Barbara Burns Ryan

Greetings from the woods of Maine!

As I write, I can look out the window of my husband’s office which also serves as computer room, at our surrounding beautiful woods of pines, hemlock, and various deciduous trees that cover our six and a quarter acre lot. We live in a log home that we had built for us two years ago. It really is our dream home with high ceilings, a huge front porch and many other great features. We have water frontage on a small, clear pond - great for swimming or kayaking or for reading a good book on the dock.

It’s been a long and interesting journey to this point in Bob’s and my life after leaving Earlham and I’d like to share it with you.

I left Earlham in 1961 and lived at home in Mountainside, NJ, for a year, working in the children’s section of the Summit, NJ library. In 1962 I moved to New York City where I lived for almost three years working in various technical libraries. The desire to earn a degree in Elementary Education became increasingly strong during these years and in 1965 I left NY to return to NJ and (what was then) Trenton State College, (now New Jersey College), evening division. When I left Earlham, I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in. My major had been Sociology but I knew I did not want to go into social work. People of all ages have always intrigued me and so perhaps it was natural for me to be interested in teaching children. As I worked toward earning my B.S. in Elementary Education, I felt that I was progressing toward a goal that I really wanted to achieve. In 1971 I graduated from Trenton State and landed a position at Margaret Mace Elementary School in North Wildwood, N.J., teaching second grade. I began teaching in March (1971), half way through the school year. The following months until June, the end of the school year, were certainly a challenge! The teacher whose class I took had lived in the community all of her life and had taught at Margaret Mace for many years. She had taught at least two generations of students and everyone in the small community knew her. Her young students probably saw her as a mother figure and they loved her. Unfortunately, she became quite ill but continued teaching, an oxygen tank in the classroom! Increasingly, her students were on their own. Eventually, the situation became impossible and she had to leave. Enter, Miss Burns, brand-new teacher and wet behind the ears, facing a classroom of kids who resented losing their beloved teacher and certainly didn’t want a strange young woman attempting to teach them (attempting, being the operative word)! One boy, in particular, a tough little kid, decided to represent the whole class, perhaps thinking that if he gave this stranger a hard enough time she might disappear. He almost succeeded! Certainly, Miss Burns was in tears many times during the remaining months of that school year. However, teaching summer school that summer with a small group of children, in a more relaxed setting, helped to make up for those tough months and I began to discover how involving and fun teaching could be. The following school year I had a great class and I was learning to relax, have fun with my students and, in short, to teach creatively and effectively, attempting to put into practice the concept of teaching to the individual needs of each child.

The almost four years I spent at Margaret Mace teaching second grade were certainly growing ones for me. I became increasingly aware of how much impact I had on the lives my young students, not only then but for the rest of their school career and the rest of their life. I had the chance to make learning exciting for each one and feel part of a close-knit classroom led by a teacher who genuinely cared about each child, or I could choose to regard teaching as just another job with the perk of a longer vacation than most and start the process of turning kids off to school. What a responsibility!

As I became comfortable with my role as teacher I began wondering how I could combine teaching with my desire to see something of the world. Certainly, I did not want to spend the rest of my career teaching in a small town in NJ. I looked into teaching with a branch of the armed services in Europe with no luck. I also investigated Australia, again with no luck. However, a few years later, leafing through a teacher’s magazine, I came upon an ad recruiting teachers for New South Wales in Australia. The contract would be for two years. If I stayed for the full two years my way would be paid over and back; if I stayed for a year I would pay my own way home and if I failed to complete a year I would reimburse the N.S.W. government for the months I didn’t teach. This sounded like my chance and I jumped for it! I applied, was accepted, and found myself on my way to Sydney, along with a plane full of other teachers, in early January, 1975.

