Hello, if you Have a Few Minutes to I Would like to Talk to You About Maine.
I’m from California, a state known for residents who will evangelize its grandness — its beaches, its mountains, the 365 days of summer and plentiful avocados. Southerners I have met are similarly proud of their southern status, and New Englanders will, perhaps bitterly, defend their region to the end. But, I have never met any state residents so earnest, so devoted and so delightfully eager to elucidate their state’s virtues, as Mainers.
Maine is part of New England — sort of — but it is also a region unto itself. An area of rocky coast, harsh mountains and endless forest that wrap around big vacation homes and small year-round communities. The natural world can seem bigger, more imminent and more ominous. Author Jon Moollem noted in his book, The Wild Ones, that human relationships with nature seems to go through a cycle: we fear nature so we try to control it. But when we do we become afraid of our own power and see nature as something that needs to be saved — the menacing bear becomes a stuffed teddy. The remarkable thing about Maine, and I think one of the reasons that residents are so eager to drink the state’s Kool-Aid, is that this cycle seems to mysteriously have stopped here. Nature is not something to be controlled and so too it is not something to be pitied and coddled. Any cuddly Maine teddy bears, it seems, should be sold complete with razor sharp teeth, claws and a temper. Deer road crossing signs are common throughout the US, but only in Maine have I seen signs, highlighted in firetruck red with bold writing, that say something like “Warning: High Rate of Deer Crossing. We’re Not Fucking Around.” Maine can be bitter cold, neighbors can be far away, deer, moose and bears can cross roads with alarming frequency. But those year-round residents whom I have met are proud and thriving in these abusive conditions — like a good Protestant should.
As an outsider (with a twinge of desire to become an insider) I think that this Maine joy comes from the idea that people can live most comfortably and happily by not holding nature back but by living within its confines, even when those confines are icy and rough. Starry-eyed environmentalists won’t survive here, but realists can thrive. If we can live so happily up here, Mainers seem to say, why can’t you?
I am, of course, hyper-generalizing. I have been on exactly three trips to Maine that I am old enough to remember, two of which were to Portland. And, no doubt my sample size is biased — the people I talk to are only too happy to live in, travel through and talk about nature. Still, I have yet to meet someone who lived in Maine for any considerable amount of time and didn’t end up praising it or becoming a permanent resident themselves. It is also worth noting that, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, only a little over five percent of Maine is owned by the State Government, and only 0.86 percent of it is Federal land. That means that about 94 percent is not publicly owned. Yet much of that natural area is open to hiking, fishing, hunting and biking thanks to private land owners. Does that seem a little too utopian to be true? Perhaps. But it also sounds like something to earnestly share with others.
