Author: Robert Kimber
Publisher: Down East Books, 2005
Soft Cover, 5.0" x 8.0", 166 pages
From the Back Cover:
Robert Kimber's Upcountry is where early settlers carved farms out of scrabble-soiled country that never wanted to be farmed and where the forest has been busy reclaiming its own ever since. It's where the coastal plain and wide river valleys give way to rushing headwater streams and the foothills of the White Mountains, where the dollar economy has not quite driven out the ancient skills of piecing life together and making do.
Kimber shares his adventures, misadventures, and reflections as a part-time farmer and fetcher of firewood, his struggles with recalcitrant sheep and aging tractors, the joys of roaming the hills with his dog, plunking for pickerel in the lily pads, savoring the echoes of silence in a sleeping Maine village. Like good apple cider, these essays are a blend of the sweet and the tart, the aromatic and the astringent. Seasoned with a dash of wit and self irony, these love letters to life upcountry are as crips, fresh and bracing as they are affectionate.