The recruiting program was a huge one involving teachers from the U.S.A., the U.K. and Canada. Queensland and Victoria, two other states in Australia had similar programs. Many of the recruits were kids just out of college who couldn’t get work in the U.S. as this country was going through a recession. We left the U.S. in winter (snow in NJ, chilly dampness in San Francisco) and arrived to the heat and humidity of a typical Sydney summer. Kids were playing cricket on the footpaths (just as kids play baseball on sidewalks in American cities) which amazed me because I knew just about nothing about cricket and had been led to believe that it was a rather an esoteric game played by a few elite boys schools in England. We were taken to a hostel for immigrants in an attractive area of Sydney. An intense week of training followed - a crash course in Aussie geography and culture and an introduction to public (government) education in Australia, in a classroom “cooled” only by one ineffective fan. At the end of the week, we were given our postings by the N.S.W. Dept. of Education. Mine was to Campbelltown, a “satellite” town, about forty miles out of Sydney. My posting was to a grade one classroom, a team teaching situation. We then had to find living accommodations. I was able to rent a room in a woman’s condo, with kitchen privileges, about an hour away by train from the school. After a week or two in Campbelltown I was suddenly transferred to another school in the nearby town of Camden. I soon learned that the state education department moved people around at will and this sort of thing was not unusual. In Camden I was put into a team teaching situation in a kindergarten. Because the school was far from a rail line, I had to buy a car - a Holden, which is the Australian version of a Chevy - and quickly learn to drive on the left side of the road. The woman I taught with was friendly but was an outspoken representative of the teachers’ union and did not care much for Yanks!

The American imports formed a tight knit group. We all lived fairly close to each other and frequently had parties. Most were a lot younger than I was and there was a lot of homesickness.

Eventually, I was able to leave the urban area where I was living and rented a room in a house in the country, about three quarters of an hour from my school. My commute took me over a range of low mountains, through farmland. I was able to find more lovely farmland in my weekend exploring.

In May (autumn) of that year, at the end of the first term, another American and I went to Tasmania. This is the island state off the southeast coast. We drove to Melbourne (Victoria), left my car with a relative of a friend, and flew to Devonport, Tasmania where I rented a car and we started our tour around the small, heart shaped state. We found the mountainous scenery beautiful and Tasmanians very friendly. Upon arriving in Hobart, the capital, we made our way to the B&B which was to be our home for the next few days. Hobart is a small city of about 100,000, situated on the Derwent River, with the four thousand feet of Mt. Wellington rising up behind it. The streets of Sandy Bay, where we were staying were lined with beautiful old deciduous trees, all turning colour. I was greatly reminded of New England, where I had spent all of my childhood summers. I felt that I had come home. I enquired about teaching in Tassie the following school year (beginning the following February). However, to my surprise, I was offered a position then and there, in Woodbridge, a small village about forty miles south of Hobart. My friend Pat and I drove out to Woodbridge which was surrounded by rolling green hills on the banks of the D’Entrecasteau Channel, an arm of the Tasman Sea. Sheep grazed on the grounds of the country school. It didn’t take me very long to decide to try to take the position, although it meant leaving the group of American friends in the Sydney area and going it alone in a new country. I also had to work out the financial ramifications of my decision, since I would need to repay the N.S.W. Dept. of Education for the months that year that I was reneging on my contract. All worked out well; an Australian girl took my place in the classroom, much to the delight of the woman with whom I had been team teaching; the financial situation was sorted out quickly. Almost before I knew it, I had packed up, said goodbye to my friends, and was making the 400 mile drive to Melbourne. There I would stay overnight with a friend, then take the overnight ferry (with my car on board) to Burnie, a port on the north coast of Tassie. I took back roads south to Hobart, driving the Lake Highway which turned out to be a dirt road, at times no more than a track, through rugged almost treeless mountains, reminding me of a moonscape.

I had arrived in Hobart about two weeks (a fortnight) before the second term of school started. I spent that period exploring that beautiful city, Mt. Wellington (which had several inches of snow covering it) and the surrounding countryside. I also was able to find living quarters - a two bedroom house owned by the Tasmanian Dept. of Education in Woodbridge, right on the shore of the Channel with its own little beach, all for $40 (Australian) a month. I was going to live in the country in a cozy little house and teach in a country school. What more could I ask for?

