The center of Jack McMorrow’s universe

July 27th, 2009

The center of Jack McMorrow’s universe

I’ve been down south (in Maine) a lot of late, hanging with Brandon Blake in Portland. The big (well, maybe medium-sized) city is great, but something there is about Waldo County …

This is where my buddy Jack McMorrow lives, on a back road in the little town of Prosperity, a stretch of woods away from his friend Clair. Roxanne lives there, and in DAMAGED GOODS (February 2010) their daughter Sophie, too. Prosperity is a fictional town, located somewhere between Freedom and Liberty (see map in the link), but Waldo County is a real and magical place.

I say this having just crossed the county last week, driving first east, then west. It was a sunny afternoon, the first in weeks, and as I drove up Knox Ridge, the hayfields in the distance showed like patches on a hilly quilt. Tractors were plying the fields like draggers, cutting hay, fluffing it, shaping it into rows for bailers. On some fields, tractors were towing chippers that grind the hay into silage. The silage flowed out of big metal shoots into the backs of trucks, like snow from snow throwers. Where the hay hadn’t been cut, the tops had gone to seed, giving the green fields a tawny brown tint, the color of a lion hiding in the grass.

There are villages in this stretch of Waldo County, too, some perched on the edge of streams where sawmills once stood. Others just clusters of houses at crossroads, like people waiting for the bus. There are no buses here that I’ve seen, except in Belfast, the big city on the coast.

The part of Waldo County that holds sway over Jack and me is the part that is far enough from the coast to have missed the boom that saw big houses popping up on ridges like mushrooms on logs. In this part of the county, there’s no real bust, either. Life goes on, impervious to the whims of novelty or fashion. The only external forces that have much effect on the people on these back roads are weather related. A stretch of summer rain that keeps the hay in the fields. A big snow that keeps the back roads socked in for a day. The wildfire of changing foliage that sweeps over the hills every autumn. The mist that hangs heavy along the ridges after a summer rain.

Jack likes it here because he feels that, in an odd way, he discovered the place. This is silly, of course. There have been people living on these hills and in these valleys for hundreds of years. They didn’t need Jack McMorrow to validate them. They don’t need me, either, driving through, marveling at the mystery of the place.

But part of the lifeblood of this part of Waldo County is the resupply of people who understand that there is something special about the place. Its natural beauty; its serene isolation from the stuff that occupies too much of our lives. Its rugged independence and stoicism. People come here and, like Jack and me, feel something come over them. And like Jack, sometimes they stay.

(dynamically generated list)

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Jack McMorrow, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Mary Catherine says:

July 31, 2009 at 1:25 pm

That is a beautiful description of this land which so inspires you. Please bring us more of the people who call such a place home. Simplicity and serenity may lull an observer into overlooking the complexity that defines all of us. Tell us more about real lives behind the fields and front porches. You certainly have the talent to do that!