We'll always have Carthage

When I met my now husband almost 10 years ago, he was living in this one room (but not as small as Thoreau's) cabin on 100 acres. Tucked into the conifers, it had been his home base for the nearly 10 years previous. He jokingly (I hope) called it "Ted Kaczynski's cabin" as none of his friends had ever been invited there and they wondered about what went on. It was his sanctuary. A wildlife biologist, he was sometimes gone for months at a time, working whatever good gig he could land--usually Maine, Minnesota, or Montana--but he always returned to the cabin.

He never went to bed without first walking a skid trail or the gravel road without flashlight, regardless of the phase of the moon. Sometimes I joined him and tried not to walk into trees. Sometimes I just tucked into the cabin, trying to adjust to the quiet and darkness. In winter, we slept with the wood stove cranked and the window next to the bed open. The cat would jump in and out during the night and land on our heads. I was always grateful that I could not see what she had dragged in with her. By day, we walked the stream beds, canoed the lakes and rivers, and climbed/snowshoed the nearby hills and mountains. By night, well, this is a family blog. That time of my life was my most peaceful and most full. I had come home--home to an area that I only knew as a place where I had vacationed as a child. I didn't know it could be a home--that people lived there all year round. Naive, yes, but it was part of the specialness and mystique that my parents and older siblings had cultivated in our collective memories over the years.

We tried to buy that property. We wanted to dig in. We came close, but the deal fell through late in the game. We were crushed, but soon after, my husband was offered a good job out on the coast (a story for another time). We packed up his little cabin and I packed up my out-of-state condo and headed east, all the while trying to pack away those strong memories of the last year together. When life gets stressful or our relationship hits a bump, I often joke that we'll always have Carthage. When the bills and responsibilities start to overwhelm us, I wish sometimes that we could do as Thoreau suggested and simplify ourselves right back there.

We eventually returned to the area--not to Carthage, but close. That sense of place I have, which began in infancy and carried me right through to the life I share with my little family now, is one of the reasons I have been been working on stopping wind projects on the mountains of western Maine. There are better reasons, but I will get to them in another blog. One thing has become very clear to me as I find my way through the wind debate. Many of the folks in this area who are most opposed to industrial wind projects on our mountains are the "greenest" among us. They are walking the walk and leaving behind small carbon footprints. Many are back-to-the-landers. Some live off the grid, some don't have a car (that's a big commitment if you live in the country), all grow/raise much of their own food, all buy locally as much as possible, all compost, some have solar and/or small scale wind...you get the picture.

I do my best, but I can't pretend to be as green as many of these folks. What we share is our love of quiet, wild places. We are conservation and preservation-minded. We live each day knowing that this is Vacationland for many and home for a lucky few. We look up at a mountain like Saddleback in Carthage and feel that sense of serenity you get when you're alone in the wilderness. Or, at least, we did. Now we look at these mountains and feel a sense of urgency--hike them, photograph them, fight for them.

May our kids and grandkids have a place they can go where they can have some peace. May you all have a place that means as much to you.