Kathryn Olmstead - True North: Finding the Essence of Aroostook

The aurora borealis, also known as northern lights, at 4:03 a.m. on March 17, 2013 along the Ginn Road in Presque Isle. Photo by Paul Cyr.

Foreword

T he columns and essays in True North tease out my own fond memories of growing up in Aroostook Countylike the aromas of my mmres kitchen as she fried donuts on her wood cookstove or that time ppre rescued a skunk that stuck its head in a milk bottle.

Kathys writing captures the diversity and essence of Aroostooks people who are necessarily hardworking and self-reliant because of the remoteness and harsh winters of this far northern Maine land. Mostly the pieces portray how friendly and caring folks here are, willing to help neighbors and others in need at a moments notice.

Like many born and raised in Aroostook County, I found myself moving away for a better paying job. But I continue to consider it home, and visit and vacation there often.

Kathy did not grow up in Aroostook but established deep roots after moving there in the mid-seventies. She wasnt scared away by the harsh winters and hardscrabble conditions, but rather embraced them, as youll read when she writes about having to ski from the road to her home or describes the wonderful northern lights she viewed from
her outhouse.

I first met Kathy in the late nineties when she was an associate professor of journalism at the University of Maine in Orono and that institutions liaison to the Maine Press Association (MPA). I was an editor at the Bangor Daily News and president of the MPA board of directors when we collaborated to read student essays and select winners of MPA journalism scholarships.

We hit it off, in part because of our County connections, and I have considered her a friend ever since. I also enjoyed her work with Echoes magazine and when the Bangor Daily News was looking for ways to boost circulation in Aroostook in 2010, I approached her to write a column for the Bangor Daily News with the caveat that she write about anything she liked as long as it had to do with The County. Kathy readily agreed.

For the next seven years, I thoroughly enjoyed her submissions highlighting the people, places, and events that make Aroostook so special. I also loved the perspective that she brought, looking at the region with such fresh and curious eyes.

True North shares a diverse selection of Kathys best columns as well as some of her gems from Echoes . It is a worthy grouping that paints portraits of County natives from astronaut Jessica Meir to homemaker Ethel Carlson, illustrates the spirit of communities from Allagash to Houlton, and shares in the joy of celebrations from the Acadian Festival to Midsommar.

Reading about moose in the yard, the luminescent night sky, and dealing with where to put all that snow that comes every winter will make many of us reminisce. And while True North will inspire pride in those of us who grew up in this region, it also surely will capture the hearts of readers from away.

Rick Levasseur

Former Editor, Bangor Daily News

October 2020

Authors Note
True North: A Fixed Point in a Spinning World

A roostook County is not just a place in Northern Maine. It is symbolic of rural places throughout the nation that retain the vanishing qualities of life many people long for in todays world. The pace is slow, nature is close, the beauty is breathtaking, and the people are authentic.

When I first moved to Westmanland, Maine, from New Hampshire in 1974, I was impressed by the number of people who had returned to Aroostook County after living elsewhere. As a reporter for Caribous weekly newspaper, I pursued my curiosity about this phenomenon by interviewing these returnees for a column called They Came Back. Simultaneously, I worked with young people in Maines Swedish Colony (New Sweden, Stockholm, Westmanland, and Woodland) to interview elders in their communities and publish three small books about their cultural heritage titled Silver Birches . These two projects began years of writing and encouraging others to write about the place in Northern Maine they called home.

I maintained my home and ties in the county after joining the journalism faculty at the University of Maine in 1984. Those ties strengthened in 1988, when Gordon Hammond persuaded me to commute weekly and join him in a publishing venture: Echoes a quarterly magazine portraying the beauty and culture of Aroostook. We worked together until 1995 and I continued producing the magazine from my home in Caribou until 2017. After I retired from teaching in 2009, I also wrote a bi-weekly column for the Bangor Daily News about life and people in Aroostook County.

True North contains columns from both publications, for readers who can only imagine a place like Aroostook and for those who savor memories of having lived or visited there. As a transplant, originally from Michigan, I share my introductions to rural life and wildlife, in an attempt to reveal the universal in the particularthe night sky and ice-out, genuine people and their cultural roots, and an intimacy with nature in every season.

Grouped under the headings: Typically Aroostook, Living with Wildlife, High on the Land, Deep Roots, and County People, the essays are impressionistic, reportorial, and often humorous, including a Bangor Daily News column on garden slugs that inspired a limerick on National Public Radios Wait, Wait, Dont Tell Me. Friends all over the country let me know they had heard it.