Tasmania became my home for many (12) years. I met my husband, Bob Ryan, in Hobart. He shared a flat (apartment) with the son of friends of mine in Woodbridge. He came, originally, from County Durham in the north of England, worked in the coal mines (as most of the men in that part of England did) as a pit lad and, later, electrician. There were five children in the Ryan family. Bob was the youngest - the “caboose”. Alice, his sister, and the next one up, was eleven years older than Bob and had a big hand in raising him. Alice was a clever and strong minded woman who had worked her way up from nannying to the top of the nursing profession. She was determined that her smart little brother was going to find more to life than the extremely hard ,drab one of coal mining. She encouraged Bob to join the Merchant Navy (Marines), which he did. He served on the Orcades on the P.&O. Line as an Electrical Officer. The Orcades was a cruise ship and, on board, Bob met a girl who lived in Sydney. The romance blossomed and Bob, after almost two years on the Orcades, left the Merchant Navy and came to Sydney to find work and marry his girl. However, the romance cooled. Bob stayed on in Sydney, working briefly for Coupland & Waddell, a ship repair company, as an electrician. Six months later he joined the Reyrolle Company, a manufacturing company which makes relays for switch gear, working as an electrical technician. After a year and a half in Sydney, Reyrolle transferred Bob to their Melbourne plant where he worked for two years. Looking for a promotion, Bob came to Hobart and joined the Hydro Electric Commission (the Tasmanian power authority).

Bob and I were good friends before we began dating. We both loved music, especially jazz; (we went to many jazz concerts and followed several local jazz groups wherever they were playing). Bob had also played in brass bands much of his life in both England and Australia, generally playing tuba or euphonium (large baritone). In Hobart he played with the Hobart City/6MD (military)Band. Other mutual keen interests included books, camping and hiking Together, we explored much of the southwest of Tasmania which is largely mountainous wilderness. Bob also had a bunch of pals who were four wheel drive enthusiasts Frequently, I was “one of the guys” on a four wheel driving expedition into the bush. These expeditions were not for the faint hearted. Often our convoy drove rough mountainous tracks; camping was primitive. Everyone had a great time!

We were married in the Hobart Botanical Gardens on September 1, 1979. Though windy, the day was sunny. This was the first day of spring and many spring flowers were blooming, providing a lovely setting. Our reception was in the band room. Bob’s sister came out from England for the wedding and was my maid of honour. A friend of ours who was in the army and in the band did the catering. Laurie wanted to own a restaurant or have his own catering business when he left the army. We were his guinea pigs. To defray the cost of the wedding buffet, Laurie used his many connections to buy large quantities of seafood, directly from the fishing boats, some of which he used for our wedding buffet, the remainder he resold at a profit. He prepared all of the rest of the food, except for the wedding cake which he finagled an army cook into making; the cost was a case of beer! The cake had two layers. The bottom was fruit cake, traditional in England and Australia for weddings and birthdays; the second layer was American white cake which I wanted, both for the American tradition and because I don‘t care much for fruit cake. The cook had a difficult time understanding what I meant by” white cake”, which in Australia and England is what is called rice cake. Fortunately, my Fanny Farmer cookbook had a recipe for just such a cake, as fruit cake, a hundred years ago was used for wedding cake in the U.S.. Laurie outdid himself with the wonderful buffet and the reception was a great party, enjoyed by everyone, including the bride and groom.

Several months later, we bought a small house on two acres of land in the small village of Collinsvale (pop. 500) fifteen miles from the state capital, Hobart, in the surrounding hills. We both became very active in the community. I was elected Publicity Officer for the Collinsvale Progress Association. My job included writing/editing a quarterly newspaper (The Collinsvale Crier); writing the newspaper, T.V. and radio publicity and posting notices for the monthly flea market, held in the community center; doing the bookings for the market and periodically setting up and taking down the market tables. In addition, I was involved in the Country Women’s Association, and played badminton with the badminton club. Bob had started a Men’s Club that met monthly. One of the women in the village felt that the Collinsvale women also needed a club, so I started one. Bob was also involved with the volunteer Collinsvale fire brigade. (Every town and many small villages had fire brigades due to the very high danger of bush fires. Collinsvale was surrounded by fires in November, 1982. Bob was away with the fire brigade fighting the fires. I was home with our animals, trying to figure out a way, if necessary, to load our goat, dog and cat into the car to flee to a neighbour’s house. Fortunately,it wasn’t necessary.)

We also had a hobby farm (as many of our neighbours had). In addition to our black lab, Buffy and cat, Susie-Tiger, we had Dinda, our goat, whom we milked for many years, ( and often one of her kids) five sheep, and an assortment of chickens (and rooster) and ducks.

