11 Things Mainers Do That Would Horrify the Rest of America

11 Things Mainers Do That Would Horrify the Rest of America

Maine is the kind of place that doesn’t particularly want to be found, which is unfortunate for the rest of America because Maine is one of the finest places in the country and keeping it that way requires a certain amount of strategic obscurity. The Pine Tree State occupies the far northeastern corner of the country like it got there first and intends to stay — cold, independent, laconic, and possessed of a stubbornness so deeply rooted it has become indistinguishable from dignity. Maine doesn’t chase trends. Maine doesn’t court attention. Maine wakes up at four in the morning, heads down to the boat, and gets to work before the rest of America has figured out what day it is. Pull up a trap and try to keep up.

1. Eat lobster not as a luxury but as a Tuesday

The rest of America orders lobster at special occasion restaurants with white tablecloths and nervousness about which fork to use. Maine eats lobster at a picnic table with a paper bib, a wooden mallet, and the efficient, unsentimental technique of people who have been doing this since childhood. Lobster rolls are gas station food in Maine. Lobster is cheaper at the dock than chicken at the grocery store in peak season. The idea that lobster is fancy is a geographic misunderstanding that Maine finds mildly amusing and financially convenient.

2. Describe everything with “some” as an intensifier and expect to be understood

“That’s some good chowder.” “It’s some cold out.” “He’s some stubborn.” The Maine use of “some” as an intensifier — meaning very, quite, or considerably — is so natural to native speakers that they don’t register it as unusual until someone from away asks what it means. It is not a quirk. It is the language, refined to its functional minimum by generations of people who saw no reason to use more words than the situation required.

3. Refer to everyone not from Maine as “from away” regardless of how long they’ve lived there

You are from away if you were born elsewhere. You remain from away if you moved to Maine at age two. You are still technically from away if your parents moved to Maine before you were born but your grandparents were not Maine-born. “From away” is not always an insult — it is a geographic designation with specific cultural meaning, and it carries the implicit understanding that there are things about Maine you understand only if Maine is where you come from. The designation does not expire. It is simply accurate.

4. Eat whoopie pies with a state pride so fierce the legislature got involved

Maine claims the whoopie pie — two rounds of chocolate cake sandwiching a filling of white frosting, marshmallow fluff, or buttercream — as its official state treat, a designation that Pennsylvania also claims, producing one of the lower-stakes but surprisingly passionate interstate food disputes in American history. Maine is not backing down. The Whoopie Pie Festival in Dover-Foxcroft is a real annual event attended with real enthusiasm. The whoopie pie is Maine’s and the legislature has said so and that is the end of the conversation.

5. Spend the entire winter outdoors and refuse to acknowledge that this is unusual

Maine winters are long, dark, deeply cold, and snowy in ways that would send most Americans into seasonal hibernation. Mainers ice fish. They snowmobile for hundreds of miles on groomed trails that function as a second road system. They ski, they snowshoe, they split wood, they ice skate on ponds, and they attend outdoor events with the cheerful layering strategy of people who have made peace with their climate and emerged on the other side with excellent gear and no patience for complaints. “There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing” is a Maine life philosophy.

6. Pump their own gas even after New Jersey and Oregon made it optional

Maine has always had self-serve gas, and Mainers would not have it any other way. The idea of waiting for someone else to pump your gas — standing there, helpless, at the mercy of another person’s schedule — is antithetical to the Maine character. Maine people do things themselves. They have always done things themselves. The self-service gas pump is not a minor convenience. It is a statement about independence that happens to also be a petroleum delivery mechanism.

7. Navigate by “the way the road goes” rather than cardinal directions

Ask a Mainer for directions and you will receive a set of instructions organized around landmarks, local knowledge, and a system of spatial reference that has nothing to do with north or south and everything to do with knowing where things are relative to other things. “Go down past where the old Hannaford used to be, up over the hill, and it’s just the other side of the ridge.” The old Hannaford has been gone for twelve years. The directions are still accurate. The landscape remembers everything.

8. Harvest fiddleheads in spring with the focused excitement of people finding gold

Fiddleheads — the tightly coiled young fronds of the ostrich fern, foraged from riverbanks and woodland edges in a brief window in May — are a Maine seasonal delicacy treated with the reverence of something rare and earned. Mainers who know good fiddlehead spots guard that information carefully. The harvest window is short, the cleaning is tedious, the preparation is simple — sautéed in butter, maybe with garlic — and the result tastes like the specific flavor of a Maine spring, which is a flavor worth waiting all year for.

9. Drive two hours on a logging road to reach a remote camp and call it relaxing

Maine has more coastline than California and more wilderness than most people realize, and the tradition of the remote camp — a cabin accessible by dirt road or floatplane, on a lake or river, equipped with the necessities and nothing more — is as Maine as lobster and stubbornness. The drive in is part of it. The absence of cell service is the point. Mainers who own camps speak of them with the particular affection reserved for places that exist outside ordinary life, and they are right to, because those places are what ordinary life is for.

10. Pronounce place names in ways that require local instruction

Calais is pronounced “CAL-us.” Harpswell is “HARPS-well.” Skowhegan is “skoh-WEE-gun.” Mattawamkeag will not be attempted here. Maine’s place names — many derived from Wabanaki languages, some from French, some apparently from a committee that actively enjoyed confusion — require a period of phonetic apprenticeship before a newcomer can navigate a conversation about geography without giving themselves away as from away. Which they are. Which Maine already knew.

11. End conversations with “ayuh” and mean seventeen different things by it

“Ayuh” is the Maine affirmation — a sound that can mean yes, I agree, I understand, I’ve heard you and am processing, I’ve heard you and disagree but won’t say so, that’s interesting, that’s unfortunate, that’s not surprising, and several more nuanced positions depending on length, intonation, and the specific pause that follows. It is a complete conversational tool compressed into four letters. Out-of-staters who try to use it are recognized immediately by the timing. Timing is everything. The timing takes years.

Maine will not be changing to accommodate you, and that is one of the finest things about it. It will not be warming up its winters, making its lobster more expensive so it feels appropriately luxurious, shortening its drives, or producing more from-away-friendly directions. It will wake up early, work hard, speak plainly, eat well, and go to bed without having sought anyone’s approval or posted about any of it. The light in Maine — particularly in September, when the air goes clear and the coast turns gold and the water is the color of something you don’t have a word for yet — is among the most beautiful things this country has to offer. Maine knows this. It is not telling everyone. That’s the whole idea.