Postcards from Maine
Maine has always pulled me Eastward to its mountains, lakes, forests and coastline. As a young boy I remember being woken up before dawn to watch the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain. I returned with a Forestry degree after college and spent a summer working in the North Maine woods. I remember my boss, at the time, giving directions, “Drive to the top of New Hampshire, head North through Canada for 2 hours and then take a right into Maine” Needless to say, I saw many more moose than people that summer. In the years since, I have been fortunate to film and photograph for Yankee Magazine from Kennebunkport to Lubec. One winter I explored, and filmed, the Caribou area by snow machine, followed by a summer voyage on Moosehead Lake with Captain Rocky aboard the Steamboat Katahdin.
As the Director of Photography for a PBS show, Weekends With Yankee, I got to look back at the Maine coast from inside the Nubble Lighthouse, mountain biked in Bethel, raced a schooner in the fog and filmed a memorable trip to Eastern Egg Island with the Puffin Man, Steve Kress. One of the best parts of my job is getting to share these places and stories with my kids. Last week I took them to another place I learned about from behind the camera, Rangeley. Ironically, I almost do not want to identify this area by name for fear of spoiling it. Too late… but I love the lack of development, long views, cold water and of course, the Loons. My daughter even commented that, “It just feels calm up here.”. A statement made humorous by sharing that our town has less than 500 residents and a single traffic light.
Rangeley Lake, Maine.
If I am being honest, I did not succeed in prying my children entirely off of screens, but the majority of their time was spent blissfully immersed in nature. A highlight being skipping stones, and then racing, with swim goggles on to retrieve them. The reality of our time blew in one day from the West, with a smokey haze replacing the endless blue. I recently finished the book “Immemorial” by Lauren Markham, and it was there that I learned of the term, Solastalgia. It is defined as, “a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home, but the environment has been altered and feels unfamiliar.” Kids today will inhabit a world vastly different from what I experienced growing up, with deadly floods and catastrophic fire becoming a normal headline. I hope our adventures together in Maine remain recognizable and that they can share a love of the natural world with their own kids.
