Where to live, why a small Maine town?
Rural living offers lots of perks and you can still take the treks to the population centers to experience whatever is a small town does not offer. Whatever the small population can not support that large urban areas can. But living with the traffic, the crime, the high cost of living is not a daily struggle when you decide to hang your hat in a small rural area.
So living in a small town in Maine, what it the day to day like?
Well for starters, you feel the connection, you become very aware that you do care about others around you. And the feeling goes both ways. You have an intimate connection, you know the folks you meet on the streets and downtown in a small Maine town. Fewer in number is the population but working with the others who live around you happens. Whether it is through your job, church, school activities or community events. Or sharing the outdoors that Maine rural areas provide as the backdrop to small town living.
So what to prepare for living in a small town in Maine?
You don’t stay isolated, you don’t just attend events or shop and go home. There are lots of opportunities to pitch in, give back and make the small town living experience richer for yourself and others. If you move in from somewhere else, share what you have learned. And respect the local traditions if new to you because you now call home the small town in Maine.
Resist complaining about how life was different where you used to live compared to the small town in Maine. You moved here for a reason. Maybe it was the lake home for vacations that became a retirement property that caused the relocation. Maybe after you retired it was just too darn expensive to stay in the city setting where you used to chase the dollar.
But lack of traffic, no worries about crime, experiencing the bright star filled skies at night that pollution choked out are just a few life adjustments in small town Maine.
Small rural living is safer. Your family has less worries. Less time is spent on the road traveling to and fro. That creates more time for stuff you want to do to enrich your life. Smaller groups mean more intimacy, a stronger connection. You know each other more deeply in small rural towns. You need each other more because look behind you. You are it. Not a lot of competition for the endeavors you are designed perfectly to take on to make your small town living in Maine experience the best it can be.
Purpose in life, it starts with having a major role in the script. Less change or shake up happening in small town living too. Because change happens slower and the pace of life is sane, predictable, and friendly. When you shop for groceries, go to the movies, pick up the local paper, you know the folks you meet and read about and their families.
When something happens, a fire, someone has cancer treatments ahead, folks turn out ten fold in small Maine towns.
It could be them needing the helping hand. There is a sense of responsibility to others and deep pride in the local community. Because you are an intricate part of it, Year after year pitching in to help make a local event bigger and better than it was before and planning the next year’s undertaking as soon as this year’s wraps up and is in the history books.
Shopping in small towns in Maine is at local one of a kinds, where the owner is in the store to provide you personal customer service. As a kid you work at these small Mom and Pop stores, diners, service providers. Your grandfather traded with the same family that started the business in the small town in Maine. There is a good feeling to doing business with a small town enterprise where you know the owner, where it is not a chain franchise. Where it is one of a kind shopping experience and everything is familiar, down to Earth and where you the shopper know you are needed as a customer. You feel appreciated.
In small towns in Maine you also sense more than Mom and Dad are raising you. You don’t feel like a little kid but are treated with respect and guided into adulthood by all the members of the village. The neighbors are rooting for you. Proud of the sports or academic performance or how you represent the small town in Maine at whatever level or endeavor you choose.
These folks root for the home town boy or girl because they watched them grow up, had a hand along the way in their development.
They helped shape you the little sprout as a teacher, minister, little league coach, farmer, store employer or soap box derby sponsor.
The college scholarships awarded to those going on to higher education are many in number. Not one big contributor but lots of them supporting you as you go on to learn a trade, obtain a sheepskin diploma and enter the work force wherever it may lead you.
Lower cost real estate, smaller sized insurance premiums too and labor for repairs or construction following along in more affordable fashion. That is all part of the many perks to getting more for less in small town living. But the best benefit is the unspoiled outdoors in Maine. When less people tramp or trample an area, the pure and natural shine it has is preserved. Respect for the outdoor fresh air and clean water and wildlife is higher. Sacred and that good stewardship is passed on to the next generation.
More than skilled in just one talent and bartering with lots of others to gain whatever is lacking until completion of anything lacking. We are lucky, grateful and don’t realize really to just how great an extent until someone from an urban area points out what is missing where they call home in the bright lights, big city landscape. We listen, hear what the city mouse regrets that usually revolves around needing more money, greater space, no crime and less traffic please. Help yourself to greater helpings of all those items that abound in small rural town living in Maine. And don’t stay away so long, Maine tugs as your heartstrings once you experience small town living in Maine.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA