Comparing and contrasting the nature of a place
A couple of weeks ago I went to Maine to teach a medicinal plant workshop way Downeast on the coast near the Canadian border. The contrast and comparison with the Ozarks were immediately apparent. When one returns from where one hails, four decades absent, things you once didn’t notice become glaringly apparent.
Like the Ozarks, the underlying bedrock along the Maine coast is about 1.5 billion years old. In the Ozarks we walk on 350-million-year-old hardened sediments from a shallow sea. In Maine, I hiked on granitic outcrops produced from 120-million-year-old volcanic rock that was scraped, crushed, and tumbled by Pleistocene glaciers. The rocks are round. In practical terms, if you walk on a beach in the Ozarks (also called a goose litterbox), the sharp rock particles lock together and create a reasonable surface upon which to walk. A Maine beach, on the other hand, with its glacial and ocean-tossed round grains of sand, moves to the form of a footprint just like a bag of marbles forms to the shape of your pocket. That makes walking in Maine sand like walking in snow.
No need to contrast and compare bodies of fresh water with the ocean. They are just too different. However, like the Ozarks, Maine is rich with fresh water, but in the Ozarks the water keeps moving downhill; the only time it gathers in one large catchment is when humans build a dam.
In Maine, the countryside is dotted with thousands of bowl-shaped lakes, ponds, and bogs. Therefore, unlike most of the Ozarks, Maine has mosquito populations like those seen in south Arkansas. Mainers are surprised when I tell them I can sit on the back porch without getting driven away by mosquitos. But a Mainer would not leave a back porch in the Ozarks for fear of venomous snakes. Heck, they don’t even go to New Hampshire except for tax-free booze.
Maine is nice in the summers. I prefer Ozark winters. Like the Arkansas Department of Health is in denial about Lyme disease, Mainers are in denial about harsh winters. However, Mainers are not in denial about Lyme disease. Maine has the highest per capita incidence of Lyme disease of any state. There were no ticks here when I was a kid. I think they arrived in my suitcase one summer about 40 years ago. Sorry. I will refrain from bringing Maine Lyme disease back to the Ozarks.