The points of interest, things to do in Maine when something like a coronovirus happens.
We are lucky to live in Maine where maintaining personal space is easy. Six feet from others and preparing to increase the distance if needed is not so hard. Neighbors, what neighbors? When you live on a dead end road, when you do not see the next house. It’s like yours and also out of sight, surrounded by field acreage and mixed woods. Staying safely spaced is not thought about until a virus hits. And you consider what it would be like dealing with precaution measures if you did not live in rural Maine. If instead it was a high rise apartment buildings with shared heating and air exchange system. Or one of 300 other carbon copy houses cookie cut out of a subdivision with a neat sounding name.
We all have the same don’t touch your face, clean surfaces, turn your cough and smother it in your elbow procedures to follow in Maine.
No matter where we are on planet Earth. It’s all about doing your part. Buying time in the race for multiple vaccines to stop it in it’s virus tracks. And at the same time belt tighten to weather it out like a Maine winter storm with too much snow and how low does she go temperatures. Reelin’ and dealin’ with economic problems is nothing new living in Maine. Adjusting to up, down, sideways road curves in life’s bumpy pot hole riddled road.
Our gratitude to live in small rural Maine does not make us less vigilante to do our part to avoid the spread or contracting the covid-19 virus.
Sure your heighten awareness about how virus germs are spread is vital information. You teach the same laboratory biology science lesson to your kids for real World application from the texbook. More in your head thinking about grabbing door knobs, shopping cart handles and using your elbow to touch. Or nodding, waving not shaking hands habit adopted in greetings. No more kissing both cheeks in an embrace like lots of cultures. All that gets an overhaul living in small town Maine as we avoid unnecessary travel. Sporting events took a major hit. So did dance classes, anything putting you or your child in a large group or losing the ability to stay less than six feet distant.
But being away from lots of population sheer number concentration helps us Mainers.
Not dealing with hording fist fighters for toilet paper, foodstuffs at shopping centers still causes us to stop and reflect though.
To really think when you have families in those urban areas, how it must be. Just how their day to day changes more drastically. What they have for a set of worries is food for thought. And to consider elderly, those with medical conditions to get them help. To reach out and let them know the community cares for those with age out of kindness and for perspective. Much can be learned in the repeated past cycles we hear about helping older, seasoned community members. You doing your part? You in that group receding or blue hair segment now or hope to live long enough to make it to the Golden Years?
Just getting around, avoiding mass transit and being jumpy every time your hear a sneeze or cough.
We can walk not have to ride mass transit in most small town Maine locations. Ask someone shut in if you can get them what they need and check in. In all of our lives, none of us really knows how the coronovirus will affect us yet. My real job is listings, selling property listings will take it into consideration. I did a regular installment Maine real estate market report post on another blogging channel this weekend. Pointing out how the numbers look, with the disclaimer these healthy real estate market figures do not reflect the coronovirus news event effect. Being a realist, not an alarmist and knowing it takes patience to learn that part of the coronovirus aftermath.
Practical approaches to difficult life situations is what Mainers are taught and see put into action daily.
We will do more than survive and make a sport, a survival game out of it. When it snows an inch or two and a metropolitan area stops dead in its tracks. We think “amateurs”. But it is really lack of the right equipment, no flake experience, too many dang people. That’s the problem in population centers handling any crisis man made or from Mother Nature. David and Goliath different atmosphere to work with to avoid panic and get the best results. Smaller is better in mobilization or house arrest voluntary shut down protocol compliance. We are prepared for this kind of challenge and together will find the best way to get through it like other struggles.
It will take another month and more to pass and further time to study the coronovirus numbers based on real time, not water cooler predictions. To weigh in on how it affects real estate, transportation, tourism, health care, small mom and pop businesses in Maine.
But Mainers are tough, resilient and used to hardship and adversity. All increases our faith and the gung ho, fire in our belly passion to make the most of whatever life affords you. We head to our private places to unplug and refresh without sharing them with wall to wall tourists. We will be just fine staying at home. We are the lucky ones who live in Maine. Don’t have to travel long distances to access all she offers for fresh air, clean water, pure and natural surroundings.
You and I will do our part to prevent the spread and rein in our travel circles to thwart the coronovirus attack on our way of life.
The local haunts will suffer but understand your absence and why. Staying close to home to keep the fires going, making our life more confined and disciplined is nothing new. When the economy is not robust, if spending money is tight or non-existent, we quickly find ways to amuse and entertain. You can not help but think of Maine’s Amish settlements. How without lots of modern day conveniences, they don’t bother any one and get along just fine.
The kids are respectful, reading books and pitching in around the farms or whatever Amish enterprise. The stay at home out of school will not be wasted.
