Maine in 2040: Can You Imagine It?
Instead of relying solely on models and charts, what if we tried to visualize just how different our lives might be in a climate-altered Maine two decades hence? What follows is an imaginative portrait...
Category: Sustainable Practices
Making Peace with Insects
Until this year, June was arguably my favorite month – with its luxuriously long days, beach time, succulent strawberries and delectable snap peas. But this June brought trench warfare, forcing me to combat squadrons...
Speaking of Climate
“It’s not climate change – it’s everything change.” – Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist and poet, in a 2015 essay Rapid. Far-reaching. Unprecedented. When international scientists wrote last fall in a U.N. report of the...
Facing a Reckoning
Ironies, like onions, come in layers and can make you cry. As I stared at a graphic showing an outline of Maine symbolically shifting down the East Coast (see bottom figure), I had an...
Caught in a Jam: Facing Overtourism
Traffic congestion at Acadia National Park. Photo courtesy of Friends of Acadia. Overtourism, a new term for a growing global phenomenon, captures how popular destinations can become overrun and degraded, diminishing both visitor...
Taking a Bird’s-eye View
On Mother’s Day, I received a surprise gift. In the peach tree just outside our kitchen, an eastern bluebird and Baltimore oriole alighted simultaneously. It was approaching dusk, and the departing sun lit up...
Dimming the Lights
A boundless dome of darkness overhead – lit only by crystalline stars – is one of Maine’s most imperiled natural assets. The Milky Way visible above Acadia National Park cannot be seen with the...
Reviving the Lost Art of Looking Ahead
The Guy Gannett House in Augusta is a museum now, but I still think of it as the policy percolator it once was, brewing up fresh ideas. In its days as the Maine State...
