National Geographic Directions

Novelist and biographer Geoffrey Wolff has spent many summers in Maine - sailing its coastal waters, climbing its rocky peaks, and communing with its natives. Now, with the voice of a passionate insider, he brings readers into the heart of this striking region and explains what makes it unique. Starting with a gripping tale about being lost offshore in the fog with inadequate navigational aids, Wolff goes on to describe the coast's geological history and discovery by Europeans. He then turns a keen eye towards Mainers, their mores and peculiarities, and to the summer rusticators who for generations have invaded the stunning waterfronts. A section on boat building celebrates the extraordinary rescue of Maine's foremost craft; another on lobsters tells the rich story of the custom, taste, commerce, environmental conflict, and scientific mystery surrounding these critical crustaceans. Here is a true feast - travel literature at its best. "Even after years of summering in Maine, Geoffrey Wolff is still "from away, " as he wryly acknowledges in this affectionate appreciation of the rock-bound, often fog-shrouded stretch of shoreline that runs from Portland to the Schoodic Peninsula. In the reckoning of a genuine Down Easter, it can take a generation or more to become a true Mainiac; less a state and more of a state of mind, it's a place as famous for its laconic Yankee wit as for its lobster, at once wary, wily, and welcoming in its attitude toward outsiders." "Anyone who already knows coastal Maine will nod in amused recognition at Wolff's engrossing sketch of this beautiful part of New England; those who have yet to discover it will find his book a wonderful introduction. Interweaving history and anecdote with his own experience, he captures the salty flavor of seaside towns where blue-collar fishermen rub shoulders with yachtsmen - and occasionally collide with them, not always by accident. He evokes the rugged insularity of tiny Atlantic islands like Matinicus and the seasonal chic of resorts like Mount Desert, where well-heeled "rusticators" spend their summers in twenty-bedroom "cottages."" "A sailor himself, Wolff celebrates the harbors, reaches, and coves of a cruising ground that's among the world's finest, and summons the maritime spirit of a region whose yards once dominated American shipbuilding, a tradition still observed both by craftsmen who preserve the art of wooden boatbuilding and by the crews of the Bath Iron Works, which outfits some of our Navy's most advanced ships. He also introduces such Mainers as the canny 19th-century entrepreneur whose business cutting ice from the frozen Kennebec River became a lucrative global industry."--Jacket Novelist and biographer Geoffrey Wolff has spent many summers in Maine-sailing its coastal waters, climbing its rocky peaks, and communing with its natives. Now, with the voice of a passionate insider, he brings readers into the heart of this striking region and explains what makes it unique. Starting with a gripping tale about being lost offshore in the fog with inadequate navigational aids, Wolff goes on to describe the coast’s geological history and discovery by Europeans. He then turns a keen eye towards Mainers, their mores and peculiarities, and to the summer rusticators who for generations have invaded the stunning waterfronts. A section on boat building celebrates the extraordinary rescue of Maine’s foremost craft; another on lobsters tells the rich story of the custom, taste, commerce, environmental conflict, and scientific mystery surrounding these critical crustaceans. Here is a true feast-travel literature at its best.