Everything you learn in life is not on the teacher’s shoulders. Time for kids to learn how to change car oil or a flat tire. To deep clean the house along with other members. To be kind, helpful and pick up more than just what they create for a mess or only the area they call their bedroom. Learning about economizing, conserving preparing for the long haul and seeing how local communities tackle the problem brings it all home. Kids will face challenges in life and the set backs and their reaction to them shows what you are made up inside.
The struggles and change of routine work around the house helps polish and improve to make kids adaptable for more puzzles presented to them in life. Respect for others and their opinions that may differ from their own. Not expecting to always be entertained or the need to make sure everyone around you should know you are pretty bored. Balancing a check book, washing windows, learning how to sew. Being a bit of an entry level carpenter scraping paint, removing and replacing a rotten board for refinishing. Mowing the lawn, shoveling snow. It is not up to others to make your life rosy. If you day, month, year, life does not turn out the way you hoped, don’t blame your parents or teachers and say “it’s not my fault”. Deal with it and look for the best solutions digging in and working hard not falling down and staying there by refusing to take ownership of your role. This virus is all about doing your job to protect yourself and others from its spread.
The coronovirus does put a hold on personal freedoms.
It causes tightened up sanitation measures, working on the areas of your life that fortify and raise your flu resistance. The even more exercise outdoors piled on, staying fully hydrated, curling up with a good book. Or puttering on hobbies is just pouring more coal on the bulk of our activities anyway. Listening to music, making the same soothes the soul and relaxes. Writing, painting, creating art or useful craft items. Cutting, stacking next year’s wood supply always a default to fill the time in a worthwhile way. In Maine, knowing how to entertain and make the most of what you have that is always way more than enough. That spirit will continue virus or not through thick or thin, feast or famine. We need to tackle cancer, heart disease, obesity and other health issues with the same urgency of coronovirus news has caused. If you consider yourself a faithful person, this is your cue to test that conviction or profession with prayer and reflection to fortify from inside out. Help others to do the same and gain strength in the process.
Helping others in the small rural areas, especially the elderly is not so hard or different in Maine, with or without the buzzing coronovirus news reports.
Much of the lend a hand knee jerk is second nature and why we chose to live in Maine rather than some place else on the globe. The local grocery stores opening up an hour early or later to help elderly shoppers make the rounds slowly. Without fear of being in the way, exposed to virus germs they can not afford meet along with power shoppers, etc. Slow it down. Get the seniors what they need one component of how Maine is working around the coronovirus and it’s after effects.
The healthier simple lifestyle not bank rolled by mountains of debt or crazy spending adopted growing up here where money is removed from the equation.
The focus on live and local in small town Maine, not online watching what everyone else is doing and thinking we are missing out on today. Providing plenty of room for adding all pure and natural endeavors in four season Maine. Again, not to brag but so lucky, very grateful and humbled to live in Maine. Farm raising makes you independent, a survivor to make hay while the sun shines and take frugal to a whole new level to stay on the patch of family dirt. Passing it on in as good or hopefully better shape than you received the acreage.
Being self sufficient and resourceful living on less I think just adds to the feeling of gratitude. Easy does it living within your means, aware of others and it is not about you attitude. More local hands on deck to round up quickly. To make a difference, for the connection aid for others in your small home town. It all may allow rural country Mainers to not fully feel the effects of a coronovirus the same way as our struggling city cousins. We are wired simple by choice and that is how our life rocks and rolls in Maine.
Like a harsh winter, poor economy, recovering from a medical operation or accident, we in Maine just adapt and adopt to whatever the occasion warrants.
And using a what we have which is more than enough positive attitude. To rise above and beyond to find something to be happy about in our look back rationalization. We will do more than just get through the coronovirus ramp up and containment. And I bet some in the audience are thinking this rural setting might be just the ticket for them at this stage of life too.
Our Maine local schools are working around the clock with teachers and administrators to learn from home.
For students to keep the education process rolling in new ways. Also to get needed nutrition to students who depend on it when school is in session. Bag back for kids loaded with food goes home with the help of bus drivers delivery them. When school is out in Maine for two weeks and more, providing food along with the reading, writing, arithmetic is critical too. Not everyone has an Internet connection in Maine rural areas or the money to bring it into their homes. How to continue education without Internet or computers at their home takes working together and being creative by local school boards.
Those in contact with the outside World are hard to corral when they roamed before we all fully understood the seriousness of the coronovirus.
But now we know, the media have thrown so much information good and flawed at us to digest right? When you live on a Maine farm, raise your own food, heat with wood and pretty much stay busy with the agriculture and being your own construction handyman, equipment mechanic, you and your family spends the bulk of your time at home.
