THE TWO FACES OF MAINE

Let me say this first: I love Maine. Until our current trip to the east coast, I had spent virtually no time in the state. My hazy picture of it was based on textbook descriptions of the “spruce–moose biome,” Sierra Club photos, L.L. Bean catalogs, and Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs. I knew that George Bush the Elder and his family spent their summers in Kennebunkport, along with other wealthy families who had summered there since the nineteenth century. Perhaps the most widespread image of Maine is that of fall color, of scarlet maples mixed with deep green pines and silver birches.

We have wanted for years to travel to Maine in the fall, and this year we finally managed to do so. Being an AstroVIP with the National Park Service, Thane planned to help a little with setting up telescopes for Acadia National Park’s annual Night Sky Festival, and I would accompany him to do anything I could. The program takes place during the last few days of September, peak time for fall color.

Our visit to Acadia—unfortunately cut short by the Republicans’ taking it hostage during the current government crisis—confirmed that picture. We spent several days touring Acadia and taking part in the Night Sky Festival, then drove south. The entire rocky coast is as beautiful as I could have imagined, with hundreds of inlets from the Atlantic leading to boreal forests. Much of the inland countryside, too, resembled the rural scenes in Andrew Wyeth’s paintings. Even many of the dilapidated barns looked beautiful.

There is another Maine, though, one not shown in the tourist brochures or in any novels I’ve read. When we drove through the north–central part of the state, we saw a poor area rivaling many urban slums. I had expected some picturesque poverty, based on news reports—neglected homes, unpainted barns, and so on, and those were certainly present. But, much of the countryside seems deserted, with old homes and barns collapsing and subsiding into the earth. Where did everyone go? What really appalled me was the trash surrounding so many places that had apparently been simply abandoned. How can anyone treat their environment  that way? Have they lost all self-respect?

Life in Maine has never been easy; farmers had to work hard to make a living from the rocky soil in bad weather. But, they managed to do so in the past. Has the soil been exhausted by poor farming practices? Has the logging that once helped support farming ceased? I suspect that many farmers blame a government that they feel is too liberal, and environmentalists like us, for somehow taking away their right to use the land as they see fit. (Certainly we heard complaints about limits on hunting, and about gun control in general.) That doesn’t explain the sad, neglectful picture we saw.