Echoes celebrates winter

    Mushers who come to Fort Kent for the annual Can-Am sled dog races are like family for the local residents who host them. Ninety mushers, handlers and close to 900 dogs could present a housing crunch in a town with one hotel, but Fort Kent families clear their yards and open their homes and refrigerators to the annual influx of visitors from across the northern US and Canada.     In the cover story of the current Echoes magazine, writer and photographer Julia Bayly visits with a few of the families who have given Fort Kent and international reputation for hospitality. “Lifelong Friendships” is one of several features in Echoes 83 that celebrate winter in Maine, past and present.
    Kathleen Hede Robinson of New Sweden remembers tramping snowshoe paths to the outhouse and underneath the clothesline in “Winter in the 1940s,” when walls of snow on the path from the house to the road were as tall as her father as he shoveled. Like Robinson, Hazel Cameron of Presque Isle recalls warming her feet on the open door of the oven and sliding down hills on whatever was available – a baking sheet or a cardboard box – in “Winter on the Farm.”
    David Parker of Rochester, N.Y., grew up on Stillwater Avenue in Bangor overlooking a rolling pasture that is now the Bangor Mall. Land now dedicated to shopping was a winter playground for local kids where the right combination of rain and cold created “an ice rink of staggering proportions.” Parker recalls that ice chutes, crust sliding, frozen meadows and bonfires on ice were all part of “Winter at Rocky Corner” – now the I-95 interchange.
    Up north in Perham, residents hope to restore snowshoe racing to the Aroostook County winter sports agenda. They created a “Snowshoe Spectacular” in 2008 to celebrate the sport and showcase the Salmon Brook Lake Bog, a year-round natural treasure supporting diverse flora and fauna. Writer Kasey Grieco of Westmanland takes readers to the starting line and introduces them to naturalist Richard Clark, who first envisioned the snowshoe race as a way to sensitize people to the beauty of the area.
    Color photos by Stephen Leighton of Fort Fairfield combine with poetry by Ethel Pochocki of Brooks and Russell Libby of Mount Vernon to create visual and verbal images of winter in a center section of the magazine titled “North by Verse.” On the back cover, Leighton’s golden retriever runs out of the evergreens silhouetted by sun on snow.
    Other features in Echoes’ 83 edition include the second part of an interview with Houlton businessman Paul A. McGillicuddy and a story of the “Last Big Fling” of the Caribou High School Class of 1907. Barbara McGillicuddy Bolton of Brooklyn, N.Y., interviewed her uncle, now 95, to create a profile laced with poignant business philosophy. “Be a little early, work harder than anyone else and be there when you close down,” advises McGillicuddy, who still sees possibilities for business.
    One characteristic of the Caribou High School Class of 1907 was “push,” according to class editor May Collins, and they continued to demonstrate the quality 50 years after graduation. Their “Last Big Fling” was a 50th reunion in Los Angeles, hosted by class member Clifford Hardison and his wife Elvira. Even though their principal, Willard P. Hamilton, then 87, thought women in their 60s were too old to travel, Collins (then Mrs. Harry Ahern) contacted her classmates, and many joined Hamilton for the flight to California and 10 days of sightseeing. Writer Glenna Johnson Smith composed the account from correspondence and class records provided by Audrey Bishop Thibodeau, daughter of class member Elsie Berce Bishop.
    Stories from the north woods include a fiction piece by J. D. Aiguier of Winslow, and an anecdote about sportswriter Bud Leavitt by Dana McNally, who operated the McNally camps between the Allagash and Fish rivers. Aiguier creates a character in “The Preacher” who possesses the qualities that inspire respect. In “The Sportswriter,” McNally relates an incident that inspired his father, William Parker McNally (Daddy Will), to joke that Bud Leavitt was a “most accomplished liar.”
    Release of Echoes No. 83 this month begins the 21st year of continuous publication for the quarterly magazine based in Caribou and printed at Northeast Publishing Co. in Presque Isle. Dedicated to preserving qualities of life at risk in today’s world, the magazine celebrates life lived simply with deep respect for nature.
    In an autobiographical essay title “Community in Crisis,” editor Kathryn Olmstead affirms the value of community in times of economic hardship. The essay first appeared in the magazine in 1989 and was republished in 1999, as the nation feared the effects of Y2K. Its message remains relevant.
    Echoes goes to subscribers throughout the United States and Canada and is available on northern Maine newsstands, with information at echoesofmaine.com.