It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

(Copyright ©1983 from his poem Standing by Words).

As we take a moment to reflect on what we’ve accomplished since August 5 and all that lies ahead, here are a couple of short videos that will catch you up.

Bill begins the basement deconstruction:

With mad and abiding gratitude,

“Polished” is a word that will never be applied to these early efforts. We’ll get better, we promise. But for now, here are the videos—unedited, no gussying up, no skillset.

To paraphrase Betty Davis in All About Eve, fasten your seatbelts, friends, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTIONS ALL AROUND

THE GRAND OLD DAME

THE LATEST

Roof—check! Thank you, ACE roofing. You did an incredible job.

Septic system—check! Except for the finger system that will be replaced just as soon as the Septic Man returns.

Air & heat—in process! More on that in a future post.

Loving Maine—check!

ABOUT US

Coco is the nickname of writer Connie May Fowler. In addition to writing novels, memoirs, screenplays, poetry, and more, she fosters her beloved writing community through her teaching vessel InkBlossom. Bill is a master carpenter who grew up on an Indiana farm building things, riding horses and Harleys, and racing cars. He has built everything from bird houses to Bethesda, Maryland skyscrapers. He and Coco have renovated several old homes together, including houses in Florida, Mexico, and North Carolina. They reside in an 1868 Maine farmhouse they are rehabbing with their rescue pets Bella, Gustavo, and Theopolis. Coco and Bill and their changing menagerie of animals have been together for nearly 20 years.

A roof symbolizes many things. Unconditional love masking human flaws. A sentinel signaling sacred retreat. A thoughtful person’s sigil of higher consciousness.

I believe a roof evokes all those things, but at the end of the day, when you lay your head on your pillow in anticipation of peaceful sleep or when the heavens open up with a deluge, you simply count your lucky stars and contractor that your roof protects you from the elements.

We bought our 1868 farmhouse sight unseen. This is a bad habit we’ve fallen into, engaging in such recklessness with the North Carolina house. But in this instance, we felt fairly confident about our recklessness because the real estate listing didn’t sugar coat the situation. The house, the listing plainly stated, was in need of a new roof and the septic system was in need of immediate love. No truer words. Roof first. Septic system love second. We decided neither needed-for-survival to-dos could last through another Maine winter.

Bill collected five roofing quotes. They varied widely—the largest differential being nearly $10,000. We eschewed the very expensive national company that figured its estimate via satellite imagery and measurements in favor of a local company whose foreman walked the property, climbed onto the roof for a close inspection, spoke to us like we weren’t stupid. The crew completed the job in a single day, arriving around 7 a.m. and finishing, including all clean-up, by 8 p.m. Professional, thorough, competent, we have nothing but praise for Ace Roofing.

FIRST THING

Initially, we were all about a metal roof. They last longer and lots of homes around here are updated with standing-seam metal in red, green, blue, or black. But the more we drove around, looking at the area architecture, comparing the aesthetics of shingle roofs with metal roofs on 19th century homes, and after studying drawings and photos across the Internet, we did a complete 180. We preferred the simplicity of the shingle roofs. Their minimalism, their let-me-not-call-too-much-attention-to-myself spirit, existed in harmony with the simple, elegant lines of the old Maine farmhouses. The metal roofs in their near-primary shades seemed aggressive and decidedly not elegant or beautifully simple. So we went with tradition: a black-to-slate gray shingle that reminds me of fine tweed.

INTERNET, HOW DO WE LIVE WITHOUT YOU?

I conduct 80% of my teaching online. Internet access is crucial. The very first thing we did when we moved in was install Starlink. It was the only choice out here and, though I have all sorts of conflicting thoughts about going that route, there were no other viable choices (I see a future entry just about Starlink coming your way). So the roof, pre-replacement, was crowned with a Starlink dish on our first full day in the farmhouse (it works great, by the way). But a new roof meant the dish would have to be removed. We talked about me getting a hotel room until the internet could be restored, but Bill, true to his MacGyver nature, simply moved our connection to the world into the sky.

