My Maine Summer of Moose Chasing, Blueberry Picking, and the Love of Two Wonderful Women
I wrote a lot less this summer than I normally do, but for the best of reasons: I was busy living the richly varied and rewarding life of a Mainer, sharing the experience with the love of a great Mainer on my arm.
In my first four years in Maine I rather obviously lived and worked here, but it was really only with the summer of 2024 that I felt fully vested here, quite less a newcomer-outsider; that I wasn’t merely residing and working here but very much living rather like the natives do. I felt more one of them.
For the first time in my life, I fed my lifelong blueberry addiction by picking my own blueberries, alongside Kerry, at a farm in New Gloucester. We leisurely meandered about the long rows of blueberry bushes on the farm on a blissfully blue-skied weekday we both had off from work, and a steady breeze kept us cool under the searing sun as we each patiently filled sizable produce cartons. As Kerry drove us home that afternoon I cradled the berry-stuffed cartons in my lap as precious cargo, and I remember believing that I’d experienced the first of what I hoped would be many an annual summer ritual, shared with the beautiful blonde berry picker beside me. And on my cereal and my oatmeal the berries tasted fresh and naturally sweet.
On a weekend up in the western Maine mountains of Rangeley Kerry and I joined our friends Jim and Brandy at their mountain camp, and in their rugged Wrangler well assembled for off-roading the four of us impulsively set about moose-seeking on a summer night near dusk along a route that hugged the mountain’s marshes and ponds. We failed that night to secure me my first moose sighting in Maine, but we’ll make another moose-seeking adventure together again, likely this fall.
Four fun loving friends packed into a Wrangler roaming about mountain marshes looking for moose after sunset is a novel way to spend a portion of a summer night. As the sun faded on that day the mountain air delivered a sudden and spectacular chill in the Jeep’s back seat, Kerry seated next to me, and briefly I thought about my friends back in D.C. enduring yet another historically overheated, mega-humidity saturated summer there, so glad I wasn’t among them.
I made my first visit to Popham Beach with Kerry to beat the heat on a steamy July weekday we both had off from work. Popham is Maine’s busiest state park beach and famous for a set of rock islands a modest distance offshore, ones that entice beachgoers on hot days to wade through revitalizingly chilly knee- and waist-high tidal pools to reach them. Kerry and I did this, twice, each time arriving on an island to discover seals at play in the ocean below us.
Popham was also the site of my first full immersion in Maine’s normally icy summer ocean water. I’d attempted to douse all of myself in past summers, at other beaches, but always the biting chill of water rarely much above 60 degrees stymied me by waist-level depths. I managed a solid 90 seconds of a full immersion swim at Popham, feeling baptized as a full-fledged Mainer. I beamed at Kerry back at our beach chairs. We packed up our beach gear, drove into the town of Popham, and took happy hour outside on a tavern patio, sipping wine and watching more seals at play in a channel of ocean water a hundred feet away.
Kerry and I attended the wedding of a great buddy up in Rangeley, my first wedding in Maine, one complete with outrageously delicious blueberry pies substituted for wedding cake at the reception. One of us made his tongue blue with a second helping of pie. We were celebrating the bride and groom in a gorgeously restored rural Maine farm barn, one overlooking Rangeley Lake, and Kerry and I decided right then: When we tie the knot, we’re having blueberry pie instead of cake at our celebration, too. Perhaps she and I will pick the berries for our celebration pies.
In a summer of special shared memories with Kerry one magical set of days towered above all others: the arrival of my sister, Marianne, for her very first visit to Maine. Marianne is my only sibling, and I am so proud of the wife and mother she is. Kerry is a single mom of heroic and indefatigable devotion. I had a feeling they’d get along great right from the start, and I was right.
Two years ago Marianne and I lost mom, and I hadn’t seen my sister since Christmas a few weeks later. Events inside and outside of our family this year I think have bonded us in an especially close way. We lost a dear friend to cancer back in D.C. right around the time we started discussing the possibility of her visit. But Marianne has also been excited by my reports of prosperity with Kerry, and I was eager for them to meet.
This summer Marianne and I, rather suddenly and quite naturally, began carrying off phone calls whose duration stretched well past a couple of hours. I’d open up a bottle of wine on a few nights while reconnecting with my sis and find it fairly empty before we’d said goodbye. I began feeling that my success with Kerry was somehow bringing me closer to my sister 1,200 miles away in Tennessee.
But also on the phone this summer, for the first time in more than 30 years, Marianne and I began revisiting our youth, its good and not so good, mutually contextualizing with a reflection only time and maturity can deliver the impacts from our parents’ divorce, when we were both in college. It felt good to talk about it in depth, unhurried, with great and careful listening on both ends of the phone, to share and reflect, to articulate values we share today as it relates to functional family living. I found our phone calls comforting, and they culminated with Marianne sharing the exciting news of purchasing a plane ticket to come visit me, and to meet Kerry.
The more time I spent on the phone with my only sibling the more I realized that Maine was becoming more than a safe space away from the waste basin that was Washington, D.C., for me. It truly was becoming my home. When I arrived here on New Years Eve five years ago I hoped to find refuge and a fresh start, one that might include lasting success with love. And in this summer of 2024 Maine I’m realizing is a good deal more to me than merely snowmobile trails, frozen ponds upon which to chase pucks with pals, low stress driving on its highways; it’s where I am able to soothe my little baby soul from the hot mess of my hometown. It’s my heart’s home.
I made the best possible dinner reservation in Portland for the night of Marianne’s arrival — Fore Street, the very same culinary jewel that was the site of my first date with Kerry. In the days leading up to Marianne’s arrival Kerry and I had great fun putting together a Welcome to Maine gift bag for my sis, and then at dinner Marianne arrived with gift bags chock full of surprises for Kerry and me. We enjoyed a fabulous meal with delicious wine and wide ranging and warm banter. The closeness I felt with my sister on the phone all summer was now here in Maine, and now, quite naturally, enveloping Kerry.
The next day Kerry and her son Garrett met Marianne and me in Boothbay, for an afternoon schooner ride in Boothbay Harbor. Thick morning fog that delighted my sister on her walk through Portland streets gave way to a bright blue sky for our sailing a bit further up the coast. Marianne adored seeing elegant sailboats around our schooner, a smattering of porpoises circling us, and opulent homes hugging the coastline. We also received word from my brother in law back in Nashville that the mercury there had reached 100, while we shared with him images of our breeze-laden voyage in ideal late-summer temps in upper New England.
We captured dazzling photos from our boat ride. There was an awful lot of happiness deeply etched in the smiles of the four of us.
A few hours before my sister’s return flight home I led her on a walk up to Munjoy Hill in Portland’s East End, where we ogled amazing homes seemingly 100 years old or older overlooking Casco Bay. In a short while together we managed to see a decent range of this enormous state. But considerably more importantly: Marianne and I simply relished being reunited, being together again.
My sister departed Maine in August’s final week, thrilled by its beauty, refreshed by its soothing climate. And as tinges of orange and red begin to touch the leaves of upper New England I am beginning to think that my life as a New Englander is transitioning as well. In a couple of weeks I’ll begin rejoining my neighbors one or two evenings each week after dinner by our community firepit, adorned in flannel shirt, a hoodie on chillier evenings. And this autumn I’ll have Kerry in an Adirondack chair next to me, her hand to squeeze in the glow of the fire. I’ll be missing my sister then, quite badly I think, but I’ll also be thinking for the very first time that I may just be becoming the big brother she’s always deserved.