"Nine Mile Bridge" by Helen Hamlin

            Here’s the perfect book to read (or re-read) during Maine’s bicentennial celebration of statehood. Hamlin, born in 1917 in Fort Kent, Maine, was a rugged adventurer who chose to take her teaching degree into the depths of Maine’s north woods back in 1937. After a year, she married a game warden and spent two more years (including snowbound winters) in isolation that makes our current quarantine look like a party.
            Highlights include the surreal beauty of snowscapes, care and dependence on sled-dogs, insider views into the early logging industry, spring ice-out, frontier medicine and innovations for survival, and much more.
            Hamlin’s writing style is spare, direct, and highly readable. Her love of the outdoor life and meeting physical challenges emanates from the pages. An excellent immersion into another place and time, worthy of note. 
 
My 60th year in 60,000 words
Day 286: 134 words, TOTAL = 47,760; 12,240 remaining