Directions & Angles

I was raised in Maine, USA, in a little town called Carmel, emphasis on the CAR, unlike in California where they put the emPHAsis on the MEL. And perhaps more accurately, I should say we pronounce it CAHml. But that’s beside the point.

The point, friends, is, where in Maine is my town? With a population of about 1200 during my childhood, it wasn’t large enough to include on most maps of the state, so we just told people we were “about an inch west of Bangor (BANGore)” on the map; you know, using your index fingertip. For people “from away” that were unfamiliar with the situations of towns and cities of Maine, though, that wasn’t necessarily helpful, so they’d ask questions like, “So, are you in the south? The east? Central? North?” And it was never an easy answer. Directions & Angles always played a part in that.

If you don’t know what Maine looks like, this is going to be especially difficult for you to follow, so I suggest you Duckduckgo.com yourself a political map or photo or two of the state so that you get an idea of what I’m talking about. Might want to include a snowy forecast map, too, since that comes into play. For examples:

So, as we look at the above image, how do we describe the directions to locations in Maine? If you live in Portland, then you are most definitely in Southern Maine, right? Or would it be more accurate to say you are Coastal Maine? Western Maine? Southwestern Coastal Maine? Coastal Southwestern? Forget Portland. Rumford. Rumford is DEFINITELY Western Maine. Case closed. Whew. Eastport. Well, it goes without saying, doesn’t it? Coastal! Ha! I kid. Eastern Coastal. No, I joke some more. Easternmost town in the United States, so yeah, it’s Eastern Maine. On the coast, too.

Madawaska, Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Caribou, et al, are definitely in Northern Maine, but you’d be surprised to hear how often Bangor is put into that category, too. It’s a 2-hour drive from Bangor to Presque Isle, per the 70-mph limit. But if you look around that northern area of the state, called Aroostook County, you’ll notice there aren’t a lot of towns; it’s largely unpopulated wilderness. The area of the state of Maine is equivalent to the rest of the New England states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), but with a present population of just 1.3 million people. Aroostook County, along with the northern regions of several other counties, is wilderness. But that’s beside the point. I digress once again!

Let’s look again at Bangor (not BangER; BANGore–or as one local Democrat inadvertently says, “BAN Gore”). Depending on one’s point of view, Bangor, ergo my hometown of CAHml, could be in Northern, Eastern, or Central Maine, all at the same time. It all has to do with Directions and Angles. For the OuttaStaytah that thinks Maine is just from the New Hampshire border to Bah Hah-bah, then Bangor is “Northern Maine.” For the political campaigner that’s tryin’ to rally the troops, as it were, Bangor is “Central Maine” when the race is for the U.S. Senate, and “Eastern Maine” when it’s for the Maine Senate or House. But when it’s the weather forecaster, that’s a whole different animal, as we’ll see below.

When the roads dictate north and south, east and west, that’s one way of knowing where in the state Bangor is. But when the weather patterns show up, all bets are off! God’s hands turn the winds wherever He wants them to go, and the map above shows how He often sends them to us, swirling from Montreal to New Brunswick, via Vermont and New Hampshire, with an occasional swipe at Massachusetts. Here is where listening to the meteorologists gets interesting, because when they speak of “from Bangor north,” they sometimes mean “north by northeast, due north, and north by southwest,” but that’s not how they say it. Oh, wait. Did I say “north by southwest”? I meant south by northwest. Well, you get my drift. It’s confusing as all get-out. I will tell you what’s not confusing, though, is that the meteorologists firmly place Bangor in East-Central Maine, settling that argument once and for all.

So, then, where did I grow up in Maine? In the town of Carmel, about 15 miles due west of Bangor (which is inarguably located approximately 200 miles north by northeast of Portland, a city on the southwestern coast of the state), in a region known emphatically as East-Central Maine, where politicians blow hot air that doesn’t melt the ice and snow in the winter, but occasionally will give me a day off when the roads are too treacherous to drive to work, thus giving me the time to write foolishness like this.