So points of interests, things to do in Maine when you thought this blog post was about suggestions to start collecting lighthouse visits. Knowing you want to see a Maine moose, eat a whoopie pie, try a slice of native blueberry pie, put on a bib to eat a boiler lobster or steam clam feed. Slice into a Maine potato to add the butter and maybe a few other ingredients. You come to Maine for the wide open space, friendly but fewer number of people with or without cornovirus new alert background buzz.
Hiking Mt Katahdin, hitting the trails and visits to popular coastal beaches or Maine sporting events, musical events, school activities, church services, etc that may be curtailed for a spell.
Hold that thought on go carts, Santa’s Village and public pools and going out to eat, large crowd music venues, whale watching. Make your World staying close to home or in it until we get a handle on coronovirus containment developments. When things settle down and the coast is clear to move around less restricted in larger travel circles. We take care of our basic needs and enjoy the work involved in just that as a labor of love. Grateful for how good we have it and knowing not everyone does due to where they now live today.
Instead, for now, what you do up to camp in Maine is private and secluded. More one on one or by your lonesome. Small if exposed to any size groups the order of the day. Away from people where you worry less and learn to enjoy your space more. Maybe working the land to grow food you know where it came from and heating with the wood from your own property that’s a renewable resource. Not being an alarmist, but life spent for the summer at an unorganized township in Maine like St Croix Lake camp up in Aroostook County. Like the Lawlors and my cousin Randy and his wife Barb do every year. Happy living off grid in the remote location Maine is famous for and no longer a secret to many doing their online homework.
Waving at the freight train engineer a couple times a week hauling wood forest timber products down the clickity clack tracks.
Who leans out and smiles knowing he is about the only person you see hiding out in the deep, vast North Maine woods St Croix Lake location. Maybe the inland fisheries and wildlife guy or gal with the badge, the sidearm and a pick up or snow sled, maybe a four wheel tools by to say hey. Nature’s wildlife, the sound of weather, a crackling wood fire, a lake lapping out front not just the mournful train whistle approaching the one road siding crossing is what you hear. Who’s turn to deal in our cribbage board game and what did you peg for points from that last hand you lucky buzzard? Get the deck ready and shuffled while I whip up clean and place in the rack to dry these dirty dinner dishes Marguerite.
Surviving on less at another off the beaten path cabin in Harvey siding or laboring on a small Maine farm might be just your new setting. Many bought land in Maine over the years for just that “what if” scenario easier to sleep at night. Without the tossing and turning worry. The property acreage a safety net, an insurance policy if you will to bee line to if life in a population center got a little too crazy. If you lived in a city and all heck broke loose, do you know where you would head following the blue evacuation dots to high tail up to Maine.
Most of the land in Maine bought for cheap vacation recreation, maybe future retirement. Using owner financing terms to fit their budget to buy the Maine land. Now owned free and clear and put to another use than hunting, fishing, snow sledding or hiking for fun. Could you live off the land in Maine, be off grid and live pretty much self sufficiently? Think you have the skill set if put to the test or could rise to the occasion?
We are vocation not just vacation people and can not take enjoy our recreation until caught up on our Maine work load.
In Maine it does not feel like being on house arrest because home is where your heart is. We don’t need retail therapy at the mall or to be social butterflies running the roads. Mainers are content and enjoy their own company. Being alone is not scary but sacred when you need to process events and hear yourself think. Your life is around you and lived in the moment not out of step and some place else. This coronovirus makes you do some serious thinking about the direction your life is heading.
Oh sure, people love Maine for the rocky coastline and maritime history.
I have posted on the expensive tourist traps that is often all the out of state visitor gets to sample. But go up into the belly of interior Maine deeper. Maine is a place to sample the outdoor traditions year round and the paths into those areas are less traveled. You could start over, change it up or retire easily in Maine if the timing is right and you are prepared financially, emotional, spiritually.
The small Maine communities are small but there is nothing larger or stronger than the hearts of the local volunteers.
They doggedly take on much and preserve to pass down these shared Maine family and community traditions. Our rural nature, the vast size of Maine and sparse population insulates us. Some think isolates to a degree. But when is that a good thing? Depends on where you are in life, what you have gone through and how you survived. Ask that very personal question to the person you see in the mirror brushing your teeth looking back each day for the answer.
Small towns, their schools, churches, businesses can mobilize quickly when ordered to stay close to home in Maine.
It happens every time the economy tanks. We still practice and pass on common sense to the next generation. The hand washing precautions, avoiding large groups protocol, how you meet and greet just means rein it in a little tighter. But we already live independently and not fueled by lots of cash. Are not dependent on others and make an adventure of being house bound or if weather increases and the power goes out. All taken in stride without being shook up or getting light headed with fear. We are all in this together and the individuals part of the solution.
