I won't be going to Maine this year
I go to Maine every summer, in July or August, to teach a writing workshop. I go to Rockport, which is a small, pretty town on the coast about two hours north of Portland.
It’s beautiful where I teach, in Rockport. The school I work for pays my airfare and gives me a stipend. That’s how I can go.
This year, though, my workshop did not fill. So, I won’t be going. I’ve grown to love Maine intensely, and not having it as part of my summer makes me feel bereft.
Maine’s beauty is of a special sort. I’m speaking of summer on coastal Maine. I haven’t experienced fall, winter or spring there. Just to be clear. Nor do I know Maine’s interior that well, a different landscape entirely. So, this is an unfinished rhapsody.
Maine’s beauty, its singular personality, is difficult to put into words. I think that’s why so many people who love Maine just look at each other and nod or sigh in expressing that love.
Maine is no secret now. If it ever was. But I think it’s to the point now where you could say it’s been fully discovered. You can’t expect to come to Maine in the summer, particularly on the coast, and have it all to yourself. Perhaps once you could, but that time is gone. Still, it’s more than worth it, I assure you.
A friend, a true Mainer, said to me that real Maine doesn’t begin until you get to Portland and north. She meant that the beach towns of Ogunquit and Kennebunkport, for example, located on the south coast, with their smooth sand beaches, are not, she believes, what makes Maine Maine.
You need rocks emerging from the water. You need swaths of spruce and fir. You need tall Eastern white pines. You need long, three- or four-fingered extensions of land that jut into the sea. You need hundreds of islands. You need rarified salt air. You need, of course, lobster boats and their uniquely painted buoy-marked traps. You need hills with wildflowers spread across them. You need the sense of apparent struggle to deserve this beauty.
I’m not sure how many people have written about the light in Maine, but I want to note that. It’s rich and buttery, a painter’s dream. Uninhibited and generous. The best companion for experiencing summer’s wildflowers, sharp salt water, tall strong trees, birds, barns, narrow roads.
I’ve written about Maine before. I’ve written about paddling a kayak around a Maine island. About the dramatic appearance of deer on the sloping lawn before me. About summoning my mother’s ghost while hanging out the wash in Maine. About fog in Maine. About turning 75 in Maine and communicating with a huge Eastern white pine about that. About how Maine stays with you when you return home.
I become a different person when I come to Maine. Or, rather, I become the genuine me, the authentic me, the me that remains after all the dross and fear washes off. I discard artifice—or at least a great deal of it. I am essentialized. That is a powerful state to be in. Can a landscape make you stronger? Yes, it can.
If we think about our fragile earth, how much peril it’s in, we might think of the places we love and speak of them. Write of them. Paint them. Sing about them. Whatever form of awareness we can muster. We have been given a gift, a magnificent gift, and we are in the midst of squandering that gift, so that those who follow us might never receive that gift. How unimaginable is that?
We don’t know what follows when we die. But we do know what we have while we’re alive. This earth has many problems, and you don’t need me to point them out.
It has many glories as well, and Maine is one of them. A place that seems to exist to celebrate being alive in just about any way you can imagine.
What is the place you love? It behooves us to sing its praises and to fight for it to last.
This piece particularly touched me. I’m sorry you will miss going to Maine this year. I hope there are other visits in your future. I have been going to Maine for 73 years for vacations. My mother was from Maine and I still have cousins living there. It is quite simply a beautiful place to take in the beach, ocean, lakes, mountains and rivers. I’ve seen changes in the climate in recent years. It used to be much cooler with freezing cold water. Now temperatures can be hot and the ocean water is much warmer. But on a beautiful, clear, crisp day in Maine there is something that touches your soul.
So sad to hear this. Daughter Caki and I have come to love Maine. The landscape, the food, the people and I cannot say enough about Maine Media and especially your memoir writing class. I wouldn't have know about it unless I had seen it on Nancy Harmon Jenkins Facebook page. I wish there had been more publicity and I for one would be happy reccommend any of your teaching classes. The course was incredibly worthwhile!