The people of Maine are different: hardier, more outdoorsy, and seemingly closer to the land. Kish has noticed that the women wear less make-up and tend toward a no-frills look, while the men have the kind of ruddy complexion that makes it look like they’ve just stepped off a sailboat.
There’s something about living in a rustic area, near water, that seems to encourage that laissez-faire personal attitude. If you’ve got water and a boat nearby, there would be a lot of incentive to use it — and if make-up tended to run down your face when the fog rolled in, and fancy haircuts frizzed out and became unmanageable in the salt air, then make-up and the high-end ‘dos would likely hit the cutting room floor.
I thought about all of this on our recent mailboat run out to Isle au Haut. At one of our stops we saw a mother rowing her very cute little girl across the harbor to a dock. The Mom was an accomplished rower, and I’d be willing to bet that her daughter ends up as one, too. That’s not a bad skill to pass down from generation to generation.
