Editor's Note
By Paul Doiron
In case you haven't heard, we're living in the Age of Google. Also the Age of PlayStation, T-Mobile, and MySpace. On every street corner, in every coffee shop, a Wi-Fi cloud hangs over our heads. Gizmo has replaced Fido as man's best friend.Except in Maine's North Woods. Technology might be encroaching everywhere else, but until cell-towers replace pine trees along every mountaintop from Old Speck to Katahdin, there will be places you can go to escape the pestering reach of ringtones. Now I happen to think this is a good thing, and I say that as a confessed gadget freak. My wife and I own, between us, five iPods. We subscribe to umpteen cable channels. If we ever adopt a dog, we will probably name him Subwoofer.
But here's the rub about this brave new wireless world of ours -- it can't hold a candle to the real unwired thing. I appreciate this anew every time we visit our friends Pat and Greg Drummond at the sporting camp they run near the Bigelows. At Claybrook Mountain Lodge, my wife and I have snowshoed and moose-called, bird-watched and fly-fished. And like most visitors to Maine's sixty-two sporting camps, we've found the experience of stepping outside our hectic lives to be tonic for the soul.
The guests at West Branch Pond Camps (page 38) certainly feel that way. As you will read in this month's cover story, the Stirlings have stubbornly resisted modernizing this rustic lodge north of Kokadjo. But if you think they are clinging to an outdated way of life, think again. Eric Stirling is a Bates grad who once taught algebra at the Hyde School in Bath. He knows exactly what he's missing by choosing to live in the woods -- except that he's not missing what he's missing.
Maine tourism officials worry about the negative impact new technology might have on the Pine Tree State's "brand." How do you sell the Great Outdoors to people who prefer the Great Indoors? How do you convince the text-messaging generation that in-person conversations, held preferably around a campfire, are superior forms of communication?
For my part, I remain hopeful that the virtual world will provoke its own counter-reaction, as it inevitably does in me. Kids hate phoniness. They just need to know what's real. If you want to show them the difference, I can't think of a better place to start than a Maine sporting camp.