On a small or large scale Maine country farm, the lifestyle includes lots of tasks that keep us pretty busy and out of trouble. Occupied with cutting, processing next year’s home heating wood and maintenance of out buildings, the homestead and tending fields and animals fills much of our daylight hours.
The locals and tourists alike want to be out on the trails that open up the Great North Woods and places like Mt Katahdin at Baxter State Park. Or to bike the fifty miles or more of trails around Acadia National Park in the Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island area of Maine. To get out on the waterfront for early morning fishing in a boat or wetting the line in waders out in a Maine river or stream. But what’s important during an outbreak of say the cornovirus means first things first to protect yourself, your family, the community that is near and dear.
Farm stands for field to table fresh, museums that showcase the agriculture and lumbering heritage are popular points of interests.
So are home cooked service club suppers that often are fund raisers and silent auctions for some local in need that hit a low point in life. But the best things to do in Maine depend on you combined with the weather in the season at hand. One thing is for certain. No matter what time of year you visit Maine or when are lucky enough to live here full or part time as a native, much of the our time is spent outdoors. The fresh air, not being house bound by four walls and itching to get outside to walk, bike, hike, ski, swim is a strong desire in Maine.
Simple living makes it free and easier in many ways in Maine.
No crowds, no gangs, no crime and space. Lots of wide open space to explore and to return to those favorite places people from Maine and away flock to all their life. Once you discover your own special place to get centered, for exercise and enjoyment, that location is added to the can’t wait to return or continue where you left off.
Living simple in Maine also takes the need for lots of money to keep things humming. Independent, resourceful Mainers know how to do more than just survive. To maintain a quality of life, if it is to be, it is up to me is one skill developed at an early age. Attitude, not being lazy, pitching in to make it better than it was or to maintain something good in a small Maine community. Everyone has a role, all are ambassadors to their own small Maine town and traditions.
So points of interest, things to do in Maine and how all that gets combined with the coronovirus.
This blog post topic did not deliver what you thought it would right? It is not business as usual and we interrupt this blog post programming for a special report. If you are brand new to Maine, never been here before and only had a few days to start collecting experiences what could be the plan Stan? To not waste your time in Maine but also not feel rushed and chasing a major time line to “beat the buffet” do it all. To cover all the bases and more in one hurried visit that sums up Vacationland in a matter of hours or or just a few days. The coronovirus has closed many options for safety sake. Rent a cabin and explore to discover what each facet of the jewel of Maine offers on your own or virtually as you plan for the rear visit. Google “what to do in Maine for fun” and watch the flood of recreational options spill out in your lap.
Resources, time is one, money is another that can whittle and shape the list of things to do in Maine on the points of interest list.
Camping is always a default affordable and enjoyable way to spend your time in Maine. With nature surrounding you, the wildlife one by one wandering by your camp site, you never forget the smell of the woods, the sounds of the lake or river you camped near. Food cooked on an open fire. The same one used to talk about the day that was and the one approaching discussing your Maine experiences.
Maine is personal, one on one, more intimate and the connection is stronger because crowds of impersonal people are removed. You learn to entertain yourself and not follow the pack or worry about what everyone else is doing. You seek to carve out what you want to accomplish. What fulfills you is only learned spending time with yourself and away from all those people jammed shoulder to shoulder. Not bumper to bumper in population centers like other parts of the nation. You can grow, learn, relax in Maine. Where I live, work and play there are 11 people per square mile. In New Jersey that number increases to 1000 souls.
One last blog post observation.
Maine travel gets your one of a kind authentic experiences and wisdom to apply to your life.
Like music that is real, genuine and even with a few imperfections, it has heart. It is not machined or sounds like all the rest of the riffs and lyrics. It is not copied and over dubbed in track stacks sameness. Feeling original, one of a kind, crafted from the heart. The melody, lyrics riding on top in the sandwich all crafted with total conviction. Honest effort poured in the pencil fill notes in the music liner creation discovery.
Maine is like the person providing the hand crafted product or wholesome level of service is testifying about how much joy he or she feels because they chose to live in Maine.
That kind of song or story hits you deeply because it is made from deep inside. The words and notes arranged because the success comes from being in the same mood when put together. Writing, singing and story telling about what you know works best when it is non-fiction and heat felt shared
Small town Maine wrapped in hundreds of thousands of acres of mostly woods because Vacationland is over 90 percent timbered. Stripped of material things that are like medication to pacify the illness symptoms on a short term basis. Replaced with rich authentic one of a kind lasting ingredients. The kind that hit all five senses on firing on all cylinders and making you feel alive in Maine where all this unspoiled space is waiting for you to tap. Unplug and recharge in Maine will clear your head and help your heart.
