Small towns in Maine, better coronavirus recovery chances.
Social distancing is easier in small towns in Maine because let’s face it. Just less people populated vast and sparsely inhabited Maine. Too many people that crowd together and no where to go is COVID19’s best scenario. It’s why cities are hardest hit and can not handle the high virus cases. Too many people makes it like living in a giant petri dish in populated areas. Maine is vast, uncrowded, more wildlife than people.
But survival, starting with meeting your basic needs and moving out from there.
Keep it simple living in small town Maine is already in place. Not wall to wall people to tip toe around or avoid. To begin with, living high on the hog and complicated or expensive lifestyles is not small town Maine. It is not regressive to strive for a cottage or farmstead existence but enriching and highly rewarding.
Your kids benefit too from more chores and no other choice but pitching in to be a vital part of the family.
Learning new skills and responsibilities over just camp out on the couch. And then veg out on a device to deal with boredom of just not enough to do for the rest of the day and night.
What coronavirus does show in small towns in Maine is how much we all care about each other.
Because of the strong connection of small town Maine living, your concerns are much more on the local level.
We watch the news World wide and collected off the small towns in Maine local grapevine.
Feel badly for heavily hit coronavirus population centers and makes all of us sick to our stomachs, helpless for them.
But we spring into action and reach out to help those locally who we do know and care about daily. To help make a difference in their lives.
The disabled, elderly members of the small Maine town community are on our minds daily.
Meals on wheels providers check in to add the social interaction at a safe protected distance. The phone calls to see what they need and pitching it up for them at the local grocery store outlets happens. You would be surprised what happens behind the scenes in small towns in Maine with or without a COVID19 pandemic case swell.
I think the coronavirus reminds us of how lucky we really are living in small towns around Maine. Yes we struggle for economic independence and fight something fierce to protect local jobs. Keeping the money spent locally and turning over six to seven times is a beautiful thing. But when the small town provider of goods or services does not have enough volume to stay out of the red ink. Or there is not local provider and you are forced to go online if no other options exist in the region out of your small Maine town.
There is the challenge to retool and reinvent in the small Maine town’s economy.
Opportunities are opening up as small town Maine living is seen as a very viable option. Safe, easier to social distance and getting back to basics. First, everything that you need and then easy does it moving on to what you think you need. As people’s standard of living increases, their spending habits and the more more more gotta have this and that complicated their lives. Creating the need for even more of something they may or may not have really needed. When the money to fuel the complicated living dries up or gets interrupted, there’s the rub.
Only in times like a coronavirus or an economic downturn is the necessary change going to happen because you have no other choice.
Can not continue on the same expensive course and that’s where what about if we relocated, moved to Maine thoughts intensify in the brain. Native local Mainers are masters at creative work arounds when bumps in the roadway of life show up and they do. A lot. Lessons learned from mistakes or coping with hardships early in life benefit the rest of how things play out in a Mainer’s life. Has COVID19 caused you to consider what if you lived in a small town in Maine?
A person’s opinion of small town living changes 180 degrees when instead of itching to leave, you long to return.
If you were raised in a small Maine town, you know what it is like. What is taken for granted and missing in a populated area living where you lose the small town living approach.
Have an oldest daughter, her husband, new grandson living in a “pod” next door on a Maine lake. I get her perspective on what living in Boston was like during the early stages and now during the coronavirus. Small town and city living are also part of the contrast because by nature just the number of people in an area dictates the way things are gonna roll or not.
What you need and what you want and the price you pay for anything in time, money, sacrifice.
In my job I hear the statement a lot. “Something is missing in my life”. Which could mean something is lacking in my life at this point. Maybe what you needed before you started a family is causing the hole of what’s missing for your kids. In a small Maine town, the village raises the kids, not just Mom and Dad.
Or the “been there, done that” could be I chased the American dollar and achieved an income to support this lifestyle that was too high a price to pay. Or took away time I should have been living life gleaning small pleasures and not the pie in the sky high life. What do you need in your life? You know the answer if you can stop and catch your breath long enough to reflect and ponder. Not what marketing says you need and can not live without.
