The creak is a distinctive sound— wooden oars kiss the oarlocks, wood rubs green bronze and squeals before it settles into a silent groove. A stroke, pause, water drips and then another stroke. Head moves side-to-side, wary and cautious. A cadence forms between boat and rower. The trip across the water varies in time, dependent […]
“I am wanting to go and find Frog Rock,” my friend said with a sly smile. I waited to see if he was serious. He was. Now having spent five years living here, there are few things that surprise me. But going to see a rock shaped over time and eventually named “frog” seemed intriguing, […]
I have a deep admiration for clammers. It began when I apprehensively ventured out onto the clamflats to try capturing a few of these mollusks. That experience fostered an appreciation for this ancestral food gathering skill and for those that spend their days moving mud. Trust me, clamming is hard work. By definition a clammer […]
When you were young did you have a special tree? I did. Maybe you still do, and together, you and the tree continue making stories. Living here in Maine, it is easy to love the landscape. The rocky shoreline runs for some 3,000 miles through nooks and crannies of inlets, harbors and channels— its goodness […]
Down East, Maine is a unique place. I have been writing about this “uniqueness” for some time now, so it’s refreshing to find a new book that offers a trove of some quirky stories that add to the unusual luster this place provides. In Jim Harnedy’s new book, Forgotten Tales of Down East Maine, place […]
On a morning crisp in its chill, the autumnal clock stirs as colors flow through the veins of leaves in tall stands of trees, saturating them with a last breath of summer. I step outside for a walk behind the house. I can see my breath bend in the cold air and hear the trees’ […]
Life seems to come in two chapters: a time when we are young, looking forward to the future; and that time when we are older— glancing back, remembering, trying to stave off tomorrow’s arrival. In Deborah Gould’s novel,The Eastern: Later On, we find a story that is woven from the fabric of both young and […]
Many years ago, fresh out of college and a couple of years into my first job, I read the book First Person Rural, Essays of a Sometime Farmer, written in 1978 by Noel Perrin. After finishing the book I was convinced that one day I would go to Vermont, buy a 10-acre farm, raise chickens, […]
A friend of mine visiting Downeast for the first time mentioned shortly after arriving that he noticed a drastic change in the air and in the light. Paraphrasing, he commented, “The air is tinged with the scent of salt, and the light is brighter. Everything here seems so different, even the shadows appear out of […]
Pack the parka and the snowshoes and throw in a six-pack for good measure as we travel to Canada, a place many call the “Great White North” because of its vast expanse of snow and wilderness. The term was also used as the title for a Canadian comedy sketch about living in Canada in the […]
