Going to Extemes, or: True North

There’s this impression we have about some states, this sense that, not until you’re in the middle of them (or, in some cases, not until you have reached some extreme—usually northerly—point in them) are you really in the state. Consider the following illustrations:

Maine, the Kittery area, just across the border from New Hampshire, “isn’t Maine.” Culturally (or, perhaps more to the point, retail-ly), Maine isn’t like this further downeast on the coast or further north into the mountains and forests. Ergo, according to the received view, Kittery isn’t Maine.

While it’s true that, say, Baxter State Park contains no profusion of outlet stores, why does this more northerly geographic locale define the Maine standard? History, you say? Or ubiquity? The prevailing historical identity of Maine is not Kittery’s outlets but Baxter State’s lakes and mountains and forests? Or Camden’s charming harbor?

Sometimes, yes, history can account for the claim that this place manifests the true state identity, while that place doesn’t. Shopping malls, while ubiquitous in some side pockets of the state, are simply too recent, too localized—and too contested—to be the defining images of the state. Point taken. But history and prevalence alone don’t tell the tale either. If they did, surely potatoes would be a bigger part of Maine’s identity than, say, coastline. Laid end for end, Aroostook County’s rows of potato plants undoubtedly stretch far longer than the state’s much-vaunted coast.

Bottom line: neither potatoes nor outlet malls are as a)picturesque and quaint; b)remote and rugged; or c)simple and unassuming as (our visions of) sweet little harbors or forbidding miles of forest wilderness. And to an outsider (or a romantic insider), these are the qualities that we use to define the true nature of a state.⁽¹⁾ (Or at least a northern state; I have a feeling that another different, but related, set of qualities defines states in other parts of the country. Care to tell me about them? You know the address.)

Consider another northerly example near to my heart: Minnesota. It’s all northern pine forest and lakes to a non-Minnesotan;⁽²⁾ indeed, the northeastern parts of the state define its identity for many residents as well. Never mind that far more of the state was covered in tallgrass prairie (a fact to which at least one public radio program pays homage). And never mind that, these days, vast expanses of the state are covered in soybeans and corn (a fact to which Cargil, the sponsor of the aforementioned radio program, pays homage). Our state bird (the loon), our state flower (the showy ladyslipper) and our state muffin (yes, we have a state muffin, and it’s the blueberry, thank you very much) contribute to the sense that the state is just one giant Boundary Waters. We do not have a state grass; if we did, would it be Big or Little Bluestem? Probably neither; it would be wild rice—another northern lakes denizen. (Don’t even ask about the fight over the image on our quarter!)

It’s interesting that, in the “extremes” approach to state identity (the belief that the further downeast, the further north you go, the “truer” it is to what a state “really” is), there operates an implicit belief that what the state “really” is like, is what we believe the next state (or country) beyond it is like. So, for instance, Minnesota is “really” like Canada—or like what we take western Ontario to be like.

Such a belief helps take care of the paradox that arises from the Extreme view: the paradox that, if you go far enough “in” to a state from this side, you end up on your way “out” the other side. That’s not a paradox, if it turns out that the place into which you’re exiting has even more of the identity you’re ascribing to the state you’re in than does the state itself. There’s no paradox at all to the claim that the Boundary Waters are what Minnesota is “really” like—no paradox, that is, if you accept the notion that “really” Minnesota is a U.S. version of far western Ontario. If that’s the case, then of course it will be its most Minnesotan right at the border.

But I do wonder what the Canadian perspective on this is? Do Canadians think Minnesota, and those other states that border it, are “really” like Canada? And if so, do they have the same Canada in mind when they envision it? I’m guessing no, given the evidence found in this last illustration. One year, I left Maine on the most northerly route you could take in an ordinary vehicle, via some logging roads up near Moosehead Lake, I went thru some fairly rugged and beautiful country. The farther north I went, the wilder and more remote it got. “Just think what it will be like when I cross the border!” I remember thinking, “How wild will it be there?” Well, had I applied even ten minutes’ rational thought to the matter, I would have realized that, given that I would be entering the province of Quebec, and given that 90% of the population of Canada lives within 100 miles of its border with the United States, the answer is “not very wild at all.” I crossed over onto a four-lane highway with flowers planted in the median.

(2) Barb the Brief was once heard to insist that Minnesota didn’t have a southern part—thus St. Peter couldn’t be in southern Minnesota.