Along the coast of Maine, fame and fortune abound; the town of Owls Head has little of either. Its people occupy a gorgeous peninsula in Penobscot Bay but have raised only two-and-a-half tourist attractions. The businesses in town with multiple employees are the general store and two lobster wholesalers. The Town Comprehensive Plan modestly states, “There are no sidewalks in Owls Head.”
For nearly 20 years Jim Krosschell and family used their house in Owls Head as not much more than a vacation spa to recover from the stresses of suburban Massachusetts. But when he retired, with time to explore and think and write, he crossed some kind of line, into much more intimacy with the place. The town is ordinary, except if you walk through its neighborhoods, on ocean shores and country lanes, on points of land, undeveloped woods and saltwater marshes, even through a couple of housing developments, and then Owls Head becomes a place many may seek: magically ordinary, a place of beauty and history, contradictions and community. Over the course of a year, the author visited anew, walking every lane and road in town. The record of these modest walks became a book of enlightenment, Owls Head Revisited.
Author Jim Krosschell has been coming to Maine for 30 years. After a career in science publishing, he began writing much more regularly, and more than 50 journals and magazines have published his personal essays, most of them about Maine (and versions of several of the chapters of this book). He is also President of the Board of Directors, Coastal Mountains Land Trust, in Camden, Maine.
Proceeds from book sales for the evening will benefit the Owls Head Conservation Commission.
Rockland Public Library is located at 80 Union St. in Rockland. This program, sponsored by the Friends of the Rockland Library, is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 594-0310
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