I also continued to do relief (substitute) teaching both in our little three room country school, in a similar one in the adjoining village of Molesworth and in larger, town schools, both on the primary and high school level. It was a busy but very happy life in beautiful Collinsvale, surrounded by mountains with the sea close by. However, in 1986, with serious illness on Bob’s side of the family in England and the need for my assistance in caring for my very elderly grandmother, it was time to return to the Northern Hemisphere. We were back and forth between England, the U.S. and Australia the end of 1986 and early 1987, finally selling our house in Collinsvale and making the move in May of 1987.

Bob found a job with Doble Engineering in Watertown, MA and we bought a small house (winterized summer cottage) in the Spec Pond Park Community in Lancaster, MA, forty miles west of Boston, We had half an acre of land and an eight foot strip of water frontage on pretty, clear Spec (Spectacle) Pond. After a few years, I once again became involved with our little local community (20 full time residents and probably an additional 20 in the summer), becoming secretary of the Spec Pond Park Assoc. which involved taking minutes for the monthly summer meetings, and putting out a monthly newsletter which I expanded frequently into a newspaper, (The Spec Pond Spectacle). Eventually, as the association became more active, we had a few officers meetings during the winter and I wrote a quarterly newsletter during that period. During the summer months we frequently had community fund raisers (since we maintained our own roads and plowed and sanded them when necessary) which usually took the form of picnics complete with home made food and raffles, on the Spec Pond beach or dances in a country dance barn. They brought the community together and were a lot of fun.

I attempted to find full time teaching, but the U.S. was in a serious recession and there were very few teaching positions available and those were taken by teachers just out of school who were cheaper to hire. Consequently, I returned to subbing. As was true, in Tasmania, I returned to the same schools year after year and became very familiar with the children, the teachers and the school curricula. I also worked for a year in a day care center, as a quality control/clinical coordinator in two intermediate care facilities for 16 mentally handicapped men and women and did a lot of temporary work of varying durations in conjunction with teaching.

Bob commuted to Watertown, just outside of Boston, every day, a distance of 32 miles each way. It was a tiring commute but always pleasant to get home to our rural location. In 1998 Bob changed jobs and began working for Schweitzer Engineering. The main office and factory were in Pullman WA. Bob, another engineer and a sales manager worked in Braintree, MA, one of the many field offices dotted around the country. The commute to Braintree was 50 miles each way and in very heavy traffic. In 1998, Schweitzer allowed Bob to set up his own office in Devens Industrial Park, 15 minutes from the house. What a change! Frequently, if I wasn’t teaching or doing other work, I did clerical work for Bob in his small office.

We lived very happily in Lancaster for 14 years. The little Spec Pond Community reminded us a lot of Collinsvale, without the animals. However, we wanted a bigger house and more land. By the 1990s real estate prices were through the roof in MA. I had spent all of my summers as a child in NH and loved northern New England. Since Bob, another engineer and two sales reps worked with customers in a huge area from the Canadian Maritimes to southern Maryland, we believed that Schweitzer would allow us to move the office further north. I began house hunting in Vermont, NH, and Maine.

In 2001 we were able to make the move. We had found a large log home on two acres of land on Crystal Lake in Harrison, ME and moved the end of August of that year. The move was filled with snafus. The van carrying our furniture couldn’t get up our steep driveway and threatened to return to MA, carrying our furniture! (At the suggestion of one of the movers, we removed the furniture we needed and ferried it to our house in our van. The rest we put in storage.) Bob had signed a new office lease with Devens only four months before and Devens refused to let him break the lease. Consequently, for three and a half months Bob continue to work in MA and came home on weekends. Finally, in December he was able to break the lease and move his office to our house. The next day he went to Wal-Mart to buy office lights, returning home in a bad snow storm. He hit ice, lost control of the Jeep which careened down the hill backwards, finally hitting a tree. Bob was thrown out the back of the Jeep and almost didn’t make it. He then spent a month and a half in a local hospital. Fortunately, Buddy, our dog, also survived the accident.

