Old Town

Kristen Lenea Ryberg

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                        With regard to essentials, I have never had the occasion to change my mind.                                                                                                                                                                          
										            ~Thoreau

HEADLINES READ:
Covid Slows Hiking on the A.T. Millinocket, ME.
Loons heard by fewer visitors this year.  

Hedrick Jameson of The Maine Woods Outdoor Store 
stacks vacuum-packed meals, 
displays one in the open mouth of an upright plastic bear, 
pepper spray in its right claw and a cowbell 
carabineered to a pack around its back. 

Shakes his head as his recent installation goes largely unappreciated. 
Should he take a photo and try putting it on that Instagram?
Remembers something about hashtags, not today. 

Adjusts the SPECIAL 3 for $30 sign in the black left paw. 
Sighs at the overdone marketing:  Stew-for-You grass fed beef cuts in savory gravy with organic field potatoes, Fettuccini-Unafraid-O ala dente’
Italian pasta smothered in rich Vermont Cheddar organic cream sauce.

When did adventurers become connoisseurs? 
Thoreau’s ghost would be lost
in these high-end accessories of $90 titanium cook kits, designer stuff sacks.  

But here we are. 
He gently wipes the gunwales of his inventory, 
Old Town Canoes, made in Old Town, ME. since 1902.
Known for their stability; modeled after the birch bark canoes of 
the Penobscot First Nation people, an essential transport for 10,000 years.
  
As a kid, Hedrick was was attuned to the subtleties of shuffled steps on the worn floors, steady creaks indicated a serious outdoorsman shifting his weight—carefully unfolding and tracing his index finger on a map, before choosing practical ivory thermals, an army-green poncho and the most useful Swiss Army knife under the glass case.

After the purchase, his father would say Now there goes a man ready for real wilderness.