Before I ventured north on Friday evening, I knew three things about Allagash, Maine: first, that it was the site of an alleged alien abduction during the 1970s; second, that it is fertile moose-hunting ground; and third, that my friend Sara grew up there, a good six and a half hours north of Portland. You could get to New York — northern Jersey, even — in the same time it takes you to get to the tip of Maine. I'm glad I went the other direction.During my 36-hour stay in the Allagash region, I had better luck than the four Massachusetts College of Art students who journeyed into the Maine wilderness in the summer of 1976, only to allegedly encounter a UFO. I didn't see any moose, either, despite the fact that these lands, just south of Canada, are a sportsman's paradise, famous for hosting heaps of game (a Web site designed to lure recreational tourists boasts: "If you want a moose, Allagash is the place to come!"). But Sara was there, shocked that I'd actually come ("It's rare I meet someone willing to make the trip here," she wrote me in an e-mail that I received upon my return), and her hometown hospitality made the 700-mile voyage well worth the gas and coffee my car and I guzzled on the way.
Pumped full of turkey, feeling independent and adventurous, I made the drive north on Friday evening; it was my inaugural visit to "the County," as Maine's northernmost sector, Aroostook County, is known. Along the way, I listened to Lucinda Williams, Ray LaMontagne, Kathleen Edwards — you know, hardy types who could hack it in the wilderness. Around mile 280 on Interstate 95, it started snowing. By the time I cleared Presque Isle, on the winding roads of Caribou and beyond, I realized that when she'd said "Allagash really is its own universe," Sara hadn't been being hyperbolic. It's so easy to forget that Southern Maine is just a tiny piece of this huge state, and that the farther you get from it, the more different things are.
You can't just "run to the store" when you're in the County. Every task or trip requires a bit of a drive. To go to the grocery store, the gas station, the bar, or a friend's house — all these tasks are a haul. Even though everything is pretty much on the same road (Route 161; it's Allagash Road in Allagash, St. John Road in St. John Plantation, etc.), it's a loooooong road. So we did a lot of driving, with snow, old homes, and the beautiful St. John River zipping by our windows. (Needless to say, mine was the only car on the road that wasn't American-made, nevermind my hippie-dippy "Coexist" multicultural, hooray-for-tolerance bumper sticker. Cringe.)
