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Maine: Of Person and Place

How deeply can place and person be connected? Scott Herrigel of Bath considers man's relationship to Maine.

    Maine is a land of seemingly endless pine forests and pristine, but harsh, ocean and coastline. Maine elicits a feeling garnered from being within its borders that is hard to explain. There is something in Maine, in its people and in its land, that is raw and pure.

    I know a beach that extends for at least the length of a football field at low tide and then is swallowed up like a small candy at high tide, leaving only a chip of what was existent before. This is part of the grandness of Maine, where a cliff face can rise straight out of the sand like some fantastic, burrowing snake emerging for air. It flings itself at least 100 feet into the sky and extends itself at least twice its distance forward. Look the other way, either south or southeast, and see the daunting globe of the Atlantic Ocean. And when I say globe, I mean it. For one sees the ocean like a vast, extensive hill or hummock – I still cannot figure out how anyone could ever conceive of the Earth not being round, at least anyone that lived near an ocean. It rises before one and fills them with a slight sense of apprehension and dread, like as if they were looking out on the back of some fantastic, poised sea giant: Rock and barnacles for a face and great, thick locks of seaweed for hair. The wind blows with raw, archaic fury there, like the battle drums of nature herself: It whistles, it howls, it tears, it wrenches and it cools. It sweeps off the ocean like a tremendous breath; carrying upon its back all the cadaverous remnants of its origin. It smells like pure power as it grabs your hair and flings it; unaffectedly sweeping past you with all the indifference of a man walking through malleable grasses.

    Traveling westerly and inland, an omnipresence of forest is unavoidable. There is a mountain nearby that I like to climb called Morse Mountain. It is a short hike with a steep and bedraggled incline. Upon reaching the summit  a great and massive boulder — like the shoulder of some lackadaisical colossus — help provide the surmounting individual with a phenomenal view of the surrounding landscape.
   
    Hike Morse in autumn and a great menagerie of colors sparkles below through a crisp and cool atmosphere. It's as if a Jackson Pollack masterpiece has been proliferated upon the tips of all the brilliantly fading trees. And, in the midst of this colorful siege, meandering throughout the whole canvass like a thread, is the stark, eternal green of the pines. It is a splendid sensory accretion, witnessed from a temporarily kaleidoscopic bastion. The dusty detritus from the falling leaves fills the air. This autumnal scent intertwines with the constancy of the sappy pine being exuded. It rubs up against your nostrils as you breathe it in, becoming exhilarated and catalyzed. It is pure and untouched, glimmering and chilled.

    I remember hiking Mt. Kathadin at the beginning of the fall years ago. It was a great spire pluming out of the land like some indeterminable power, unabashedly raising and tossing the Earth about with ease. Rivers spilled down the sides of this behemoth like spindle threads of aqueous crystal. They danced over the rocks lithely, raising no issue with any abrupt absence of land, as they cast themselves off the sides of cliffs in continuous veins and crashed in a drum rolling fury to resume their journey down the face. There was something about the placement of the rocks — the water curling lucidly around any impediment – that just inspired tremendous felicity and awe. You'd reach your hands into the turbulent effluence and feel the kind pulse of the land wash through you: cold, refreshing. You'd take a drink and it was like engulfing the pure heart of Maine. The only word that comes to mind in recollection is mesmerizing.

    The hike up the mountain was a strenuous endeavor that involved the ascendency of a steep face of ancient stone. It taught respect and awe, if nothing else, and showed that nothing worth achieving can come easily. This, again, is part of the total circumference of quality that one finds in Maine.

    Poignant autumnal beauty, though, is but the fine carpet laid down for the coming of Maine's utmost patron: Winter.

     When winter finds Maine it forcibly exacts from anyone, or anything, any complacency that has formed during the summer and fall. Maine's winters are part of its legacy. The qualities elicited by surviving through a staunch and powerful Maine winter are the touchstones that determine if something, or someone, is strong enough to be from and of Maine. For Maine is a northern land — governed more by the parameters of what is cold and desolate then anything else — and so exhibits "Maineness" most entirely in, and by, anything that can forge its way through the epitome of coldness: Winter. Pine trees embody this winter bred "Maineness," as do Maine's eminent mountains. These elements exude toughness and fortitude. The pine tree is built of rough and ragged armor: It is pliant as a scrawny, struggling youth, but becomes rigid, thick and strong as it grows older. The mountains live in an almost indeterminate winter; shielding themselves against voluminous winds in thick blankets of hardy trees and great bones of aged, well wrought stone.

