“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

To escape the tourists and the leaf peepers in Acadia National Park, I headed west and then southwest to the tiny rural town of Brooklin, Maine and it’s tiny cemetery. I was here to visit another writer and this was a writer that is close to my heart. He instills a lifelong love of reading in many 3rd graders around the world. He has written books that are still read by thousands to this day. I had read his books in my youth and loved them.

When I arrived, after an hours drive from Acadia, after an unsuccessful attempt to sketch Bass Head Light, I saw the Brooklin Cemetery on the left, across the street from the white church. I got out and searched the headstones. I didn’t know where the grave was located but I was going to search until I found the tombstone I was looking for.

At the end of the cemetery, under an oak that had not yet put on it’s autumnal vestments, were two identically shaped dark tombstones. The one on the left was Katharine Sergeant White. The stone on the right was the one I was looking for. The name read: Elwyn Brooks White 1899-1985.

The headstone was very plain and without any words beyond his name and dates, which seemed odd for a writer’s grave. The only sign that this was a person of note was the two rocks and penny that rested on the top the marker’s arch. In the lower corner, there was a spider’s web attached from the gravestone and the flowers, it was also without words and I resisted the urge to clear the web from the stone, leaving it untidy. After all this could be Charlotte’s web.

The White’s headstones in the background and the headstone with “Wilbur” in the foreground. Uncanny.

Elwyn Brooks White, known to his many readers as E. B. White, spent 48 years his life in this part of coastal Maine. He is known for the writer manual The Elements of Style and two children’s books: Stuart Little and his masterpiece, Charlotte’s Web.

Andy now rests next to his wife, who died eight years earlier. White’s fear of crowds meant that he did not attend his wife’s funeral.

In 1933, White, who was known to his friends and family as Andy, bought a farm in coastal Maine on Allen Cove, just south of Acadia National Park, in the town of North Brooklin. White and his wife, Katherine, who was The New Yorker’s first fiction editor, spent much of their time at the farm both farming and writing.

The farm, barn, and farm animals became the inspiration for his greatest work. He wrote Charlotte’s Web here and in the boathouse where he often wrote with a view of the Atlantic and the highest point in Acadia National Park, Cadillac Mountain.

White relished his role as a gentleman farmer and he was shy and shunned his ever growing fame. When his wife Katherine died in 1977, he he did not attend her private burial service at Brooklin Cemetery. As Michael Sims noted in his wonderful book, The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic:

 Knowing Andy’s aversion to public events, no one had been surprised or upset. Now his legendary fear of crowds became part of his own memorial service. “If Andy White could be with us today,” Roger Angell (his stepson) said to the assembled family, “he would not be with us today.”

One touching episode that happened towards the end of White’s life, when he was either suffering dementia. His son Joe, would read to him from his own books and essays. He would often get confused and not remember who wrote the words. Sims writes of Andy:

. . .he would stir and look at Joe and ask again who wrote what he had just read to him.

“You did, Dad.”

Andy would think about this odd fact for a moment and sometimes murmur, “Not bad.”

I stood before the stone and did a quick sketch. Before I headed back to the car I took out a penny from my pocket and placed it on the tombstone. “Thank you”, I said.

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”

Last two sentences of Charlotte’s Web

-Elwyn Brooks White

“Abruptly he started the car and put it in gear and drove away, trying not to look back. And of course he did, and of course the porch was empty. They had gone back inside. It was as if the Overlook had swallowed them.”

-The Shining

Stephen King

On my way out to Acadia National Park from New Hampshire, I made a little detour to Bangor, Maine. With a population of 33, 039, it is Maine’s second largest city, losing out to Portland (population 67,067).

The landmark I wanted to visit was just off the interstate on a tree lined residential neighborhood. The houses that were set back from West Broadway were large, speaking of the wealth that once created these mansions, most of them built by lumber barons, the  once key industry of this area.

I was here to see the house of a millionaire that made his name in paper goods. Both writing paper and printing paper. All trees at one point, so a lumber baron of a different nature.

