To cover the breadth of writings about Maine would take several websites.  A daunting task.  So we will begin humbly by placing here some of our favorite Maine quotes and short excerpts.  We encourage you to visit the attributed source and read more.  And we welcome your favorite Maine quotes and stories.  They can be short excerpts (include source info) or your own original writing.  Email them to us at info@exiles.com  .
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 Gum, Gummer, Gumming -- Relating to the gathering of spruce gum in the Maine woods to be sold to a processing firm at Five Islands.  Some choppers didn't bother, but others would collect the resinous globules from felled trees and bring out bagfuls in the spring.  There was a mite of tarnish to being a gummer;  less enterprising choppers made fun of them mildly.  Gum is also used to describe toothless eating:  "Until my new choppers come, I'm gummin' it."
John Gould from MAINE LINGO
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APRIL

"Stars deprive the night of anonymity." -- Constance Hunting

I drive northward.  Winter comes to meet
my car.  Trees that promised buds below
are now stick-thin in wind.  The sky is low,
as if darkness is its due.  A frozen lake
gives up its ice.  Black trees lie along
the water, crocodiles, tooth and tongue
on the wait, eyes alert for some mistake
of heart or mind.  Not so long ago,
no, not so long, the August sky was wide
enough for all the stars that it could show
to open eyes, and we, along the tide
the hollow moon mistook for candle-flame,
sent the dark away to find another name.
      ------ H. R. Coursen, from COMING HOME TWICE
 
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 "We once had an SBA consultant tell us we were nuts to own a marina in Maine.  We were not offended.  We knew where he was coming from.  All the government agencies we have to satisfy, the Engineers and so on and so on, would make any reasonable person think twice about running a marina or boatyard.  From the consultant's viewpoint the whole thing looked like one huge headache. 

What he didn't know about was spring!  For boat owners and those of us who try to make a living messing around with boats, spring on the waterfront in Maine has to be the very best time of the year.

Everyone is upbeat and smiling.  The weather's steadily getting warmer, the sun's staying up longer, the mud in the boatyard is drying up and the smell of bottom paint is pungent on the spring breezes.  The well-known Maine author and boat lover, Bill Caldwell, understood these feeling well and once wrote that in spring the height of achievement was to have your bottom painted and your peas planted.

Here at Marston's we don't have the space for winter storage or repairs so we miss out on some of the spring rituals and hustle and bustle that accompany fitting out and launching hundreds of boats. ...... We do have our own signs of spring and routines which mark the beginning of marina season for us.

First is the process of getting Buster, our venerable Clark forklift, started.  It's a diesel and we store it outside so we need a warm day for prepping and then firing it up.  We learned years ago that mice liked to winter over inside the dash of the tractor, so a first step is to take the dash apart and evict the mice.

"Get 'em out of there!" the foreman yells, and we douse the little critters with a blast from the freshwater hose.  They scurry down the hydraulic lines, drop to the ground and run for cover under a trash can lid.  The reward comes when we hook up the jumper battery, hit the switch and the engine rumbles to life and quickly settles down to a slow comforting idle.  The clapper on top of the exhaust pipe rattles and shakes and we smile at each other sure now that another marina season is underway."
      Exerpt from "Spring Happens at Our Marina" by Randy Randall, in SANDBOX CAMP TALES

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Christmas in Maine
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Christmas In Maine, the Original Edition, CD and Tape
 

David Mallett reads from Thoreau's THE MAINE WOODS

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