Are We Merely Visiting?

I am in the midst of this undeniable privilege: traveling to explore other places and communities in this world. For a week of rest and relaxation and learning, Judith and I chose an island further down east from our home in Deer Isle, ME, and journeyed to Prince Edward Island.

PEI is an island community home to approximately 135,000 souls and, like Deer Isle, hosts a robust fishing community -- although theirs is both more regulated AND more supported by the Canadian government, making Canadian lobster the primary competitor to our Maine crustracean. Additionally, there appears to be a somewhat robust bluefin tuna fishery here at this time of year, complementing the potato harvest. The red soil and long beaches make this a beautiful place, and we pass by field after field of potatoes newly harvested and awaiting the wheat, oats, and barley that will come next. The potatoes love the red, iron-rich soil and Irish Cobblers and other potato varieties are much beloved. With the decidedly Celtic lilt in the people's voices, it is easy to imagine a time when no ocean divided Ireland, Scotland, and Canada's Maritime Provinces.

Yet all over, too, we see how the economic consolidation of agriculture -- where once a 75-acre farm could support a family, now potatoes are grown on 1600-acre farms, just as in the U.S. midwest -- is creating gaps and shifts in the traditional island ways. Potato fields are given over everywhere to tourist cottages and second homes. And the Canadian government, either sensing or responding to these shifts or both, is a huge supporter of cultural tourism; which on PEI means Anne of Green Gables.

The beloved book by the native PEI author has an entire tourism trail named for its various locations, complete with actors dressed as Anne and a huge visitor center hosting bus loads of international tourists at the House of Green Gables. It's quite astounding.

As we drive, however, it is difficult not to wonder: are we merely visiting this earth, or living on it? As we have allowed our economies to develop uncontrolled, they at times appear to be eating us up rather than serving us. The truth is, the way native peoples once lived sustainably on our shores for thousands of years was never the colonial plan. British colonists in particular were in service to an empire on which "the sun never set" and from the time they set foot on these shores created economies that were about exports: exporting livestock (and enslaved peoples) and timber to the British colonies, in the West Indies or England; importing the rum and sugar and other goods they then needed to survive on their own. Colonization is about acquisition and consumption and the white narrative of North America is defined by this.

The House of Green Gables.

The question now remains for us to face and future generations to experience: now that we've eaten it all up, exported most of it and destroyed the rest (the deforestation of this island and much of the Maritimes is, as in parts of New England, a sad sight to behold) -- do we re-learn how to sustain our human (not just individual) selves and this world? Or will we be content to be merely visitors to this beautiful planet? And if the latter: how temporary will we make our visitation? how much of a foot print will we leave, how quickly will we consume what remains? Will we leave sustainable places to live for the generations of humans who could follow?

Falling in Love with Lubec: Vacation Fall 2019 Day #1

 “My worst day on the water is better than your best day in a cubicle somewhere.” - Ralph DeWitt, pilot boat captain, Eastport Harbor as quoted in Galen Koch’s project, The First Coast

Vacation Day #1. We make the drive down east along Maine’s Bold Coast. Completely rugged, wild, and poor. Destination: Lubec, Maine’s easternmost village from which the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge arcs gracefully across the narrows to Canada.

Lubec is our first stop to see Galen Koch’s The First Coast exhibit and sound walk. Galen has been traveling in her renovated Airstream mobile digital studio along Maine’s coast to capture some of the voices of these hard-working remote communities in which people are struggling to maintain their traditional, sustenance-based ways of living: fishing, clamming, harvesting. She’s done a terrific job capturing these actual voices. Listening to them, seeing the accompanying photos by Greta Rhybus, and then exploring Lubec with Galen’s sound walk is a magical afternoon.

 Judith and I immediately fall in love with Lubec. It’s experiencing a bit of a renaissance since we first came through, 10 or more years ago, en route to Campobello. During that visit it seemed all the wooden, Gothic-style former smokehouses and canneries were collapsing into the water, where two large salmon farm pens lurked like sharks’ mouths waiting to swallow up the native fish. I can’t remember seeing a person on the street during that visit. Today there are people of all ages walking, the restaurants are full!

There is something magical about these end of the world places. You can feel how it could again be just you, the water, the land. Not about jobs, or going other places; not about cars or money. Just about being a part of this glorious planet.

There is an old church here for sale. It makes our eyes gleam with dreams. It’s in worst shape than the Stonington Opera House even was when we first stumbled upon it. But we can see what it might be. A new kind of community and cultural center, one centered in relationship to Maine’s indigenous communities and crossing borders of all kind. Small and simple, an end-of-the-world outpost where our stories can be told, shaped, imagined, reflected, re-told, archived in authentic ways. Another place where we can gather in community to learn.

A place of staying put. A place for introverts and artists. A place of growing and gathering berries. A tough place, too, where the huge fierce tides and the harshness of the climate compete for human lives.