| Michael Fralich |
Life Outside
When I was growing up in Cape Elizabeth in the 1960’s, I had the joy of access to both the ocean and the woods. Where I lived, in the Cape Cottage part of town, we had rights to go to Casino Beach which was a short bike ride from our home. Behind our home was a pond nestled into the woods with many more acres of woods within walking distance of where we lived. It was not uncommon as a lad of ten to disappear into the woods or to the ocean all day on a Saturday with only the request from my mom that I be home for dinner.
I would go with my buddies exploring both of these habitats for hours on end. We would dive into the woods not at all sure where we were going, knowing if we walked long enough we would come to a road we knew. When deep in the woods it felt as though we were the first people to see the area through which our adventures took us. It was long before the era of computers, cell phones and video games. Our joy was a simple one: to be out on our own on land that surely had amazing features to be discovered.
At the ocean, we were proud of our early spring dips in the frigid waters of Casco Bay. In those days there was a pier that jutted out into the water at Casino Beach. We would fish for hours delighting in catching pollock, flounder, mackerel and the occasional cod. At high tide we would jump off the cliff at the edge of the beach, risking not only the chill of the cold water but also the rocks below. At that time Fort Williams was an active Army base. We would enter the fort by way of the rocky shore. We would sneak into the fort and comb the rifle range for shells (when no one was shooting there!). One time we walked from Casino Beach all the way to Willard Beach on the rocks. That was an epic journey that dropped us far from home and a long walk back on the roads.
When my wife and I were married in 1974, we bought land in New Gloucester. We were living in Boston at the time but planned on building a house there sometime in the future. In the interim I bought a twenty-foot tipi and pitched it on the banks of the brook on our property. We never lived there full time but would come up for weekends and sometimes longer as we began to become acquainted with this place we ultimately dubbed Norumbega. In my twenties then, my love of the outdoors only deepened as I discovered marvelous places on the land that would ultimately be our home.
The four years we lived in Boston also provided me with opportunities to explore the outside world. I would go for long walks at the Arnold Arboretum and also at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Both of these places had magnificent old trees which gave me their silent energy and sparked a now-lifelong study of trees. This passion led me to the University of Michigan where I studied forestry.
With my second bachelor’s degree in hand (my first was in photography from Goddard College in Vermont), we moved back to Maine and began to plan our house to be built on our land. When our children grew to be old enough to go on rambles with me in the woods, we would take off for the day with surveyors tape, a compass, USGS maps, food, dogs and even our cat to begin marking out trails. Over the course of several years, we laid out and had cleared seven miles of trails on our land, giving us and all who came to this special place a way to get out in the woods for long hikes to take in our two waterfalls and the peace of the woods.
Two years ago we built a new house in the Lower Village of New Gloucester four miles from Norumbega. I still go to Norumbega with our two English shepherds, Mocha and Sadie, to reconnect with what has become the center of my life. The house that I built myself is now the home of a good friend who I grew up with in Cape Elizabeth. Now in the village, I have new places to explore, often on the back of my mare Cyra. My love of the outdoors has grown all of my life and I now consider being outside to be a form of worship connecting me to what the Lakota call “The Spirit That Flows Through All Things.”
— Michael Fralich
