Archive for the ‘Travelogues’ Category

So in Part One I went to Maine, and in Part Two I went to Canada and got blown up at.

In Part Three I return to Maine and have a terrific week with Fancy Pants, FPS (Fancy Pants' Sister), and their assortment of very large dogs. I really like those girls. They're smart and goofy and kind of ruthless; they're full of odd personality combinations. They love the outdoors and have cynical senses of humor. They love their dogs.

We left Canada and headed back over the border. At the border checkpoint, I sat in the passenger seat. Both times. Both times I passed my identification over, and both times the border guard–up in a booth on the driver's side–examined it and waved us through without looking at my face. I could have handed them some other dude's ID while smoking a joint wearing a turban and they'd have given me a gift basket.

Marshmallow Fields Forever

The thing that surprised me most this trip was that in Maine they grow marshmallows on farms. They're lined up in rows, in field after field, each one the size of a cow.

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So where we left off in Part One, I was 1) struggling with whether to make the characters in my screenplay more sympathetic, and 2) in Maine.

After a day in lobsterland, we packed up and continued on into Nova Scotia. In case you were wondering whether they have a different set of values up in the Northeast with regard to their natural environment, the following two pictures are from a highway rest stop along the way:

Every writer needs something different to write their best. I need trees, water, and wildlife. (And the occasional shoulder rub doesn't hurt.)

This was my first view of the Nova Scotia coast:

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When I visited New York City several years ago, I went to the New York Public Library for the first time. I walked up between the giant stone lions, past which the Ghostbusters in the 1980's ran screaming. (photo: Wally Gobetz, used with permission) I hopped up an old staircase and found myself in a room filled with glass cases. In one of them was a small hardbound book, with yellowish-white pages, opened to the title page printed in that distinctive, spread-out all-caps old-timey typeface (you know what I mean)–it was Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Just under the title and author was a small note, written in pencil. I don't remember the exact wording, but basically it said, "To my dear friend Ralph Waldo Emerson" and was signed "Henry David Thoreau."

What I remember most was the fact that it was written in pencil. I don't think Henry was giving much thought to how it would endure in museum displays; he was just writing a note to his buddy Ralph, who was more famous than he was.

But that's not an interesting story, so feel free to go back in time and not read it. The point is that I was thinking about Walden the last couple of weeks. Henry David Thoreau stepped into the New England woods and came out with one of the great beloved books in American history. Every writer is different, of course–some can write brilliantly in the middle of subway trains, NASCAR races, and leafblower conventions. Most of the ones I've met, though, are a little more like Thoreau and need their space. We can go anywhere to read Walden, but Thoreau had to go to the woods to write it.

So when I was invited to go to Maine and Nova Scotia for two and half weeks, I emailed all my web design clients, called a few friends to cancel plans, and left within three days. A dear friend got frustrated with me and said, "You don't have to leave to write! You can do it anywhere." We are no longer on speaking terms.

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