jackets for layering

Mens open plaid shirt jacket from Johnson Woolen Mills, Vermont.

 Womens fleece hooded jacket with Native American print.

his & hers

1950s Melton hunting coat with back game pouch
Unlabeled hand knit sweater with loons

the county

After two years of living in Maine, I finally ventured to parts far inland and north that I have been eager to explore. Aroostook County, or simply The County, is (according to the tourist board) larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined and the largest county east of the Mississippi. Hugging the Canadian border - but fully embraced by international cell phone charges - I saw a good chunk of the populated County, although little relative to the expanse of the Great North Woods. Aroostook's two industries are visible while on the road, passing vast rolling potato fields and being passed by huge trucks carrying lumber. All the while being kept company by a mix of country music and French radio because otherwise, there is often not another soul around. 

It was a mission that not only yielded a bounty of true and tested work wear, but afforded many big views and small town moments. As much as I love the thrill of the search, I also appreciate learning about a place through that lens. Stumbling across a thrift shop tucked away in a hardware store, a town abuzz for 'half-off day' at the church's basement shop which is also serving up free coffee and donuts, the kind old gentleman watching his wife's shop who, on the sixth attempt, is able to ring me up on the new credit card system. I'm pretty sure I am considered 'from away' since I live in the Other Maine, coastal Maine. I'm told I just missed the potato blossoms which I can imagine enliven those hills that are now dug up and put to bed for the winter. I'll also have to return to the dauntingly huge Baxter State Park, where I arrived on the first day of its winter closing. I drove through the open gate and around in Katahdin's shadow, but without a ranger or map to be found, spontaneity-turned-underpreparedness resulted in little hiking. 

I returned to my own small town, my new midcoast home, where the Main Street was newly decorated with Christmas lights that brightened the afternoon and pitch black sky. Friends who were raised here say they've never travelled those parts. Maine intrigues me but it's becoming more familiar, and with that it seems more like home.