BOOKPATHS

Maine

Geraldine Fabrikant travels to Winslow Homer’s Maine.

This little house was Winslow Homer’s studio, where he lived during much of his last 25 years and painted some of his most dramatic oils. Walk down a small trail from the front lawn through wild brush to the right places on the craggy coast and you may well be standing where Homer stood when he painted ‘High Cliff, Coast of Maine’ — with the sea hurling itself against the rocks and waves exploding toward the sky in giant billows hard white against the chilling black-brown of the stones — or ‘Weatherbeaten’” another dramatic seascape. Stand on those rocks and look back toward Homer’s studio, just as it was when he worked so assiduously in its ‘factory,’ the painting room that his brother Charles Jr. added in 1890, the room where the artist died in 1910 with his brothers around him. – from “Winslow Homer’s Main, by Geraldine Fabrikant, The New York Times

Maine, U.S.

The Country of Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett (New York: Penguin, 1996 and various other editions ; first published in 1896)

A visitor to the fictional Dunnett Landing is introduced to the people and landscape of “the country of pointed firs.”  Readers, too, are pulled into the quiet lives and beauty along the Maine coast, inspired, Sarah Orne Jewett wrote to a friend, by the “shore between the regions of Tenants Harbor and Boothbay, or it might be farther to the eastward in a country that I know less well.”

We went from the upper edge of the field above the house into a smooth, brown path among the dark spruces.  The hot sun brought out the fragrance of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as we climbed the hill.  William stopped once or twice to show me a great wasps’-nest close by, or some fishhawks’-nests below in a bit of swamp.  He picked a few sprigs of late-blooming linnea as we came out upon an open bit of pasture at the top of the island, and gave them to me without speaking, but he knew as well as I that one could not say half he wished about linnea.  Through this piece of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the great backbone of an enormous creature.  At the end, near the woods, we could climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above the circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of island-ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons.  It gave a sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged one in, -- that sense of liberty in space and time which great prospects always give. – from The Country of Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum

The Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project (including The Country of Pointed Firs)

Brooklin, Maine, U.S.

Literary reverence or E. B. White is just one of the reasons to visit Brooklin, Maine.

Literary reverence for E. B. White is another reason many people turn south from the larger town of Blue Hill. The Friend Memorial Public Library in town, regarded as a local gem with a good selection for year-round residents and summer visitors alike, was well used by White and his wife, Katharine. – from “Where Boats Are as Plentiful as Lobsters,” by Jim Norman, The New York Times

Maine

Novelist Melissa Bank explains why we “must read” Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout.

This is the story about people who live in a small town in Maine — people who might seem ordinary. But they're only as ordinary as we are. – from “Who Says You Have to Like a Character?” by Melissa Bank, All Things Considered - NPR

Maine

Ethan Gilsdorf tracks “Thoreau through Maine’s ‘Grim and Wild’ Land."

“Following Thoreau into the Maine Woods is hardly a new idea, but it is becoming easier. Last year, the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail was inaugurated, delineating and celebrating Thoreau’s passage on routes that Penobscot Indians had used for thousands of years. And this year, the Appalachian Mountain Club released its revised edition of J. Parker Huber’s long out-of-print guide, The Wildest Country: Exploring Thoreau’s Maine, chock full of maps that pinpoint his best guesses at where Thoreau camped each night.”—from “Tracking Thoreau Through Maine’s ‘Grim and Wild’ Land,” by Ethan Gilsdorf, The New York Times

Sarah Orne Jewett House, 5 Portland Street, South Berwick, Maine, U.S.

The 18th-century home of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), author of classics such as The Country of Pointed Firs, Deephaven, and the hauntingly beautiful short story, The White Heron, is open to the public Friday through Sunday from June 1st to October 15th.   The house remains much as it was during Jewett’s time, including her bedroom, writing desk, garden, and the second floor view of the South Berwick “intersection [that] provided her with material for her books."  For information, visit the Historic New England website.

Maine, U.S.

The Trees in My Forest, by Bernd Heinrich (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998; first published in 1997)

Biologist and nature writer Bernd Heinrich invites readers to explore with him the “hidden life” of the piece of Maine forest he calls home.

I ramble in my home woods at different times and circumstances. I’ve struck out in the middle of a blizzard. Once in July I waited until midnight to head out. I’ve wandered out on spring dawns just when the warblers were returning, on sweltering summer afternoons when the blackflies were biting, in thunderstorms and also under blue sunny skies in Indian summer when the woods were a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors. In my memory, I savor the images that were collected on these rambles and that bind me to this place. Some might consider these images trifles. But I am hard-pressed to come up with greater riches than those memories. – from The Trees in My Forest, by Bernd Heinrich

Publisher’s Website

East Boothbay, Maine, USA

In the December print edition of Smithsonian Magazine, Richard Ford considers his life in East Boothbay and the “concept of home.”

“…Here in East Boothbay (estimated population 491), authenticity rests principally on the presence of history in everyday affairs – on the way citizens find a living (fishing and boat building); on the old-timey layout of our relatively few streets (School Street, Church Street), which persists unviolated by developers’ schemes; on the placement of long-established residences; on the resilience of our few business concerns; and on the fact that many families have stayed in one place a long, long time. In other words memory – that great certifier – is still relatively seamless and reliable in East Boothbay. And, of course, much confidence is owned to our town’s face being turned everlastingly to the sea.” – from “My Kind of Town: East Boothbay, Maine,” by Richard Ford, Smithsonian Magazine

Bookpath: Maine

The Maine Woods, by Henry David Thoreau (New York: Penguin Nature Classics, 1988)

Even with the changes that have occurred since Henry David Thoreau’s three journeys during the 1840s and 1850s, The Maine Woods remains a worthwhile companion to Mount Katahdin, Moosehead Lake, the West Branch of the Penobscot River, Lake Chesuncook, the Allagash River, and other places along his routes. As always, Thoreau’s curiosity and insights are infectious and wise.

“On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine, by way of the railroad and steamboat, intending to accompany a relative of mine engaged in the lumber-trade in Bangor, as far as a dam on the west branch of the Penobscot, in which property he was interested. From this place, which is about one hundred miles by the river above Bangor, thirty miles from the Houlton military road, and five miles beyond the last log-hut, I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.” – from The Maine Woods, by Henry David Thoreau

Links

Publisher’s Website

The Maine Woods – Electronic Text

Baxter State Park

Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce

Penobscot River Restoration Trust

Allagash Wilderness Waterway

Thoreau’s Maine Woods (history and links)

Bookpath: North Brooklin, Maine

One Man’s Meat, by E. B. White (Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House Publishers, reprint 1997)

In the late 1930s, E. B. White, his wife, and young son left New York for their saltwater farm in North Brooklin, Maine. During the five years they lived there year-round, E. B. White described rural living in monthly columns for Harper’s called “One Man’s Meat.” In 1942, the columns were collected into book form. The most recent reprint of One Man’s Meat, by Maine’s Tilbury House Publishers, continues to prove the timelessness of White’s observations as he transports readers to the Maine landscape that he loved.

“Several months ago, finding myself in possession of one hundred and seventeen chairs divided about evenly between a city house and a country house, and desiring to simplify my life, I sold half of my worldly goods, evacuated the city house, gave up my employment, and came to live in New England. The difficulty of getting rid of even one half of one’s possessions is considerable, even at removal prices. And after the standard items are disposed of – china, rugs, furniture, books – the surface is merely scratched: you open a closet door and there in the half-dark sit a catcher’s mitt and an old biology notebook.” -- from One Man’s Meat, by E. G. White

Publisher’s Website