I have been vacationing and now living in Maine since 1949. The lure of The North Woods was ingrained in me from my earliest memories. Our family came every summer from wherever we lived at the time. Alabama, Ohio, New York, Maryland, New Jersey … none of them had the draw we had to this beautiful, wild wilderness. We brought a number of families with us over the years to experience Maine, and every one of them ended up coming back again and again and some eventually retired here.

Our destination was a small lake in the Lincoln area where the last 15 miles of the road was dirt in 1949. The camp we rented was primitive … no electricity, an outhouse, no TV and a crackly transistor radio, kerosene lamps, an old-fashioned ice box (with real ice), a wood cook stove — all the amenities.

Today it is still that way, but we bought it back in 1972, and we like it that way. We grew up lying on our backs on the dock at night looking up at the trillions of stars and galaxies in the pitch dark. So did my kids, and now the grandchildren and great grandchildren.

As kids we learned about nature and the universe, Grandma read us books about the wilderness at night. We learned an independent spirit because we could go just about anywhere on the lake and still be in view of the camp. It was great for our young psyches to have the controlled freedom to explore, fish, swim, camp out on a secure island, canoe, motor boat, hike, gather berries and do all the things The Maine Woods offers.

Sad to say, I showed up at the camp in the spring of last year to find my view out the front porch of our camp, the view my recently passed Mother thought was “the best view in the whole world” (and she lived and traveled all over the world) was spoiled with 23 400-foot-tall wind generators spinning during the day, and flashing their red and white strobe lights all night. I was heartbroken. Our idyllic North Woods retreat was ruined, and for what?

The myth that wind power is a good form of “Renewable” energy is just that; A myth. The truth is, wind can not provide a reliable, dependable source of energy without enormous subsidies from the government and the power industry. The cost of production is double that of gas and coal fired generators, and three times more than hydro power. If the investors in wind power had to rely solely on the output from their generators, there would be no investment.

The rest of this can be read here in the Bangor Daily News.

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/10/opinion/vanishing-vacationland/

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