Please tell Dan we love this and it’s so true!

“When I talk to friends or colleagues I know from living in big cities about moving to Maine, it still feels like I’m trying to justify my decision as if I’m disclosing some rare disease. They always want to know, “But why Maine? There’s nothing there!” Insulting and just plain wrong as that statement obviously is, I hear it a lot, and I’ve tested a range of answers (but don’t worry, I always add the caveat that I’m new to the state myself).

No explanation seems to strike home with people who have no real concept or even faint impression of what Maine is as a place and as a home. In the imaginations of such people, I get the impression that they think Maine is some mysterious frontier where lobster is served with every meal and every road is under constant threat of invasion by giant herds of stampeding moose.”

My husband and I are finishing up building a home on Bald Mountain and couldn’t agree more! The day we closed on the land 3 years ago, a friend said almost the same thing to us – “Why the heck are you going north? Everyone’s retiring south?!”

My response was: “That’s exactly why!” After all, who wouldn’t want to be in God’s Country!

– Mark & Karla Misto, Oquossoc, ME & Foster, RI