Penobscot County Busride

You might think it strange that I haven’t yet written about my work on the vernal pool research project here. (After all, at right is what one of our vernal pools looks like.) However, as lucky as I am to have gotten this opportunity for biology field work, it is nonetheless work, and I’m therefore more inclined to talk and write about what I do on my free time.

And experiences in Ireland, New York, Boston, St. Petersburg, St. Louis, Chicago and now Maine have convinced me that boarding a public bus or light rail train car is one of the most rewarding things you can do with a free day or even with a free forty minutes.  So that is what I did with this Saturday: took the bus 20 minutes southwest to the city of Bangor. Perhaps from the outside buses might look like poorly lit mobile caves, but inside you find that the whole cabin is surrounded by wide windows, making you feel like you are on a large glass box. After paying less than a candy bar you are free to board. To an enthusiastic mind, the raised rear section of a bus recalls the quarterdeck of a sailing ship. You are then whirled off somewhere else without having to think about it, and are free to read or listen to music.

Or perhaps even talk to someone. In Galway, Ireland, the bus drivers I saw often had friends who would board for a stop or two just to cling on the front pole and exchange witticisms with them. “Are you a Galway man, at all?” an elderly man asked me on the train to Dublin, midway through his wife’s brief account of their family’s life history. She told him of course he isn’t, don’t you see his ball-cap? (I hadn’t picked up a Galwegian accent: I just think he couldn't hear very well.) Sure, I have heard some tedious speeches on the subways of large cities, but for the most part American public transit spaces are often ones of comradely traveler’s small talk, or at least a silence with a positive, and not a defensive, energy to it. Wal-Marts and lame polo shirts carry on their slow, steady arsenic poisoning of American culture, but buses remain. Even in Maine, buses are multiethnic and often multilingual. It is one of the few places left in this country where, while waiting out a long cargo train crossing, a stranger is unafraid of asking another if they’d be brave enough to save up money, get on a train and cross the country, and another stranger is unafraid to answer yeah, of course, why not?

The bus from University of Maine-Orono’s campus to Bangor roughly follows the Penobscot River downstream. Riders are treated to quick views of the river between houses on the banks, and of small mountain ridges in the distance. This is a good time to discuss how the people of New England are often spoiled utterly rotten. I have heard whale watching called “cheesy,” when I believe many of the people I grew up with in St. Louis will never see a whale.  I have heard Mainers talk with great complacency of the low property values here, how it is only good as retirement country—a cold Florida. And yet the number of houses—of apartment complexes and trailer lots—with rock-bottomed salmon rivers a hundred yards wide and more in their backyards is, to my Midwestern eyes, incredible! Cheesy whale watching, forsooth.

We stopped at the central bus depot in Bangor, which was, as I had hoped, right in the  historic downtown. Bangor, whose name comes from a city in Northern Ireland (though indirectly, through a city founder’s favorite hymn), is the third-largest city in Maine. The city plan is haphazard and gangling, not unlike the asymmetric street grids of medieval cities in Europe. It grew quickly as a port for the loggers of Maine in the 1800s, shipping Maine lumber to build New York and Boston. At one time it was an economically crucial city. But in more recent years, the usual outer ring of box stores and strip malls has expanded to serve a broad rural population that includes New Brunswick, Canada. As a result, the center has declined—antique stores are not good evidence for commercial bustle. Yet it still retains some of its vigor. I was deeply pleased to see tall brick buildings, old white-steepled churches, and a café devoted entirely to bagels. On a Thursday when I drove through on the way to a vernal pool, downtown had all the dense traffic a city-dweller could wish for.

I stopped in a café with an Italian name and bought a muffin and a double-shotted cappuccino. The barista took the order from the cashier with every appearance of great personal dislike for me, vanished behind the corvette-red espresso machine, and reappeared to hand over what instantly seemed to me the best cappuccino I had ever tasted, as coffee is apt to do. I sat outside, nominally reading a Jane Austen novel, but in fact watching large bright clouds passing over the sunlit brick buildings.

My wandering about town, up and down the canal, up and down Main Street, satisfied an appetite I have for urban landscapes that has not been fed by the small but adorable town of Orono. Having heard that some undergrads at U. Maine see Bangor, dear little Bangor, as “sketchy,” I was reminded of my hypothesis that somewhere along the line, many white suburban children learn the lesson that there is something inherently dangerous and untrustworthy to places where buildings are close together—even, God forbid, touching along their sides—unless the buildings happen to be in Europe. I don’t know how exactly I escaped this lesson, but I am grateful that I did. Their are few cities I've visited that I don't have affection for. I have a passion for roof gardens (at right) and the tiny, over-planted front lawns of Boston (usually no larger than a kitchen) that is disproportionate to their size.

The bagel shop on the left is closed
on Saturdays--what nonsense!

As I continued to explore, the town continued to cause Galway nostalgia—compact, with canals and a boardwalk. Not surprisingly, I ended up having lunch at an Irish pub which advertised traditional Irish music on Tuesday nights, which I am now determined to go and see. They had a very tasty open-faced Reuben and had a jumble of tables and a seat-yourself policy which prevented a solitary traveler from feeling awkward about his solitariness—another similarity with Ireland. Perhaps both areas are simply dependent on tourists.

The pub.

With only half an hour to go before catching the bus, I headed towards the long boardwalk along the Penobscot. There was a food truck with an entire brick pizza oven stuffed inside, an ice cream truck, and many picnicking families. While the Kenduskeag Stream through the center of Bangor is somewhat dirty (every city worth its salt has filthy rivers—the Liffey, the Chicago, the Hudson) the Penobscot beside Bangor is broad and blue, with a very tall bridge, high enough for ships to pass under, some way downstream. With a very limited knowledge of Maine geography, I wondered—was it possible to ride a bike to the ocean from here? I was about to take a picture of the bridge when a voice startled me from behind. My first reaction was defensive: a panhandler, I thought? Money for the bus? No, it turned out, he was asking if I wanted to be in the picture. First I automatically said no, that’s alright, but he offered again and I accepted. It didn’t end up being a particularly good picture of me, but the mere fact of his offering made me strangely happy as I walked back towards the bus depot. Travel makes us sensitive to the ordinary kindnesses of strangers.