Maine US Route 1: Kittery to Fort Kent

These photos are from a series I did in 4 days in March of 2004, during my second semester as a student at the University of Maine in Orono. It was bitterly cold, and I covered about 250 miles a day, stopping at night to stay in homes of friends along the way. Except for the fourth night, which I spent in my car in Mars Hill. It dropped to about 15 degrees, not accounting for a bitter arctic wind. I bought a sleeping bag from Wal-Mart, and returned it the next morning.

My first day started in Portsmouth New Hampshire around 6 in the morning. I crossed the bridge in to Kittery, took some photos, and continued driving. I recall getting pulled over once that day, for a parking permit that looked to the cop like an expired inspection sticker. Later, I got pulled over for the same reason, and decided to take the permit off my rearview mirror. In Portland, I photographed the scrap yard by the bridge, which I now pass nearly every day on my way to class. I photographed graffiti on the side of Dogfish Cafe, a restaurant I have yet to eat at, but have heard is very good. I photographed a wide view of Portland's East End, which I didn't know was called that at the time. Five months later, when I moved to Portland, that would be the neighborhood I lived in. I took several pictures in Portland Public Market, which sadly closed their doors in 2006. Some of the businesses that were located there are now in what used to be an army surplus store in Monument Square. I photographed a couple views along Back Bay. A little under three years later, I would walk that same path as a volunteer photographer for the March of Dimes. I photographed the largest globe in the world, in DeLorme's building in Freeport. I photographed LL Bean's 24 hour outlet store. I spent my first night in Freeport, with the family of a friend of mine whom I have since lost touch with.

 

My second day covered from Freeport up through Bath, and little tiny towns whose names I do not remember. I photographed the famous Moody's Diner. Two summers later, I would find myself eating there several times when I worked at a summer camp nearby. I photographed Montsweag roadhouse. Three years later, I went there with my girlfriend and her sister to see a friend of theirs and his band play there. I photographed a bunch of ducks, and a bunch of boats, some colorful cottages, run-down homes, and a couple old churches. I photographed a junkyard with a sign reading "DO NOT LEAVE any Trash ON THIS PROPERTY". I found a tattered flag in the broken window of a weather beaten shack, and of course, I photographed that. That night, I stayed at the remote home of a childhood friend, whose parents own a blueberry barren where my parents and myself had spent several summers in my youth picking blueberries. Years later, we went to high school together in Limestone, which is another town I passed through, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

Day three-I went all the way from Cherryfield to Mars Hill, and didn't find much of anything to photograph. I photographed a junkyard by the side of the road, some snow covered fields, an abandoned church, and some signs on Main Street in Mars Hill. That was the night I spent in the 'borrowed' sleeping bag. I worried vaguely about being rudely awakened by a police officer, then remembered that Mars Hill probably isn't big enough to have a police officer. The next day, I got pulled over by Border Patrol after stopping to make a call on my cell phone, realizing I didn't have enough signal, then stopping again at the top of the hill. Apparently I looked suspicious. I decided against telling the officer that I was taking reconnaissance of Moose for Al Queida's next attack, which will involve suicide bombing moose running through small town streets.

 

On my fourth and final day, I traveled from Mars Hill to Fort Kent, and then went home via Route 11-a much more direct route through the center, rather than the edge, of the state. I stopped by to visit my high school statistics teacher in Elle Maine, where he owns an antique store. His wife, who was 'dorm mother' at the high school, wasn't there-she was visiting her son (another high school friend I haven't kept in touch with) in Bar Harbor. That day, I photographed some more storefronts, mostly in Madawaska-a town that looks like it's straight out of an old Western movie, minus the neon orange pimped out ride parked on the street. Then I photographed the sign that marks the end or beginning of Route 1, depending on which way you're going, and headed home. A couple weeks after I got home, my girlfriend said we needed a break, and moved out. Five months later, I moved to Portland.

 

 

Going through these photos almost exactly four years after they were taken is interesting as an exercise in self-exploration, and in memory. Although the dates on some of the events that these pictures remind me of may be off, they still trigger a sequence of events that I can remember with very good clarity, even though the photos do not directly relate to those events. For example, I remember looking up at the stars the night I spent in Cherryfield, miles from any source of light. I remember the girl I had a brief, not very serious fling with after my girlfriend moved out, who ended up dating my new roommate. These photos also have the ability to trigger later memories with the same scenery. I remember the first time I ever drank, with some friends in a cabin near Mount Katahdin, and sitting in a booth at Moodies Diner with three other camp counselors.

 

I was also struck by the naive way in which I approached these scenes. In many ways, what I was looking at was very new and exciting, even though I had just turned 20 a month prior. Part of this naivety came from my inexperience with photography-I had just spent nearly $2000 on a new digital SLR camera just a month before the trip, and the camera was almost certainly more than I needed-I had only really gotten interested in photography a year prior. The other part came from being born and raised in rural Maine. Portland now seems small to me, having lived her for nearly four years, but at the time I did this series, it represented something of a metropolis. The sense of exploration, and the knowledge that I was traveling 1000 miles and seeing a lot of the state also fueled this naive approach.