As I drove up, there were already eight people standing in front of this Maine landmark. They seemed to be holding guidebooks in their hands, or sometimes clutched them between armpit and arm as they took pictures of the house. All were smiling and excited to be there. One couple had come all the way from Italy.

But these were not guidebooks they were holding but the paper products that the owner produced. Not lumber, or furniture or boats but books. Just books. And this literature major loves books!

This was the house of King, author Stephen King. He is one of the most popular and prolific writers of the last 40 years. He has sold over 350 million copies of his books! Many of his books have been made into popular films including Carrie, The Shining, Stand By Me, and The Shashank Redemption, to name a few.

This was the best time to visit the King of Horror’s house in the autumn, the time of the dying of the leave as October paced towards All Hallow’s Eve.

Happy Halloween!

A refuge from the masses of one the the East Coast’s most populated National Parks, especially with fall foliage at it’s peak, was my rented cottage, 30 minutes away in Lamoine. The cozy dwelling is what we would call a cabin on the west coast. And the “Up Back Cottage” certainly made me feel like one of the East Coast “rusticators”, albeit on a much smaller scale.

All of the lumber used to construct the cottage was milled from trees on site, leaving the exposed beams and paneling with a rugged roughness.

Downstairs was a framed in porch which was not used much considering the fall temps creeping into winter.  The living room was  furnished with a cozy couch, a reading light, and was stocked with books. A few favorites:  Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, You Need Help, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Shultz, Abolition Democracy by Angela Davis (I am a Slug after all), and The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. The kitchen was fully stocked and fitted with a four-burner, gas range which was perfect for cooking and staying healthy.

The bedroom was in a loft, accessible by a ladder. Under the A-framed roof, windows filled the space with light, setting nature’s alarm clock. Get up and get out and see the world! (And to find parking at any of Acadia’s most popular sights.)

If there is one thing that stood out in the “Up Back Cabin” it was it’s only source of heat. I was the last guest of the season. Beyond October, you have colder temperatures, snow, and then the long Maine winter. The wood burning stove was great companion to my stay.

A sketch of the Up Back Cottage in Lamoine. The is a true cottage, unlike the mansions of millionaires in Bar Harbor which where hyperbolically called “cottages”. This is the real thing.

Probably the most artistic entry I’ve ever made in an Airbnb guestbook. This dwelling really inspired me! 

There are three animals that I saw on license plates, advertising, stickers, postcards, posters, and signage throughout my time in New England. In fact you could see all three represented on different license plates in Maine. They are: the common loon, black-capped chickadee, and moose.

I had seen the common loon many times before because they spend their winters in the near shore oceans or harbors on both coasts. At this time they are sporting their drab winter plumage and not their iconic black and white checkered patterned breeding plumage which the loons in New England are always represented wearing . The density of loon representations was at critical mass in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. It seemed like every store, inn and bed and breakfast that was anywhere near a lake, had a loon on their sign.

I had only seen loons on the ocean and never on a northern lake. On our Squam Lake pontoon boat tour we saw two small rafts of loons, the adult where still in their stylish breeding plumage. Soon the birds would be leaving the lake as the temperature got colder and the lake begin to freeze over.

Exhibit A, yet another loon sign!

Another bird that I saw on many signs and license plates, especially in Maine was the common black-capped chickadee (Maine’s State Bird). I heard this bird’s well known “chick-a-dee-dee” call in both town and county. In fact the chickadees call was one of the most common calls I heard throughout my trip, except for perhaps the blue jay.

The black-capped chickadee license plate was the most common in Maine.

The last iconic animal of the Northeast is Maine’s official mammal, the moose. This large deer, in fact the world’s largest deer, appeared on more and more advertising, stickers, postcards, posters, and signage the further north I travelled.

Most visitors to Maine only see a moose on a t-shirt or bumper sticker. To see a real, living moose you have to wake up early and travel north as I did to Baxter State Park (More about this in another post).

New Hampshire loves the moose too but I did not see any at Squam Lake.

It was really tough researching this post. This is how you celebrate seeing a moose in the wild!