I’ve asked Bill to put a figurehead on the end of the board, one befitting a starship.

DISCOVERIES

One of the joys of saving an old home are the windows into the past discovered only when you dive below the surface. In this case, as they removed the old shingles, two discoveries: the house originally had two fireplaces and the 1868 shingles were shake—not a surprise, but the discovery did boost my confidence over the shingle-not-metal decision.

The garage roof was in far worse shape than the house’s roof. In fact, when I looked through the ceiling, I was propelled back through time to my elementary school outings to the local planetarium, all those pinpricks of light representing stars and galaxies. Which is really cool if it hadn’t been a roof. So, in essence, Ace did two roofs in a single day.

See what I mean about the roof resembling fine tweed?

SUCCESS!

And, so, here we are: an old house with a new roof! Restoration Project 1 complete! I think it looks truly beautiful: calm, simple, elegant.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Septic love, of course! But also, we’ve been remiss. You need to see the house in its entirety before we do any more gussying up. The tour video will drop soon!

WHAT I WAS DOING WHILE THEY WERE PUTTING ON THE ROOF

Making a chicken pot pie, of course! It’s one of Bill’s favorite foods, and though currently the kitchen is composed of a stove and sink (what else might one need, you might be asking? Counters! Cabinets!), I managed it with the help of store-bought pie crusts. Sometimes, we need to give ourselves a break and not make everything from scratch.

The dish:

Pre-heat the oven to 425°. Rack position: middle.

• four diced chicken thighs. Chicken thighs have more flavor than breasts, so they are my go-to for such dishes. Also, I am not religious about measuring, so I diced the entire package and sauteed them in olive oil, salt, pepper, basil. I decided that if it was too much chicken, I’d simply hold some back for a different dish, but it ended up being perfect.

• 1 medium onion, diced. I used a vidalia. Yes, they sell them in Maine!

• 2 medium carrots, sliced. I bought mine from a farm stand but first used the carrot tops to make carrot top pesto—it was divine!

• 2 medium stalks celery, sliced.

• 1 leek, white and light green parts, sliced thin.

• 2 large garlic cloves, minced or sliced, your preference.

• fresh thyme leaves; I tied about fifteen springs together and tossed them in the pot. Remove the spring bundle before you put the mixture in the pie plate.

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter.

• lots of freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning.

• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

• 2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

• 1/2 cup half-and-half

• 2-3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard (I like mustard so I do 3 generous tablespoons).

• 1/2 cup frozen peas (keep them frozen!)

• 2 store-bought pie crusts. I used Pillsbury. You can make your own pie crusts if inclination and time conspire to make this a good choice. But, in all honesty, the Pillsbury crusts worked beautifully and cut down my kitchen time. Pro tip: Keep the crusts COLD.

• 1 egg, whisked

Saute the diced chicken thighs and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large pot such as a Dutch oven. When melted, add the sliced-and-diced veggies and soften amid medium to medium high heat.

To the veggies, add the garlic and thyme bundle. Saute maybe a minute (don’t burn the garlic).

Add the flour to the veggies, stir nearly constantly, for one minute. Add broth, 1/2 and 1/2, and mustard. Stir like a mad woman until the mixture simmers. Reduce the heat to low to medium low. Let everything gently simmer, as the slow heat brings out the magic. You will stir until the sauce is lusciously thick—5 to 8 minutes.

Remove from heat, add the chicken and peas, mix it together. Such delicious alchemy! Season with anything your heart desires, kosher salt included. Steep and cool for an hour or so.

Do what you know to do with the crust: 9” regular pie plate, roll out bottom crust, fill it with the scrumptious filling, top it with the top crust, trim and crimp (find your crimping style), brush on the beaten egg, sprinkle salt and pepper on top, vent the top crust with at least 4 1” slits, and pop the pot pie into the oven.

