The Lupine Lady

When I used to summer in Caratunk, Maine, sometimes renting the house next to my Erika-friend, Erika told me about the Lupine Lady. In June in Maine, the roadsides are waves of purple because of the tall spiked flowers everywhere. Erika said there was a legend of a woman, like Johnny Appleseed, who traveled around spreading lupine seeds wherever she went. That the flowers were everywhere was evidence that this could not be a legend. But in researching the children’s book Miss Rumphius, it says it is a fictional story. Miss Rumphius is about a lady who travels the world, comes home to live by the sea and strives to make the world more beautiful by spreading lupine seeds along roadsides.  It is written by Barbara Cooney, the children’s author who moved from Brooklyn, traveled all over, and after raising her children, moved to Maine in a house overlooking the ocean. She died in Damariscotta in 2000. The Thompson family has had several of Barbara Cooney’s books over the years: Ox-Cart Man, Hattie and the Wild Waves, but my favorite is Miss Rumphius. And to prove it, I was able to go down in the cellar on our last shelf of kids’ books and retrieve the dog-earred, worn-torn paperbook copy of Miss Rumphius.  On the last page in the book, the narrator is telling of her great aunt Alice, the  “oldest woman in the world” who was the Lupine Lady. Alice told her niece to go out and travel to faraway places but to find a way to make the world more beautiful. The little girl says she "did not yet know what that would be. " I believe the little girl WAS Barbara Cooney and the way she found to leave beauty in the world was with the beautifully written and illustrated children’s books.  Part of me also believes that Barbara Cooney was also a lupine lady herself……and now, every end-of-summer, when the lupines in my garden have gone by, I take the seeds out of the little pods, and throw them everywhere I travel so I can be a Lupine Lady too.

Drive-by lupines at 60MPH