We loved our new log home, our water frontage on beautiful Crystal Lake and the cute village of Harrison, located on the northern shore of Long Lake. However separating our water front from our house and the rest of the property was a busy country highway. All sorts of trucks, many of them large (logging and dump trucks) thundered by our house. It seemed the noisiest place I had ever lived! We had certainly not come to Maine for noise and, once again, in 2002, I began looking. We found our present property almost immediately - six and a quarter acres of woodland with water frontage on a small pond in the adjoining town of Bridgton. However, the water frontage was wetland and seemed at first unusable. I continued to look for property with water frontage that we could afford, throughout the summer, always returning to the first property I had seen. It was sunny and quiet. The little pond had very clear water and lots of wild life. No large motor boats were allowed. We found that, although the bottom was mucky in many places, underneath the muck was sand. I spent many happy hours that summer sitting on a rock and reading or swimming, with my constant companion, Buddy, playing with the tadpoles. We finally realized that a piece of water frontage was firmer than the rest and actually had some low bushes growing on it. It would be possible to put board walking over the wetland and then put out a dock, similar to the one we had in Harrison. We bought the property October 1 of 2002. The water frontage was 102 feet, too narrow to build a sizable house on. Also, we would have had to build 150 feet back from the water and could not interfere with two rights of way which ran through that area. However, about 200 feet back from the pond was a thirty foot high cliff of ledge. It seemed a great spot to build a house. We loved our log house in Harrison and became determined to build another one. In 2003, we had the house lot cleared, put in a path to our wetland/water frontage, had boardwalk sections built over the wetland and put in a large dock. Then we began raking the bottom of the pond. The pond is shallow (28 feet in the deepest spot) and the water is so clear that grass was growing in the muck. We had to pull that up and remove the many sharp rocks first. Once that was done, we could fairly easily rake the muck, revealing soft sand. When we were too hot from raking, we swam or read our books on the dock, enjoying the tranquility and the wildlife. The lake teemed with bass, perch and trout as well as hornpout. We frequently saw a huge Great Blue Heron come gliding in, probably nesting in the reeds. We loved watching the loons, frequently laughing at their antics. Other wildlife lived in the area. Moose and foxes had been sighted as well as a black bear.

Dostie Log Homes began our log home dream house in 2004. We had sold our Harrison house to a couple from MA who weren’t bothered at all by the noise, and had rented a house, also in Bridgton. That year of building was, I guess, typical, fraught with many problems and delays. I frequently told people that if you want to build a house you need a strong heart, strong stomach, deep pockets and a strong marriage! Finally the house was almost completed. We were able to move into the main floor and Bob worked around the workmen who worked around him in his office! Even after moving into the house, many details needed fixing and we found the varnishing and sanding of the interior walls hadn’t been completed. For at least a month, we had people from Dosties coming back to make corrections. We also found that, although our well is 400 feet deep, our water had a lot of iron in it and, at times, especially after much heavy rain became very rusty. Eventually we had a house filter put on and the pump in the well lifted off the bottom of the well. That improved the situation tremendously. We had had to have a huge amount of fill put in since we were building on uneven, rocky ledge. Rather than trying to put top soil and grass on top of the sandy fill, we put down bark mulch. The rustic appearance of the bark mulch perfectly suits the log house and looks natural with the surrounding woods. In the winter we can see our little pond quite clearly from our perch on the cliff through the bare trees. In the summer, we catch glimpses of it through the trees. We are constantly treated to the loons calling each other and frog choruses. Around the end of May, a young adult black bear meandered up our driveway. By the time I had grabbed my camera, he was gone, sauntering through our woods.

A friend of ours who is a keen gardener gave us a lot of cuttings, mainly perennials, as a house warming gift. They form a colorful border around the front of the house, trailing down one side. At the end of that border is a Norway Spruce in memory of my father who died two years ago. Our dear Buddy died last December and is buried on the side of the house on the edge of the woods. We use the sprinkler a lot to water all the plants. This serves a dual purpose in that the two hours of sprinkling flushes out the well. At present, our water is great! (Knock on wood).

We’ve been in “Tasmaineia” (named for the two favourite states in which we have lived) almost two years. Perhaps you can tell from all of this that we love this retreat in our Maine woods. Come visit us!

bobryan@att.net