Out of Africa

The movie Out of Africa came out in 1985. Frank and I thought it the worst movie we had ever seen and considered walking out of the theatre out of complete boredom. We were twenty-three.

Twenty-four years later, my life now doubled in length, I watched it again. It took that length of time for me to get it.

At twenty-three, it’s not that I didn’t know love. It’s not that I didn’t value the beauty and wonder of nature. It’s not that I didn’t understand what it meant to travel and leave one’s home and country.

It’s that I didn’t know these things deeply enough.

Watching it so many years later, I watched a completely different story. It was a story of love, still, but love and loss…

...love and pain
love and betrayal
love in friendship and respect of others
love in kindness and generosity
love in truly understanding other human beings
love and connection
love and letting go
love and joy

Now there were so many layers to the story. At twenty-three, I hadn’t lived enough to touch the layers and begin to peel them back. I didn’t even see there were layers.

It’s a wonderful thing when a movie or a book (like The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher) or a conversation can creep so deeply inside of us that it moves us, gives us a sense of knowing and clarity, and changes us. In both Robert Redford’s and Meryl Streep’s characters in Out of Africa, I recognized pieces of me. I identified with their feelings because of my own knowing and understanding. In this discovery through characters, we may learn something about ourselves and find peace with those parts now that we have validation and confirmation.

If we pause to observe or read, we may find the messages entwined with our own lives no matter how disparate the story or location. I’ve never owned a farm in Africa; I didn’t live in 1910; I don’t know a thing about safaris or growing coffee, but this movie moved me to want to kiss my husband, and hug my children, and value more my family and my friends. It also made me want to honor my need to spend time alone and live my life as a woman of independent means. Although Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) lost everything, her story left me with a feeling of hope. Her grace, civility, steadfastness, and strong yearning for love and companionship touched me, at forty-seven, at my very core.

Are there movies in your past or books that it’s time to watch or read again? Let’s seek the media to get us thinking about what matters most to us and urges us to act in a way that lives life more fully.

(photo: not Africa, but Scarborough, Maine)

EXCURSION: The Cliff Walk, Prouts Neck, Maine

At the very end of Scarborough and Ferry Beaches, connecting the two, is a point of land known as Prouts Neck with one of the most beautiful walks in Maine along the cliffs of the sea. The fact that Winslow Homer lived and painted here, and walked this sometimes desolate path, may give my claim credibility. The winding, craggy path rounds the point, at times as a rocky beach, at other times as a tiny footpath at the top of a cliff no wider than my feet. The walk is about a mile in length, but to get to it, we park at either of the beaches, walk the entire length of the beach, and then climb the rocks at the small 1949 stone pump house to get to the footpath. Perhaps you can park at the Black Point Inn; we've never tried.

I was introduced to this land when I was a little girl, taking rides with my father after we'd had breakfast out on one of his weekend visits with me. My father introduced me to lots of places along the sea -- Kennebunkport, Marginal Way in Perkins Cove. Having once owned an island in Casco Bay, Pumpkin Knob, my father loved the ocean and on so many rides, that's where we'd end up, and he'd share his stories, his dreams, his love of the rocky coast of Maine. Right on the point of Prouts Neck, there was a particular piece of land he always wanted to purchase. Now, a house sits on that spot and each time I look at it, I remember my father's dream.

Along the path are beautiful homes, boarded up in all seasons except summer. For me, going to the ocean is as much pleasure in the dead of winter as it is in summer and I'm usually sad thinking the owners are not getting the maximum benefits of owning such a piece of property. I think I might like winter at the beach even more than summer as I'm generally a more solitary traveler which is always pleasing to me.

The path is moderate in difficulty. There are seasons where it's quite muddy and wooden boards have been lain across particularly wet areas. There are times when spots are impassable. About mid-way around is a very tall rock just off the path. In summer, my boys used to climb the rock and sit perched precariously on the top as their lookout point, making me dizzy. Never would I dare climb up it.

On the walk, the wind blowing up off the ocean against your cheeks, you can look toward the horizon and appreciate the beautiful place in which we live. You can bring a picnic. You can draw, paint, journal, think or not think. The sun shines brilliantly off the waves in all seasons, and I take deep breaths of the fresh salt air, always grateful to be right there, right then.

The Crow

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

Albert Einstein

My husband is a gardener; we call him "Farmer Frank" in our neighborhood. The year he gave a small pumpkin to every neighborhood kid, after I'd watched the pumpkins grow and overtake our entire back lawn that season with leaves like you'd find in dinosaur days, huge and prehistoric-like, remains one of my favorite memories of the kids' early years. The neighborhood kids were all about five, and they took their bright orange pumpkins in their small hands and brought them home as though they were on a school field trip to the "pumpkin patch."

Frank truly can grow anything he touches, while I, on the other hand, kill anything living that I touch. Hopefully, that doesn't apply to humans, but I must admit babies don't like me nor do dogs, and I've never met a plant I didn't kill. I liken his skill/talent to that eye-of-the-tiger-competitive spirit some athletes have from when they're in elementary school; I believe both are innate and not something you can develop or cultivate.

Frank also feeds the birds. He has bird houses in the spring where parent-birds come to build nests and over a matter of weeks have babies. He revels in the baby's first flight from the house and usually happens to be in his yard to witness it when it occurs. Usually, a couple babies are born, but only one seems to survive. Seems barbaric to me but, hey, what do I know - the nature thing isn't innate in me, and I'm all "peace & love & the giving tree" and never been one for survival-of-the-fittest.

In winter, Frank has bird feeders. Faithfully, he puts on his deep-snow boots and trudges out to the middle of the backyard to fill his feeders. He screams and pounds on the deck to keep squirrels away, and he hates the crows. The crows are usually on the grass, below the feeder, eating anything the beautiful birds Frank invites, drop from it.

Early October appeared to be peak foliage season in Portland, Maine this year. The trees I saw out my back bedroom window, from my bed, were breathtaking -- brilliant yellows, oranges, and red, the trees beginning to drop their leaves. As I turned to step into my shower one morning, I noticed, and I'm not quite sure why, a crow at the tippy-top of a beautiful, full-foliage tree in our field just beyond our yard. That crow was on his tippy toes, or talons, precariously balancing on a tiny twig at the very top of the tree, wings a-flapping as he tried to stay on.

I paused a minute wondering why he was doing that. And, as I sometimes do, I drifted off into the metaphor-world and the wonderment of what this meant to me. The fact that I would even notice this happening told me I'd better observe for a minute because this meant something.

The crow continued to fight to stay on the branch for a matter of minutes. Surely, the view, if that was his motive, would have been equally good from half way up the tree or from a thicker branch. Or would it? That is what spoke to me. It's better to be at the tippy-top, fighting to hold on, because the view is NOT better from part way up; the air is NOT better from part way up; the feeling in his body of pure adrenaline pumping is NOT possible from part way up.

The crow told me that we should go as high up the tree as we can. Why? Because we can. And because the view at the top is unparalleled.

(photo: Evergreen Cemetary, Portland, Maine)