Like many, I have a set morning routine — coffee, a word game, the news. And, I suspect, like many these days, I often emerge into my morning’s work a little wobbly from this immersion; over-caffeination aside, I’ll let you guess which of these three pillars of morning shakes me.

This morning was no different — mayhem visits every precinct of our lives and camps out in our minds; we arm against ourselves. If I am to try to make use of my day, be useful in it, I need some counter-weight, some balancing visions and actions. For me, those visions and actions are nearby. Some are known and sought, while others happen to or near me, and it is up to me to pay attention.

Here’s one tiny story, set, as this column should be, on local, common ground, public land we share with each other.

It’s a late afternoon, mid-tide at Simpson’s Point, one of our few points of public access to the sea. I’ve just decided to water-waddle my kayak out for a few hours afloat, and I’ve stashed my car at the uproad parking. On my way, I’ve passed a pick-up, familiar to me for its bumper sticker, which touts re-electing a president I loathe; the sticker has a parenthetical about driving a liberal (me) crazy.

While I gear up my boat and get ready to put it in, a small boat wings over the water from the Miller Point area. No surprise here — it is mid-tide, when clammers who work the mudflats come in with their diggings, and recreational boaters go out. Working tide meets recreational tide.

A middle-aged man with a wind-worn face lands and begins to offload some mesh bags of clams, a good haul to my lightly-tutored eye. I offer to help schlep a few bags to his pick-up, now pulled down next to my car. “Thanks,” he says, “all good.” I turn back to my boat, but curiosity returns me to the clammer.

“Hey,” I say, using this now-universal greeting, “how are you finding the flats over there by the Point?” “Can’t complain,” he says, hefting another bag. “I ask,” I say, “because I’m on the town’s Conservation Commission, and we’re interested in minimizing the impacts on the flats from some development coming to the point. “It’s good mud,” he says, and I take that as agreement that it’s worth our while doing this work.

We talk a bit more about local conditions, and then he surprises me with a question. “Are you a man of God?” he asks.

I stall for a few seconds, then stumble out, “No, no, I don’t have a particular god…but I do believe in all this.” Here I sweep my hand across the horizon of the bay.

“I wondered,” he says, “because we’ve been talking for 5 minutes and you haven’t used the F-word yet.” I’m not sure how to respond. Clearly, we’ve just stepped onto personal (hallowed?) ground, but what to say. “Um, it just didn’t seem necessary,” I offer. My mind flashes to his bumper sticker, but then I don’t go there; I stick instead to the ground we’re on.

“What’s the daily toll of clamming on your body?” I ask. My question rises from some limited time on suctioning mud and from simply watching the hump-backed clawing of that mud when the tide’s out.

“It ain’t easy,” he says. “I got to have a hip replacement this year. I’m trying to figure out how to time it so I don’t miss to much time here.”

I know this surgery since my wife’s had it and I got to help with her recovery time. The clammer and I exchange some surgery notes, and I feel myself shift inside a bit. “I think you’ll be pleased,” I say, referring to relief from daily pain and a return from the calibrations of movement any of us makes when pain becomes chronic.

“I hope so,” he says. “It does make me nervous.”

“Me too,” I say. “Opening us up and moving things around is enough to scare the hair off you.”

He’s done loading his truck, and I’m ready to put in my boat. “Glad the flats are good for you,” I say. “Me too,” he says. “Thanks for whatever you’re doing for them.”

I watch the truck pull away uphill. The bumper sticker’s still a small finger in the eye, but it recedes as I think over our conversation. Common courtesy on common land. And, as happens when we are curious, when we talk with each other, the surprise of sudden intimacy.

I do believe in the possibility of all this.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chair of the town’s Conservation Commission, and a member of Brunswick Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com