelhillmann 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Elizabeth Craig Hillmann: Searsmonter, 2021.pptx Old Searsmont Village, 2021.pptx Readfield (ME), 2019.pptx Searsmont’s RiverSide Cemetery, 2015. Searsmont-Liberty-Lincolnville, 2011.pptx. Searsmont Bicentennial Quiz, 2014.pptx Searsmont Houses, 2015.pptx Searsmont-Liberty-Belfast, 2015.pptx Maine, 2017.pptx Maine, 2019.pptx Elizabeth Craig Hillmann and Jim Hillmann–Art, 2021.ppt t Searsmont-Belfast, 2021.pptx Jim’s Belfast, 2021.pptx On Searsmont’s Quantabacook Pond in May/June 2022
These PowerPoint presentations are designed for posting at http://issuu.com/michaelhillmann and a Searsmont Historical Society online archives. 40