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Tomorrow, I will leave Fort Kent. Just now, I was paging through the guestbook we keep in the entrance of the lodge here. I have been here for four years, ever since June 2002. The previous season did not go as planned or as hoped; I missed qualifying for the Junior World Championship Team, probably by a small margin, maybe great. That’s insignificant now, but it wasn’t then. So I moved here. And I loved it, despite the smallness of the population. The grandness of the woods made up for that, as did the vastness of the silence.
While my lunch was cooking today, I walked around as one often does before leaving a place. Recalling memories. Conversations. With a biathlon range outside on which I have competed many times, triumphs and failures join in with the memories. The targets I have hit, and missed. The stands where my mom stood during every competition helping me make the Olympic Team, despite the weather and the cold and being the only one there. The stand of birch trees that, on windy days, is a dancing of limbs. Every year since I have been here, there are ever fewer trees there. I miss the ones that are gone. I’ll miss Fort Kent.
I’ll miss going into the grocery store and stopping to chat by the rotten bananas with a volunteer, now friend. I’ll miss being able to walk down to that store, and haul my groceries up the alpine hill without a car. And the view once you climb the hill, in the springtime, of the St. John River Valley, the river moving slowly toward civilization further south. I’ll miss the rollerski loop, skiing dozens of loops, fighting through boredom, replacing it with focus. Running up the stairs, changing clothes, and starting dinner within ten minutes of having finished the workout.
And I’ll even miss last spring. Spending five weeks here absolutely alone. Dealing with the news that I was being cut from the Development Team for no reason. Rising to the challenge, after believing the only option was to quit. To give up. Instead, running outside in the cold rain, through the woods, literally through the trees, trying to make sense of what I would do. Why there always had to be challenges in the way of my goals. Why I suddenly felt helpless because of biathlon politics, because of one coach, and a few apathetic souls. But how I pulled through it and ended up with such conviction, focus, and moral bearing that I felt direction and confident again.
I’ll miss being awakened by the sun, rising in the summer before 5 AM. And I will have fond memories of the people with whom I shared this lodge many years ago. They’ve changed, our relationships have, and many are moving on now as I am. But I’ll miss the camaraderie we had, which I felt, at least. I will miss walking out the heavy doors to the shooting range, and shooting below my bedroom. I’ll miss the youth kids coming into the lodge for training at 8 AM, reminding me where I started, and that I should get up, if I was asleep.
I’ll miss arriving in the parking lot after a seven-hour drive from Vermont, stepping out of the car, and breathing in the northern air, reminding me why I had driven such a long way. And the first year, when everything was new, and I got lost on occasion, I’ll miss that feeling, that of not knowing, but finding out. I won’t miss the black flies. Or the ATV’ers. Or the access road with its ruts so deep I bottom out. I will miss the moose, whom I haven’t seen for many months now, and to whom I will not be able to properly say good-bye. I’ll miss Fort Kent.
This is becoming emotional, writing this. Much more than I expected. I had originally thought this winter, when I was making plans for the new season, that it would be easy to leave. But it isn’t. Now I see Mike Paradis out grooming the trails and am I reminded of another reason why I will miss this place. The people, the volunteers who set a new standard for dedication to a cause, to my cause, to biathlon. For no apparent benefit to themselves. There are few places that you will find such a situation. So I’ll miss that, too. I’ll miss them. I’ll miss Fort Kent.
Peace,
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