Maine Pilgrimage: The Search for an American Way of Life

x, 353 pp. Endpapers illustrated with map of Maine. "I traveled more than ten thousand miles through Maine in 1971 and 1972, interviewing people, spending time with them to become familiar with their way of life, exploring the wilderness on foot and by canoe, sailing down the coast…Maine's forests, lakes, rivers, tidal inlets and islands, the mountains and farms presented infinite challenges to those who were trying hard to work out solutions to environmental problems. And thus, even though the state resembled an exploited colony, Maine was a fortunate place, too. In this book I mean to tell you why. For, having suffered less than other states from industrialization and urbanization, Maine presents opportunities to those who would attempt to establish prototypes for living in harmony with industrial and technological progress. And as I will try to show, the search for solutions to basic environmental problems is only the first challenge. The recapturing of an essential American way of life, where the family is paramount, where a person has control over his own destiny, is the inevitable next step." - From the Author's Prologue