The Way Life Should Be: sweet stories from New England

#### ‘ Live free or die’… ‘be nice or go away’…’we make the best ice cream in the world’…

At the risk of causing offence to any native New Englanders, life here is as refreshingly simple as their blunt sayings. Come here for good wholesome food, rugged wilderness and the most laid back people you will ever meet.

We all have preconceptions about our destinations when we travel, and as a self-confessed cynic I admit that often places do not deliver in one way or another. Thus, when I set off for Maine I was well aware that I probably wouldn’t spend two months living among the blue and white striped lighthouses, lobster pounds and blueberry fields that the New England dreams are made of. How wrong I was. Not only did New England delivery every stereotype you can imagine in the most authentic and impressively non-tacky way, but it revealed a multitude of other experiences and delights which I never imagined could happen in this sleepy corner of the USA.

Sitting on a jetty eating lobster and fries from a paper basket, staring out over the bobbing fishing boats on the Atlantic I realised how the Mainers had achieved such a perfect way of life. The secret, unsurprisingly, is simple. They just get on with it. Coming to New England as a tourist one should expect to enjoy the landscape in all its unspoilt glory, eat seafood straight off the boat and forget about the outside world. Two months spent here with no internet, no phone and, for the most part, no shoes, was the best thing I ever did and I can’t wait to return to the place that after about a week I wished I could call home.

Mainers like to eat and are incredibly proud of their local produce for a very good reason. Drive down one of the few huge, unwinding roads of Maine and whereas in England you would find burger vans or Little Chefs, here there are Ice Cream stalls. The ice cream here is indescribable. Turn up to any tiny roadside kiosk and order a cone of homemade delight from the menu of 50 flavours, and whether you ordered a small or not, it will be larger than your head and cost about $2. Most flavours are local and you won’t know what’s in it until it arrives, try Moose Tracks (peanut butter cups, chocolate and caramel), Pirates Treasure (rum and raisin, of course) or, ultimately L.L.Bean Muddy Boots. An anniversary homage to the esteemed outdoor outfitters which put Maine on the map, this is the marriage made in heaven; caramel, vanilla and brownie (mud) chunks. I however, can’t resist the quintessential Maple Pecan, especially when you’re next door to a farm that offers DYOMT (Do Your Own Maple Tapping). Have two scoops with Blueberry as well and you can’t get more New England than that.

Blueberry farms dot the countryside here and are open from the wee hours in the morning. Wandering in at 6am to fill up punnets with handfuls of fresh blueberries which are warm from the morning sun is the ultimate soul activity. Sitting cross legged in the grass eating your harvest whilst chatting to the farmer you can’t help but envy his lifestyle.

In such a pristine environment it seems wrong to drive everywhere, and the great outdoors just can’t be enjoyed from the air-conditioned confines of a Jeep. Also, in rural Maine everyone has cool vintage Ford trucks and Cadillacs, so a shiny rental bat-mobile from the airport will stick out like a sore thumb in comparison. Instead, the best advice I can give anyone is to get on a bike. I was working full time at a summer camp but I still found time every day to squeeze in my cycle and it was on these jaunts that I really experienced what Maine is all about. An hour’s ride led me first through corn fields with ’50 cents per cob’ stalls, past the white and blue houses straight from a movie-set with the post-card views of Lakes and forests. From here you passed a Maple syrup farm with a shack selling candy and ice cream (of course) before arriving at a small beach on the shore of one of Maine’s hundreds of lakes. Hopping off the bike, swim across the lake before enjoying the cycle back dripping wet in the stifling afternoon heat. Past the run-down liquor store with the men sitting outside watching the world go by, back past the white clapperboard church and ivy-covered grave yard and arrive back in time to what the sun set over the lake.

It is impossible to describe every activity on offer here as the Mainers take full advantage of their incredible environment, so its suffices to say that among the lazy river rafting, the rock climbing, the lake swimming and the sailing, you must take time to climb the mountains. Watching the golden eagles soar above your head after a three hour vertical scramble up Tumbledown Mountain. Or watching the sunrise over the Atlantic from the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park are the most numinous outdoor experiences you could ask for, and simply cannot be missed.

Lying on the lakeshore watching the shooting stars every night, or hiding under a porch watching the incredible pink and purple electric storms rage above, it is hard to believe that places such as this still exist in such a popular corner of the developed world. As the Maine number plate reads, this is “the way life should be”, with which I couldn’t agree more. The rest of us are getting it wrong, so come here and experience life the New England way; the relaxed way, the wholesome way, the way it should be.