It is a memorable line from an iconic movie.
A young Iowa corn farmer hears a ghostly voice whisper: “If you build it, he will come.”
In the end, as another character talks about what people yearn for — memories of their past, their childhood; memories of place and of baseball. He then turns with a smile and says to the young farmer: “People most definitely will come, Ray.”
With that, Down East Maine is on my mind. It is a place that offers much. The first place in the country to see the sunrise also harbors a vast wilderness of land, sea and sky that is caressed by indigenous whispers of its past because of the stories the first residents continue to tell. Life here is subtle, hard, unique, but it remains a nurturing place that is my home.
I have experienced the wild beauty here on both water and land. I talk with people who live and work here, mustering a hard life made harder by distance, lack of services and an abundance of isolation. Still, Downeasters thrive here because they would have it no other way.
I also speak with this place because it speaks back to me. And its story is changing. Ask if it has changed, and undoubtedly the answer is ‘yes.’ It is a change super-charged by the pandemic; people seeking safe cover mustered into large swaths of people moving Down East. Home prices surged, and holes punched into wooded fields were quickly filled with imported expectations.
Something else that arrived are arguments and court battles over who owns what. Signs are becoming more abundant, signifying ownership that invades a natural landscape that was once open and respected by all. Constraints on fishing, on trails, on water access are more prevalent. The ability to traverse the pathways of “yesterday” — across woods, fields and beaches — is quickly evaporating.
Change is inevitable, but untamed change, change without respect to its people before and now, to a landscape that has given us so much, is regret waiting to be found. And when regret is found in the natural landscape it is often too late, the damage is done. It is in every way that Joni Mitchell song when she sings: “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone? / They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”
A friend of mine lives his life his way in a place that he does not change by being here. He and the place thrive together while contributing to one another. It is a symbiotic relationship easy to achieve when one has an open mind and open heart.
He has no television, no smartphone; he walks up to five miles in the woods behind his house most evenings; he cooks for himself and he reads a lot of books. He builds things so others can do their work and make a living all while watching his neighbor — nature — through the back window. The animals he knows well in his “cornfield” do not whisper. It is his thoughts of them that guide him to protect the place he calls home from the threat of extinction.
Can something that grows without forethought go extinct? Change without parameters or a clear understanding of what this place intends is extinction in real time. That Down East “intent,” and what many of us came here seeking, is for this place to remain more like it is than what others think it could be. Today’s Down East is calling across the blueberry barrens, lakes, streams, forests and a sweeping coastline that it is being taken for granted.
My friend and I share what we read. We admire writers who speak to yesterday while warning about tomorrow. He believes Down East is at a tipping point. With wind turbines filling the sky, solar panels replacing what were once thick forests and people fencing off property, what it used to be and remains is quickly disappearing.
Leave it to some to figure out a way to irrevocably mar what once called to all of us. Over time people either leave light fingerprints on a place, enjoying it completely as it is, or grab it with both hands and forever remake it, expecting those who have been here all their lives to accept that this now is the way life should be.
Down East is like that baseball field in Iowa that Ray eventually builds. People do come, they have to, because they realize life moves fast and what better way to briefly pause it than to go to a place that is made from their yesterdays — and get some of that life back.
This field of dreams has been here a long time. And people came. They will continue to do so as long as that yesterday remains and we do our part to inspire a thumbprint approach to life here rather than dramatic change. Because progress cloaked in unbridled change will transform this land to become a tired, crowded tomorrow every day.
My friend knows what drew him here and what can draw others. The mystique and beauty that they remember is held every day here.
What is the whisper he hears from the wooded field of Down East when he takes his daily walks? He hears: “If you leave it be, they will come.”
