An avid reader creates a movie in his/her head that is as extensive as the original author intended and as rich and colorful as the limits of human imagination. Indeed, it is this skill that creates an avid reader in the first place.
One of the greatest fears of that reader is to have a favorite book “ruined” by the production of a screenplay which is then rendered into a movie. Of necessity, even the most skilled of screenplay writers must ruthlessly prune a novel to make the story fit inside time limits presented by a commercial movie theater.
With trepidation, readers viewed askance Peter Jackson’s $281,000,000 effort to bring Tolkien’s epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to the screen. Messing about with hobbits and dwarfs is bad enough, but what if he had “whiffed” on Gollum? Ruined, just ruined. As it turns out, the director did a heroic job, loading everyone up and shipping them off the New Zealand, exotic enough to most of us to resemble Middle Earth as it exists in our minds, especially with some digital enhancement from production magicians in Hollywood.
Autumn in Aroostook County undergoes a similar alteration of the landscape. Things are similar, but not quite the same, as what we have encountered through the summer months. The familiar shape of the indigenous trees remain, but the leaves that cloak them are altered. Brooks and streams that offered cool relief from summer heat now act as heat sources, sending tendrils of water vapor into the cooler morning air.
Punctuated by water-rounded stones, the placid water reflects the stream banks and cloud banks in a familiar, yet foreign, upside-down reflection on the real world. Ducks mutter low, dismal sentences to each other while drifting across the mirror-smooth medium.
Overhead, geese argue in shrill, hysterical voices over which path, which v-formation, which leader will safely deliver them to their winter home in the south. The sky remains blue, but it is not the same blue. Like gels on Kleig lights or filters on a camera, the light is different somehow. Even sound seems altered by the strange changes of a Fall morning, almost as if it were whispering secrets.
Change is also found at the tables of the vendors of the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market. Taste buds are tempted by Joe York’s piquant garlic bulbs as the weather changes, but Barb’s cut flower arrangements, heavy on purples and blues during the summer months, voyage to the warm end of the spectrum before frost limits selection to hardy mums, straw-flowers, and dried specimens. Reds, oranges, rust, yellow, brown … the change in palette is echoed in pumpkins, gourds, and squashes on a number of tables. Gloria Goughan paints some with cheery faces like the elvish community, but other characters remain dwarfishly suspect. Root crops like the potatoes, beets, and carrots are just good eating through the fall and winter, stored in the cool dark cellar. Jackie Doak saves for us the less hardy produce as jars of jellies, preserves, and relishes to tempt our palate. The scent of apples spikes the air in the Aroostook Centre Mall parking lot.
Autumn in The Crown of Maine is like nowhere else on earth. The best of what it has to offer — smell, sight, taste, and sound — appears at the Presque Isle Farmers’ Market on Saturdays right through Columbus Day weekend. The vendors hope that you will appear as well.
The Presque Isle Farmers’ Market contact person is Gail Maynard, who operates Orchard Hill Farm in Woodland with her husband, Stan. Their phone number is 498-8541 and their email is orchhill@gmail.com.
