Compass Guide to Maine

This guide to Maine has a cultural, historical and informational scope. It includes practical information, literary excerpts and topical essays on subjects of historical, cultural, gastronomical, ethnographical and environmental interest.

The Four Seasons
WINTER
It is a glorious season. The snow comes in dramatic bursts. Anyone who can possibly avoid traveling stays close to home. But once the storm passes, the landscape comes alive: children learning to skate or slide, older kids playing hockey on the frozen pond, ice fishermen socializing in their little huts, the most intrepid birdwatchers up early in search of tree sparrows, cedar waxwings, hawk owls. The harbors -- full of mallards, harlequin ducks, and eiders amid the lobster boats -- never completely freeze. In the distance, clouds of sea smoke wrap themselves around the islands. Cross-country skiers, noisy snowmobiles, and daring youths who slide their four-wheel-drive trucks in circles on the ice now animate the winter woods, where Currier & Ives scenes of horse-drawn sleds have yet to fade from living memory.
At night the quiet returns. Dark comes by 4 p.m. Now and then icy slush cascades off the roof. On the very coldest nights, when the countryside seems of an unearthly quiet, the bare trees make cracking noises in the dark. In the clear air the Milky Way turns out to have so many stars that it really does look like spilled milk. On certain auspicious nights, the aurora borealis flickers so coolly and elusively across the sky, you wonder if you are really seeing it. Back indoors, you read the seed catalogues around the wood stove and await the next season.
SPRING
Sometime in April, you will hear the ice crack. The breaking up of river or creek ice is a more certain sign of spring than any daffodil. As the surface crust breaks up, and the snow in the distant hills begins to melt, modest streams become torrents. In the old days -- but again within memory -- the spring freshet marked the beginning of the season when logs crowded the rivers. After a winter of cutting in the forest, during spring the new timber would have been floated down river, collected in huge booms where the white water had ceased and the rivers widened, then parceled out to the sawmills. Almost all of this is mechanized now, and the heroic age of forestry replaced by a more corporate endeavor. But in the mind's eye of everyone who knows Maine's story is the image, when the waters churn over the falls again, of a forest economy feeding into the rivers.
Then one day in May, depending how far you are from the moderating touch of the sea, color washes over the drab countryside. Actually, the transformation takes a week or two, perhaps more in truculent years, but it always seems an overnight sensation. A few warmish days will bring out the maples and birches, then the oaks, as a band of color marches up the brown and gray hillsides in a reverse image of fall.
SUMMER
"Where are you are going this summer?" someone will inevitably ask. "Who wants to go anywhere?" is the triumphal reply. "We're in Maine!" Suddenly the long wait proves to have been worth it. Forgotten are the chilblains, the fuel bills, the cars skidding on black ice. It is time to sit in the sun and smell the balsam sap rise from the woods or the sweet stench of the rockweed the tide has left exposed on the shore. The fiddleheads of June give way to the peas and raspberries of July, and then to the tiny wild blueberries of August. At night, while most of the rest of the country swelters or turns up the air-conditioning, it's time to build a log fire. The cool breeze off the ocean or out of the hills lets you wear wool and go barefoot at the same time.
FALL
On the coast, the light begins to do remarkable things. In the early morning fog, the trunks of the paper birches, normally white or gray, appear a yellow-green, and distant objects turn insubstantial. The sound of a boat's horn seems more palpable than the fuzzy rocks on the shore. By midmorning, however, the sun has burned through the fog, and that Fairfield Porter look of vacation weather has returned: flawless blue skies, shimmering water, dark green spruces and firs. In late afternoon, Fitz Hugh Lane returns to his easel. The low golden light, the mood of utter stillness, the feeling of ripeness that fills his views of Somes Sound or Camden Harbor is repeated at a hundred coves and inlets from Kittery to Calais.
Inland has its autumn charms, too, especially in a state with 2,200 lakes. But the mood is sharper. On the coast, you can lull yourself into feeling that October will last forever. Away from the sea, however, by late August there are already signs of approaching winter. It is more a matter of fading light than cooler weather, but the note of warning is unmistakable. By September the nights are decidedly nippier. By October there is a smell of Arctic air pushing down from Canada. But what a show the land makes. There is no putting it in words. It must have been one of the most remarkable sights to confront the earliest settlers, accustomed to the brownness of the European autumn. Whether you are a "leaf peeper" on a chartered bus tour or a child running and leaping into a pile of leaves, the setting, for a few short weeks, is the stuff of alchemy. And then, with one strong storm, it is all gone. The hills are left bare, and everyone goes inside again.