From the Orchard to the Pumpkin Patch

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I have to admit that lately my Saturday nights have been most entertaining.  Last week it was Roller Derby - which is a post I'm going to write shortly - and this week it was a mad dash home from work, dropping off a colleague riding along, then layering up to go to the Cumberland Fairgrounds for the return of Pumpkin Fest.

The Fest is the amazing fundraising effort of Camp Sunshine, an NPO that supports a camp for families of seriously ill kids down in Casco.  The last time they had one here in Maine was 2003 in Deering Oaks and folks still talk about it.

So after a hectic day in the Orchard - where I'm now being asked to teach the occasional workshop - the idea of attending such amiable madness was very very appealing.

I know the Cumberland Fairgrounds quite well.  During my 20-year tenure teaching in the town I had many performances for my students there - both the Principal's Own marching band (dodging cow dung during the Saturday Morning Fair Parade) to quick unison chorus concerts in the Exhibition Building.

The W's and I would try to get out on the Friday to sample the Fair, but recently - with their kids getting older - and our own approach to the arrival of Friday evening being more gasp than cheer - we've missed it.

Now they just want to study Italian at the Cambalache Spanish Center.

Still it was fun to park over and greet the former DARE officer from the Cumberland PD - it was nice to be remembered.

The first things to great you coming into the grounds was a small but very vocal patch of jack-o-lanterns - I'm going to abbreviate and call them "Jacks" - behind the registration table.

There was a loud band playing - Entrain, according to their site - that had a happy, kind of semi-sanitized Doctor John kind of sound.  A lot of live drum beats, which set off a lot the kids to bound around and jump.

And there were a lot of little kids there.  Pretty much all of the center of the sulky track was filled with pumpkins - the lighting had started about 45 minutes before.  

There were hundreds and hundreds of children there, walking, some with flashlights, some holding hands with parent, siblings, holding dog leashes - all of them running, then stopping to see particularly happy face, a scary one, a silly - and then wandering on.

Everywhere, the smell of scented votive candles filled the air - and the rich smell of cooking pumpkin.

I would think that walking through fields, avenues and thouroughfares of lit pumpkins would be the kind of bright, magical memory that would stay with kids for a lifetime - if they weren't addicted to such experiences and memories.  I think there is such a thing as too much magic, too much amazement - maybe you should not let magic get to a point where it's expected - expected magic, like expected grace - becomes a dull, faded thing very quickly.

Better to lose your breath unexpectedly.

A battalion of volunteers was whaling on pumpkins, turning out a new face every thirty seconds.  "Toppers", mostly adults, opened the tops, "hullers" scooped the insides out and "facers" gave the gourds their new identities.

The massive effort was also taking place in the shelter of the small-animal barns.  It was there I ran into a former colleague from the Memorial School - a link to my Life 1.5 and a welcome face in the dark.

I wandered around the grounds, looking at the assembled multitudes of pumpkins, totally enchanted - enchanted in a basic, deep magical sense - with the goofy wonder of it all.  

A rich smell, a warm light, biting cold - all combined to make it a rich scene, full of sound ,music, the cries of delighted children and adults.

Overlooking everything was a huge, double-sided wall of pumpkins - each with a heart, carved for a special donation.  It rose like a cascade of frozen, molten light, high over the lava-like flow of color from the other pumpkins on the ground.

It was as if one were walking between the glowing crust of a recent volcanic eruption; perhaps this is how the Devil walks around Hell, impervious to the heat of burning red rocks.

I don't know - but it was really pretty.

Fortunately I had the good sense to know when I was done with the moment, and headed home.  Today the pumpkins all get mulched and used at Pineland Farms.

Nothing goes to waste, not pumpkins, not magic, not ideas and certainly, certainly not people.

OK - magic can do that.