Geographically, the state stretches north to south, and I can tell you catastrophically little about the latter. A mysterious land. For some reason, in our coastal parts, we called Augusta the north, but the real north begins where Google Maps stops showing city names. That is where the descendants of the first settlers live, Mainers in the tenth generation, who are spoken of as a special, distant, and unexplored people with their own traditions. And just as foreigners are disliked throughout the state, northerners do not trust Mainers from the south. The logic is clear: it is not far from the south to Boston.
Oh, how I dreamed of driving up the map! If you are in Maine, be sure to do it; buses run from Portland to Augusta, and you can transfer there. After all, it somehow happened that all the symbols of Maine, everything associated with it, concentrated in the south along the coast. As if they had been washed ashore by the surf. According to the most common opinions, Maine is: lighthouses, lobsters, blueberries, an L.L.Bean boot, and the notorious apple picking. And yet, it seems to me that the most Maine-like landscape was drawn from the northern regions...
But first, an important lyrical digression. In one of the "Neputevye Zametki" episodes, the beloved Dmitry Krylov shared a very personal story. Everyone, he said, has "their" artist and "their" work, and meeting it is a great happiness. And he was lucky. It was the painting "Christina's World" by artist Andrew Wyeth. Painted—I could hardly believe Wikipedia afterward—in the state of Maine. But that is by the way.
And in the summer, this happened to me too. It was at the Portland Museum of Art, and while my companion was looking at a seascape, I got stuck for a long time in front of the neighboring painting.
It was called something like "Night Road" and was all dark, except for the stars and a bright yellow lane marker. The road went through a coniferous forest and was, of course, completely empty at such an hour. And then, a moose comes out of the forest onto this road. By the way, both the moose and the pine are symbols of the state. And above them, in the dark starry sky, an airplane is flying. That's it. It's a pity that I am describing it in words, because the search did not yield results. So if you find it, please let me know.
Personal impressions were added to the painting. On just such a starry Maine night, dark blue mixed with dark emerald, my friend and his dog and I are walking. When suddenly, small electric light bulbs begin to light up in the grass under the pines. With a bright white light, one by one, they light up and go out. My friend, a Maine native, was surprised too: "I," he says, "last saw them in childhood. And that was in the north. We went there for the summer to my grandmother's and at night we collected them (as you have already guessed, we are talking about fireflies) in jars. And we walked around like we had a lantern; only when we fell asleep did mom set them free." And I just stood there speechless, feeling like a character from "Avatar." In this complete (and importantly, safe) darkness, the stars were in the sky, and they were under our feet, and all of this was very quiet and, most importantly, alive.
In general, describing the nature of the state is a rather useless task. You won't believe it. In summer, all states are good, and participants from other parts of the USA will be indignant that in their sunny Californias, it was much better. I won't argue. It is possible that the state of Maine, like wine, is more beautiful in maturity. Only in autumn does it actually become New England. They described to me in detail, as if not believing that it happens anywhere else, what we call "golden autumn," and promised to send pictures. They were waiting for the first cold night: after it, in the morning, everything would turn into the colors of autumn. I didn't wait. I was flying out at the very beginning of September.
Maine has a wonderful little word: wicked. It translates as "very" and is recorded in all dictionaries, but here it is considered for some reason to be inherently Maine-ish, a more iconic symbol of the state than a lobster. For all the impossibility of becoming a Mainer, one can at least pass for one by using this word. For example, that nature here is wicked beautiful.
I think I will end with that. Attaching a magic word with the best adjectives to nature, climate, people, cities. To my summer, which got hooked on the lack of information. Indeed, there is no better way to intrigue a journalist and any curious person than to tell them: in this state, they pick apples, and nothing else. And between the lines, the subtext: go check for yourself. Go, really, discover America.
And we go and discover. Thank you.