Living your own life starts by not being so concerned how others live theirs. Social media look at me is not always accurate and who has time to live their life externally through others anyway ? Small town living in Maine, the way life should be.
All I know is small town country living creates the stage for everything you need. The real foundation and nothing artificial. As I hunt and peck this blog post this Sunday morning, I look out over a bottle like surface Maine lake. My daughter and I will enjoy a freshly ground coffee bean cup of Joe in a few minutes. Talking about the new grandson.
A pair of boys just cruised by with fishing rods and checking out the best deepest spots for angling for fish this morning. Six lake loons are about 200 feet off shore and circling, cooing, socializing closer than six feet spacing. It is sunny, comfortable, not hot and muggy. I feel lucky to live in Maine not where there are so many people to motor or walk around or any crime to worry about round the clock.
The walk to the lake landing happens after sampling a hot coffee, some sliced mangos, two banana packages.
Along the way a stop to talk from one ditch to the other on Chickadee Lane. The couple live full time four lake lots down and the wife was my oldest daughter’s first grade teacher. We share where all the kids of each family are and what the grandchild count is up to now.
After the stop, we trudge on and it is learned Mrs. Austin thirty plus years ago was one of my daughter’s favorite teachers.
I ask why and she recalls her honor reward system. There was money involved, the fake in school kind. A store set up with items to purchase with the “money” earned for good behavior, academic excellence or just staying caught up with school work. Small towns in Maine educators have lots of common sense and make sure the students
My daughter remembers buying a book with her reward money and it was a book written from the big bad wolf’s perspective in the Little Red Riding Hood classic with a twist.
Mrs. Austin also let the classroom kids raise ducklings. Two of them when the school year was ending for summer break were relocated to her Grandfather’s farm out on US RT 2. A farm pond introduction ceremony was a big deal.
The two ducks, Chocolate and Butterscotch seemed happy paddling around the pond.
Then disappeared. We hope to more private surroundings away from US RT 2. But the fear the pair became a fox’s chicken dinner is hard to shake when you are a first grade school girl growing up in a small Maine town.
The walk resumes, the distinctive patented sound of a motorcycle chugging along becomes louder. The rider in leather slows, raises his left hand and smiles. It’s Jimmy Ritchie who lives up the lake. He and Lou Ann his wife used to live across from my parent’s Maine farm and were close to mom and dad. Helping them with new born Durham baby calf births during the coldest days of the year. Naming them, feeding them and part of the small population surrounding us in Northern Maine.
Living in Northern Maine means the perk of being close to Canada.
No, it is not dangerous being this close to New Brunswick or Quebec Canada. Taking trips to Atlantic Canada are common to PEI and Halifax, Nova Scotia for example when the International boundary opens up again. Maine residents are related to our Canadian neighbors and both sides feel lucky the other is there for cross border travel. The dollar and loonie difference helps the trade too.
It is cheaper to live in small towns in Maine in many ways beyond the just price of real estate.
And if you learn the joy of raising some or most of your own food. If you heat with wood or twist the dial when oil prices are low to the ground and stay frugal. Maine can be a wonderful backdrop for your life. Living careful rewarding lives communing with nature that is everywhere you look. Awareness increases, protection of the environment around us becomes more important and that good stewardship attitude is passed down to the next generation. The Maine real estate prices are cheaper and you can own not mortgage your low cost properties.
Cities are great because they have lots of people to support many endeavors.
More variety of food, sports, entertainment… the paid for kind. That’s why native full time Mainers love to head down to Bean Town for a Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics game or theater show, music concert, etc. But can not wait to cross back over the big green bridge on the southern end of Maine. Our locals can create lots of home grown food, fun and social distant fellowship.
More second homes than any other state … (ripping envelope opens sound) Survey says “Maine”.
That’s Maine. And lots of those cottage owners on a Maine lake are tooling up with insulation, Internet connections and make the slide from city to waterfront vacation cottage. Telecommuting from a Maine lake instead of the city setting is underway with a fire in their belly. Thanks for reading our small towns in Maine blog post highlighting better coronavirus survival chances. Lots of activity from folks jammed in a city trying to trade it all in for a safe spaced place like Maine.
