Guest Blogger: Peter Wagner

Peter Wagner's returned from Maine and is preparing for his year-long trip to Thailand, which is only a few weeks away. His latest post takes us to Maine's coast to observe the annual Lobster Boat Races, as well as a nearby island where he ran a camp by day and slept in a boat at night. The "real world" keeps revealing things to Peter not taught at the University of Michigan, and what's ahead--working in Thailand and with the Peace Corps--will definitely school him some more.  


The Maine Difference

Tonight I'm sleeping on a boat. Not because I chose to or because it's what I wanted, but because I have to. It was either this or a tent in Mosquitoville, U.S.A.

Boat, please.

As I should have stated in my previous post, before my sojourn into Thailand I'm spending just over a fortnight on an island off Maine's coast. It's a well-thrown stone's distance from Acadia National Park, and my duties on this island are house sitter, camp counselor, master dish-washer, and fledgling seaman. In short, being whatever the family I'm staying with needs me to be. And with no electricity or modern appliances, my duties range immensely. 

But that's not wholly what I'm here to write about. This blog is about Ann Arbor, its happenings, people, and deep diversity. It's where I spent my two happiest collegiate years, and would be a place I'd proudly call home should my life's path ever lead me back.

I vividly remember seeing a Wolfman playing violin on street corners much more tenderly than the fierce grin of his mask. Children ran as only kids run across the Diag's grassed sections, smiles almost too big for their faces. The thick smell of BTB at three in the morning…ah, college.

Yes, I remember that and much more from my two years at the good ol' Maize and Blue, and for all it prepared me for, this island experience wasn't in any curriculum. Can you decipher "Aye doo moor rah dem lobstaahs, pees"? That's New Englander for "Hey, two more of those lobsters, please." How about "Rig the boatswains off boomers to dunk him into the drink"? That's boating for "Hang the boatswain's chair onto the boom's main rope so we can dunk people into the ocean." Final test: in a headwind, tacking as best you can, do you go out and starboard and reef the sails to get a few knots to head into harbor, or keep the jib and main taught and tough it out?

Are you shrugging your shoulders, too? Well, this is the talk of the nautically literate in Stonington, Maine, and as far as I can tell that's everyone but me.


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Look in the Deer Island Gazette (the local newspaper) and flip to the section featuring high schoolers' future plans. You'll see some going to nearby community colleges, fewer into larger Maine universities, clusters into various armed services, but the preponderance have as their future plans: work.

The family tradition running generations thick at Michigan finds its analogue here among lobster boats bobbing across a slim stretch of Atlantic. I see the lobstermen every time I take the boat into town as they weigh the day's catch. They wave. I wave. Their skin seems leather-thick, with a deep olive tone; mine's lobster-red from only a few days' sun. They breathe in the brine with vigor and I puzzle at the odd, salty decayed scent. Father and son take their boat out before the sun greets them, and return heavier with salt-crusted slickers. Their trusty sea steeds?Sea of Change; Mrs. Lucy; Barnacles Bedamned; Lucky Catch?give one last weary chug before their day is done.


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And so it seems the bustling town of AA, Wolfman among the tens of thousands of others, has been replaced with one of 5,000. Everywhere I see flyers asking to "buy local, keep local jobs." Nobody wants big business; Mom and Pop shops rule supreme. Even at the height of tourism season (which is happening at this very moment) the only thing that changes are store hours. Streets aren't tidied up. No concerts in the park. Locals don't seem affected by all these oglers at their wharfs, who seem to be getting glimpses of one of the last outcrops of America seemingly untouched in this past century. There's not even a traffic light to help keep the herds of tourists in check. All that's here is a stop sign.

The thing halted me earlier today. Nobody was there on the other three sides. I continued to where our boat was docked, and a lobsterman gave us twenty of his haul at a price too low to even post here. Then the ten-minute ride to the island. Then cook the lobster for a group of nineteen.

Hence why I'm on a boat: all the beds are full. Preference on this island is given to family before hired help. Maybe that's the only similarity I've found linking me to my former Michigan home. But one thing I know that is wholly new is leaping from a boat's bow, right off its clear. I arc outward toward the, shall I say, Atlantic's refreshing cold. The sun says hello to me and this state well before all our others. Not a bad way to start each day.

Perhaps that's the Maine Difference I'm here to report, perhaps it's not. But for now I need to try and catch some shut-eye; sleeping on a boat will take some getting used to.