Bound by a Common Thread

To meet these people, I lived out of "Festus," my Toyota pickup truck and a leaky tent, roamed the state of Maine three times, snowshoed across Grand Lake Matagamon, rode a snowmobile along the mountainous roads of Coburn Gore, canoed eighteen miles up Chesuncook Lake, hiked the mountains of Monson, was backed up to one man's front door by a vicious, growling, teeth-baring dog in Waldoboro, walked two miles through mosquito-infested swale in Roque Bluffs, and slept on a roofed picnic table during a violent thunderstorm at Chemquasabam-ticook (Ross) Lake. As Tom Brown once said, "There is a Spirit that moves in all things." I will always believe that it was guiding my footsteps throughout this book. One of my professors called it serendipity. Each of the people you will meet in the pages of this book has a common thread or lifestyle that links them together. They have found peace living close to the earth, and each, in his or her own way, has shared that peace with me - and here, in this book, with you.