EMILY KWONG, HOST:
A new collection of stories from Maine Public Radio explores what it's like to live and work in a state that many folks think of as vacation land. But Maine is so much more than that. Essential Salt is a six-episode podcast series about Maine, made in Maine and reported by students from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, where I was an audio student way back in the day. And the producer of Essential Salt, Brenna Farrell, from Maine Public, is here to talk about the show. Hey, Brenna, welcome.
BRENNA FARRELL, BYLINE: Hello. So glad to be here.
KWONG: I love Salt, and I love this show because it's a collection of stories that are very hyperlocal to Maine. These are stories that are not meant to be national in scope and saying, you know, this is what Maine says about America. But really, this is what Maine says about Maine. They're very intimate. They're very deep. Why was that important to you?
FARRELL: Yeah, well, it's funny because I spent a lot of my life working for national shows, and what we were always trying to do was find a local story that really got to the bigger points. So it's almost like I'm coming at it backwards, but I think the best stories really are the most local stories because they're being reported by people who know the place, they know the people. They have a kind of accountability because they stay there. So when you can have a local reporter talking to local people, you just get this extra richness. And that, in turn, I think, actually does end up speaking nationally, even internationally, because when you really hear a real person living their real life, you can't help but take some sort of meaning out of that and maybe reflect back on yourself.
KWONG: So what's an example of that?
FARRELL: Well, one story that I absolutely love so much - it's this very matter-of-fact report by a reporter named Carly Peruccio. Carly decides to try to get on a bus in Portland, Maine, at the south of the state and go as far north as possible, which ultimately would be Fort Kent if she could get all the way there.
KWONG: So she just has to take public transit across Maine?
FARRELL: Entirely, all - as far north as she can go. And she does that, I think, like, because she wants to highlight, like, when we're thinking about public transportation, it's not just, like, New York or Boston or these big cities. It's like, it's relevant to everyone.
KWONG: Yeah.
FARRELL: And a lot of folks in rural Maine need it but don't have access to it. So she puts herself on a bus to figure out what that actually looks like.
KWONG: Let's listen a bit to this episode of Essential Salt.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
CARLY PERUCCIO: It's 6:30 in the morning, and I just got on a bus in Portland. I'm trying to travel the length of Maine using public transportation. I tell the bus driver what I'm up to, and he seems skeptical.
UNIDENTIFIED BUS DRIVER: You're not going find public transportation going anywhere up that way. There is no public transportation, unless you're going to hitchhike. I think those days are long gone. Did you really think this out before you...
PERUCCIO: Before I left?
KWONG: I'm hooked.
FARRELL: Yeah, right?
KWONG: I'm already hooked. I want...
FARRELL: (Laughter).
KWONG: As someone who has family from Maine and - yes - went to this school, I'm astonished she did this. So what happened?
FARRELL: (Laughter) I don't want to totally reveal it, but as you can imagine, it was hard. She was on the bus for, all told, two days in, met a ton of people and talked with them and got, like, a lot of really great tape about who's on the bus, why, where they're trying to go, where they end up.
So one of the things I love about Carly's piece is, like, yes, it's about hopping on a bus to talk to people on the bus, but it's about such - it's about all these really big ideas about, you know, you're on the bus because you don't have a car. Why don't you have a car? Well, maybe you don't make enough at your job to be able to afford the car payments, but you still need to get to work. So you're on a bus.
So it's this story that touches on health care. It touches on the economy. I touches on climate. It touches on immigration once she gets up closer to the Canadian border. It's all these surprising, like, large factors that come into this very local piece about a bus ride.
KWONG: What you said about Maine being a microcosm makes total sense. Like, all these issues that are happening at the national level, as much as these are hyperlocal stories, are playing out in Maine. What can we learn from Maine, then - other states, other communities?
FARRELL: I mean, a ton. I think, for me, one of the things that's really coming to the surface is, sometimes thinking about urban and rural as coming from two opposing corners or, like, city and country as two different things kind of doesn't get us where we need to be with the conversation. Like, I think in many ways, they are much more blended than we often acknowledge. And I think in Maine, that shows up a lot. I think there's quite a bit of exchange across the state between people who might be based in southern Maine and Portland but love to go up north to experience maybe skiing or an outdoor activity. Or there are folks that travel up and down the coast either for work in fishing or whatever other reasons. Like, there's just a lot - it seems a lot more fluid and interdependent.
KWONG: Yeah. Do you have a story in the podcast that highlights some of those tensions?
FARRELL: Yeah, absolutely. I think my favorite example is this piece about the Island Soundscape Project. It's this small organization in down-east Maine that records - it goes out and records the sounds of places to try to document what they are, what they sound like.
KWONG: Let's hear it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
STEVE NORTON: A lot of times, I think that when you tell people you're going to make a soundscape, they're thinking, oh, you know, chirping birds and waves and, you know, all the pretty stuff that they enjoy. But your recorder there doesn't care whether it's pretty stuff you enjoy or a diesel boat motor. You get it all, and then you have to deal with it all. So...
(SOUNDBITE OF CRICKETS CHIRPING)
NORTON: ...Hopefully, it's a thing to think about.
KWONG: Oh, I love his voice.
FARRELL: I know, right?
KWONG: So who is this?
FARRELL: So that is Steve Norton. He's one of the audio folks at the Island Soundscape Project, and you're hearing him in that piece talking to the reporter of the piece, Joe Gouvin. And they had gone out to this island, Deer Isle off the coast of Maine, to try to capture what's known as the dawn chorus, which is, like, very early before the sun comes up, like, all the birds start waking up and, like, filling the air with all their calls. Steve had really hoped that he could capture ravens doing their morning calls. That didn't happen. They did get, like, a loon and a winter wren. But Joe was sort of being kind of honest and like, Well, really, we got a lot of boats going out, like, all these diesel motor boats. And you'd think that Steve would be like, yeah, oh, it's so hard to get, like, you know, a pristine...
KWONG: Clean dawn chorus.
FARRELL: Yeah, totally.
KWONG: Yeah.
FARRELL: Yeah, exactly. But instead, he was like, no, like, I would rather be recording something that captures the whole of this community. Like, that community is a fishing community. Like, there are folks getting up before dawn to go out for an early catch. And so I want to record something where people can point to it and say, like, hey, that's us. That's us going fishing. That is the place I know.
KWONG: What do you think is the power of recording the sounds of a place as it really is, not how maybe a tourism bureau or tourists or outsiders want it to be?
FARRELL: Yeah. I mean, I think, one, it just reflects back to you what are really the values of a place, because when you're listening, you hear who can survive there. So that might be beautiful birds. It might be people fishing. Like, you hear what the sound of the place is. And what's super interesting is that these folks are actually using those recordings not just as sort of, like, an art piece or something to share with the community to document a community. They're also using it to kind of study climate and ecological change.
So I had spoken to Steve and one of his colleagues, Nate (ph), and they had told me that they kind of - they're trying to, like, use sound instead of spreadsheets, you know? So it's a different way of getting data to people so that they can hear how the places that matter to them are changing over time. And so, you know, you hear those things, and then you kind of wrestle with yourself about, is that what we want?
KWONG: Well, the result is quite beautiful, so thank you for sharing it with us today.
FARRELL: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much.
KWONG: That is Brenna Farrell, producer of Essential Salt. You can hear full episodes of Essential Salt wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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