Our Maine Experience

 

It will be a month today since we packed up the big truck in Bangor, Maine and pointed her nose for the Mojave Desert of California.  The trip from Bangor to Ridgecrest totaled 3,351 miles, took seven days, several hotels, Thanksgiving dinner at a Denny's in New Mexico, a few disagreements, a fender bender, $1500.00 in gasoline, $3,600 in truck rental costs, and a four-day hotel stay at our destination at $200.00 a day while we waited for the sale process to complete and we had keys to our new home.   It wasn't a pleasant experience but from the beginning we treated this move as a mission, not a pleasure drive.  It was a required journey. 

One thing I know for sure- while we miss the people we worked with and the friendships that we forged,  we do not miss everyone we met. Here is another truth, if it wasn't for Maine and Covid-19, and for a flooded walkway to our home last Spring that turned into a major landscaping project, we wouldn't be living in this lovely home we own in California. We are grateful for the bounty for it came from hard work with no thought of reward.

We fell in love with Maine through several vacation trips over ten years. The scenery is astonishing, diverse, and no trip was the same, each visit was an exploration  of another natural area within the State. The seafood was beyond delicious, it was culinary excellence. Some of the people were rather cranky, but we had been there several times and had only had a few unpleasant encounters,   So we moved there with every intention to spend the rest of our lives in Maine. Three years later?  Maine is no longer our home.

I won't linger long on our time in Maine. There won't be a Diffle County or some other fictional piece based upon our Maine experience. We explored, we ate delicious seafood, explored some more, and lived a quiet life in a quiet mobile home community.  We also nearly died from Covid-19, fought the  good fight trying to do our jobs against prejudice, resistance, unnecessary roadblocks, passive-aggressive obstructionists, threats of bodily harm, and even an offer of murder. After three years we both knew that it wasn't the Maine winters that we couldn't handle. As the saying goes, it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the whole barrel.  

To understand Mainers you only need to know this - they would rather vacation in their own State than anywhere else.  Maine is not your vacationland, it's their vacationland.  Mainers know tourism is important for their State and it is the perfect place for tourism to thrive,  but then when the tourist season is over they would like you to leave, thank you very much. They have sheds on sleds at their camps and as soon as the lakes freeze, those sheds slide out onto the ice. Let the ice fishing commence.  That's not all.

When the snow flies they are on the trails with their snowmobiles and ATV's,  enjoying the land their Great Grand Daddies fought to keep against the weather, the bears, the wolves, the bobcats, the weasels and fishers, the chiggers and ticks,  against the British, the Bostonians, and sometimes the French, and against those folks "from away" who did not sacrifice as their families had, and then against the weather again and again and again.  Maine mud is real and if you get stuck chances are the tow truck will get stuck trying to get to you.  Put on your big-boy pants, Maine is not a resort, it is hard living and its inhabitants are rough and ready for anything that gets thrown at them.

Sadly, there are the provincial Mainers who don't want outsiders to tell them how to improve their community, they don't want advice, they're insulted when you provide guidance, and because of that they will tear down anyone "from away"  who actually may want to improve their town.  In the end, the outsiders usually leave and isolationists win- and Maine takes another step backwards in time. Just like my bosses told me when they hired me, "We don't want anything to change."  I wish they understood that's impossible. Change will come, it always does.

But let's stop with the negatives right there. There were so many kind, caring people I met and worked with that I do not want to twist this into something it is not.   I loved every member my staff, my road crew, and almost every firefighter.  (That last sentence was for Char-lin.)  I loved my elected bosses, except the newest one (who lacks a moral compass to rise above her own self-interest.)  She's an exception. I've already developed a fictional character based loosely on her actions-  named La Meer, she will be a very large Maine Coon Cat, and will be featured in a future novel. She will not be the heroine.

 I truly love these good people, of solid Maine stock, who care about their community and serve it so well. They are my friends and I am honored to be their friend also. 

We will miss the Western Mountains, the Lakes Region, the Mid-Coast, the Bold Coast, the Northern Wilderness, the cities of Bangor and Portland, the Central Highlands, and Baxter State Park, We will miss Acadia, Blue Hill, Camden, Rockport, Rockland, Belfast, Brewer, Greenville, Dexter, St. Albans, and Moosehead Lake, possibly the most beautiful lake I have ever seen.

I deeply miss my St. Albans family, in spite of all the harrassment from the unsullied,  I will always love Maine and my Mainer friends have a place forever in my heart.  I'm sure we will be back sometime soon, probably after the spring thaw.  

Even though they can't make a cheesesteak to save their lives, and their pizza is a travesty,  they are some of the finest people I have ever met. 

Rick