After 20 minutes look to see if the top is getting too brown. Mine was browning too quickly on one side, so I rotated the pie, put it in for another 5 or 10 minutes (honestly, I can’t remember). I then loosely placed a sheet of aluminum foil over the pie and let it cook for 20 more minutes. At that point, I checked it, gave it another 5 minutes because I DID NOT AND DO NOT WANT A SOGGY BOTTOM, took it out of the oven, and let it rest for about a half an hour.

I have to say, it was the perfect way to spend an evening—chicken pot pie with a tomato, feta, and basil salad under our new roof.

Stars are found in such unexpected places . . .

It’s not the first time I left.

Late 1980s. Graduate school. Kansas. I couldn’t wait to get home.

Early 2000s. Kentucky. A relationship with a crucial child custody component. I did it for the boyfriend. I came home for me.

2010. The BP/Gulf of Mexico oil spill—a metaphor for all that was horrifying in this world: divorce, war, greed, corruption—a living entity destroying marine wildlife, the Apalachicola oystering industry, and for a good, long time my health. Over a period of twenty years, Alligator Point had become my sacred place, my refuge, a wonder-world of sea, sky, dune where childhood and adulthood traumas shed their thorns.

Five million barrels of spilled oil and untold amounts of the toxic dispersant Corexit forced me off the Point, transforming me into an environmental exile in my own land.

Boom being deployed on Alligator Point

2015: The Yucatan. For twenty years, against a backdrop of sand dunes and surf song, I’d gaze across glittering blue of the Gulf, knowing that if I were to develop the stamina and courage of Wonder Woman, I could swim south, eventually beaching myself somewhere along the Yucatan. Maybe my new sacred space was waiting for me there, among the cenotes and jungles and motmots.

It was worth a try.

After months of planning, Bill and I sold nearly everything we owned, boarded a Jet Blue flight with three pets and our friend Larry, and moved to Mexico’s Mayan peninsula.

What a beautiful place steeped in Mayan history and culture! We wandered the Yucatan—its capital, dazzling city Merida and its tucked away coastal and interior villages—eventually leaving the peninsula for a tiny jewel in the Caribbean named Cozumel. Surely, I’d find what I was looking for on a small island glorious in a turquoise sea.

Cozumel sunset.

During this period, the importance of naming the natural world, the human insistence on applying the alphabet to our daily existence, became paramount to me. It was the old, if you can name it, you are a part of it, which was not true. But it had worked for other explorers. Pedro Menendez named the Indian village of Seloy “St. Augustine” before ever stepping foot on dry land. I can well imagine that “Seloy” never crossed his continental lips. Naming was a form of establishing ownership. But I didn’t want to own. I wanted to understand.

Take the Ya’axche, a tree sacred to the Maya. I understood and appreciated the tree with the curious enthusiasm peculiar to outsiders. I had no interest in renaming it or any of the other new-to-me flora and fauna. Ya’axche was what my neighbors called the tree and I certainly wasn’t going to impose an English name on it. By learning the names of native plants and trees, I was hoping to attain a sense of belonging. The Ya’axche (some know it as “ceiba”), was a tree I admired with rational thought, but it never took root in the subterranean soil of my bones. It was not the live oak I sat under in my youth where I buried my hastily scribbled poems, so they would grow, anonymous and free, in the dappled beauty of a tree I fancifully believed loved me the way my mother could not. If I had grown up in Cozumel, the trees and seas might have spoken to me, might have loved me with maternal fervor. But my role as Stranger was resolute. An appreciating stranger in a land that would never be home: I remained an exile.

Finally, amid the bubbling lava known as Covid, we trekked back to the US, but not to Florida.

A tree by anything other name: Ya’axche, Ceiba, Kaypok.

2020: A small village on North Carolina’s inner banks. It was a pretty house. A house we could afford. In a place we weren’t prepared for, during a time we weren’t prepared for: the lockdown. I’m not going to dwell on this brief spell in our lives other than to say drugs had so overtaken this on-the-surface idyllic community that I moved “avoid getting shot” to the top of my to-do list.

2022: Return to Florida! Finally!

Bill and I thought this was our final move. We’d be back near my family. We’d reunite with old friends. I would once again wander the same shores my parents had wandered when they were at their best, before alcohol and recriminations and madness destroyed the good in them.

