Maine: ‘Almost hallucinatory’

Blue Hill, Maine, from Parker Point.

“I think of those first five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me…. I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens.’’

 – E.B. White (1899-1985), American writer

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“Should fate unkind
send us to roam,
The scent of the fragrant pines,
the tang of the salty sea
Will call us home.’’

— From “State of Maine,’’ the state’s official song

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“The beauty of Maine is such that you can’t really see it clearly while you live there. But now that I’ve moved away, with each return it all becomes almost hallucinatory: the dark blue water, the rocky coast with occasional flashes of white sand, the jasper stone beaches along the coast, the fire and fir forests somehow vivid in their stillness.”

 — Alexander Chee ( born 1967) novelist

Summer as verb

View of   summer houses in Hampton Bays, on Long Island

— Photo by Masterchief1307 

“When I left the State of Maine for college, I met my first really rich friends, and I discovered summer could be a verb.’’

— Alexander Chee (born 1967 in Rhode lsland but spent much of his youth in Maine), novelist, poet and nonfiction writer. He now teaches at Dartmouth College.