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.