    Whoever has skied Sugarloaf during the apex of winter knows the harsh and cold indifference that periodically finds birth within Maine. A new strength and terror ride within the wind; like it has transitioned to become fueled by the same furnaces that clang out the ice. It ceases to be the kind, mellow and fragrant breeze that one can find in the summer and fall, and becomes something heinous and magnified. It screeches and tears, becomes built of claws and howls like a timber wolf; running ubiquitously over and through the mountains in an unrelenting fury. It brings pain and seeks tenderness. It forces strength. You find a way to courageously and steadfastly confront it, or are forced to hobble and shrivel away, defeated.

    Sugarloaf, at this time, is a coalescence of cold. Sharp pinnacles of ice hang inverted from gutters like fine marble statues. They are metaphors of winter, warning signs cast out, exhorting all wise enough to heed them that the presence of some stringent and dangerous force is nigh. Throughout this numinous freezing process the snow falls upon the world like a ferocious beast. Blizzards catapult upon the land in vast pellets of snow that swill out all vision in white. They cause density and disruption, and are thick expostulations against movement; desiring to make all still and dead.
 
    It is interesting to note that this test of winter does not only apply to humans, but to all animate and inanimate objects that reside within the state. The state must survive itself, must prove its worthiness to be. All the rocks, trees, rivers, waters and coastline are tested by winter. They are seasoned, cast into Maine from the blazing forges of winter.  What is Maine survives, while what isn't passes on. The test can sometimes last for quite a long time, succeeding well into and past the vernal equinox. I know that I, and can only imagine many other persons or things, am almost always ready for the return of the warmer climes; the period when one takes a breath, and when winter begins to capitulate: The spring.

    Maine's spring arrives. It trails on winter slowly and dully, almost pitifully, like a runt in a family of dogs trying to gain dominance over the alpha. The bully of winter refuses to depart. When it finally does leave, it is by the hair and nails, amidst echoes of screeches and howls.

    When I think of spring in Maine, one particular element casts itself forthwith in mind: Mud. It is ironic that the one thing that should bloom most profusely in Maine's spring is mud. All of the frostbitten, and snow ridden ground slowly begins to transition from the hard, unforgiving constrictures of winter into the mellow and viscous elevation of spring. The forest is relaxing its shoulders. Throughout the whole winter, clenched and poised like a human-being hunched over in the wind, the forest waited, and now, upon spring's arrival, it is able to drop its subzero posture and resume a more languid and easy disposition. For spring is in fact the time of relaxation, enjoyment and revelry. The coldly exiled animals and birds return home from their southern journey. The air is exemplary and a fine reminder of the fortitude and indestructible presence of life. The sun begins to redefine itself, shakily rising higher into the sky and traversing a greater distance. It casts out its golden branches with a new found vigor; bending its luscious boughs lower in a generative and fertile desire. It heralds the beginning of something pleasant and warm.

    But, as before, this something does not come without a cost. The mud elicited by Maine's spring takes on the character of an amorphous Hollywood creature: An assiduous, animate and ubiquitous blob. One cannot escape it. Clothes become covered, and cleaning habits must be elevated to a higher, more intense level if anything is to remain free of the stuff. This is likewise fitting for Maine: Spring is a hassle — something that has to be dealt with as much as it is enjoyed. This applies most aptly to the people of Maine. Though the Winter is often times struggled through, it construes a sort of macabre cleanliness that is not found in other, more lively seasons.

    The muddy buoyancy of spring eventually passes, though, to once more allow summer, and so on and so forth, like a strange eternal merry-go-round. Maine accepts its allocation with perseverance and dignity. It is a state that is made of the stuff of struggle itself — a wise and weather-worn grandfather, still retaining a spritely spring in his bones.

    I have only lived here, full time, for a few years now, but have been coming to this state for the entirety of every summer since I can remember. I like to think that some of the rugged perseverance, stoically balanced and grand beauty intrinsic to this state have permeated into my blood. I like to think that I am, or have become, in some way, an atom of Maine, a piece of its being, a child of its grandeur.

    Few people can really lay claim to this and so the quality of "Maineness" should be held onto, by those who possess it, as something special.

Scot Herrigel is a carpenter; he lives in Bath.