National Perspective: Lime Rickeys and chicken houses: Summer in Maine

OGUNQUIT, Maine — The view from here is summertime lovely, the sunshine shimmery, the sky the sort of nautical blue you never see even a quarter-mile from the shore. A solitary sailboat, bouncing on flukey breezes, creases the ocean. It is July, the month of our national holiday, and much of the nation is on holiday.

It would be a crime against nature to be here in Maine, a state so favored by nature, and to read anything but a book rooted in Maine. It's the setting for so much of our national literature, from Kenneth Roberts (hardly known anymore, but a staple of my childhood) to Henry David Thoreau (whose musings about Mount Katahdin might be as much of statement about nature, and human nature, as his meditation from Walden Pond) to Stephen King (whose writing ranges from horror to Red Sox home runs).