I’m sure everyone in Alfond Arena wondered who the hell I was that I rated a handshake from the senator. It was May 1995, and I was graduating from the University of Maine with my master’s degree in English. Olympia Snowe, long-time member of the House of Representatives, recently elected to the U.S. Senate, stood up from her seat on the speaker’s ( Read more... )

Rachel Carson and the Power of Wonder

#22: The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson; photographs by Nick Kelsh (1996 ( Read more... )

At night, the Kenduskaeg Stream runs through downtown Bangor like an eel in the dark, barely visible at the bottom of the concrete canal that channels it to the Penobscot River. Where the dark night ends and the surface of the water begins isn’t always easy to tell except when an errant ripple glistens in the caught shaft of a streetlight or the ( Read more... )

At the edge of the sea with Rachel Carson

#8: The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson (1953)
#9: The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson (1961 ( Read more... )

Experiencing the Maine Woods with Thoreau

#6: The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau ( Read more... )

"Who shall describe the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be mid-winter, is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth; and blissful, innocent Nature, like a serene infant, is too happy to make a noise, except by a few tinkling, ( Read more... )

A Year in the Maine Woods: “where the subtle matters, and the spectacular distracts”#5: A Year in the Maine Woods by Bernd Heinrich (1994 ( Read more... )

I have a creative nonfiction piece appearing in the upcoming edition of the online journal Ragazine, due out this weekend. The editor blurbed it with this ( Read more... )

I took a drive down to Bar Harbor this afternoon/evening to get my dose of the ocean. I had the place all to myself. Bar Harbor in the winter is a veritable ghost town ( Read more... )