Listen, Florida love and why I left is a topic I’ll write about for the rest of my days. It’s multi-headed, complex, shapeshifting. I don’t want to step on toes, malign anyone, hurt tender feelings. So, for now, I’ll say this: I know Florida is still beautiful so please don’t come back on me about that.

I also know that Florida’s beauty is an increasingly rare commodity as developers build-out the state, pave over the remaining jungle and marshes, and as the state encourages bear hunts, power-grabs zoning decisions away from city and county governance, removes environmental protections from humans and wildlife, ignores the crumbling infrastructure, ignores the homeowners’ insurance crisis, ignores the affordable housing crisis, ignores the dwindling aquifer crisis (an aquifer ever more polluted with toxic runoff) even while the flood of newcomers surges unabated.

In 1990, according to the US Census, Florida’s population was 12,937,926. The state estimates that the 2026 population is 23,728,105. That is nearly an 84% increase. That is not planning. That is not having quality of life and land at the forefront of policymaking decisions. Eleven million new people—many of whom have no insight into natural Florida, who want the state to be Jersey with palm trees, who look down on “the locals” as if Florida is a place they moved to for the good weather and to exploit its resources while considering Jersey home, who show little interest in understanding the history and needs of a fragile peninsula—eleven million in a span of three decades is not progress. It’s catastrophic growth. It means not seeing my sister in four years because the traffic between Tampa and my home near St. Augustine is so feral, staying put is a matter of survival. It means being in awe of an old-growth swamp while trying not to let the fact that only 10% of it remains ruin your day. It’s knowing but then shoving away the knowledge, that the surviving 10% is slated to be developed. It’s listening to a newcomer decry manatees, citing the damage they do to boat props, and proclaiming the embattled animals should be slaughtered. It’s me trying to pretend the ecosystem of my youth still exists, knowing where to cast my gaze, knowing where not to look, knowing which watering holes to avoid given the political winds. It’s living in a perpetual state of destruction.

Nutshell: I am not as adaptable as I thought. An adaptable person would be okay with catastrophic development, seeing it as a natural blight that happens in the mottled light of human “progress.” An adaptable person would welcome the tsunami of newcomers and their resistance to learning about their new home because new people and new ideas create change and change is inevitable. An adaptable person would reason with herself, convince herself not to mourn the loss of cougar habitat or the decimation of fisheries because isn’t grace having the courage to know and accept what you can’t change?

Well, guess what? I am not the person.

A rare Florida cloudgator eats the moon.

2026: Maine. Crazy, right?

But hear me out. There has long been a Maine-Florida connection. The very best newcomers to Florida are Mainers. They respect weather and water and wilderness. They don’t want to know your business, and they don’t want you involved in theirs. They respect. I am working out this Maine-Florida theory, because I think there is something deep there, some sort of truth I can’t quite get at, a longing I haven’t yet pinned words to.

Once Bill and I discovered that, despite earlier proclamations, leaving Florida was inevitable, we studied the world map with the zeal of Old World explorers. We had to identify what we wanted. Surely, not the gold and souls the conquistadors were gluttonous for. No. Our desires were far humbler, kinder. We wanted quiet. We didn’t want neighbors so close they could see into our kitchen. We wanted to be able to drive to a local farm stand and not get run over by crazies running 100 on the interstate. We wanted a home where wilderness spoke more loudly than car stereos, where people’s self-worth was tied to their stewardship of place, where people were not constantly on edge, where the ghosts of dead parents and the pulsating energy of past traumas could finally be laid to rest, where water and forest, bird and mammal, wildflower and mountain, bloomed in an interconnected veil called life.

We have lived in our 1868, in need of restoration, farmhouse in central Maine for precisely fifteen days. In this digital space, Bill and I will mark our journey in our new home. You’ll see our struggles and triumphs as we bring the house back to life. You will see me come back to life, wander again through a sacred space, adjust to the wonder of finding home, of finally, finally no longer being an exile in my own land.

We hope you’ll go on this journey with us.