What it Means to Be a Registered Maine Guide

I am occasionally asked what it means to be a Registered Maine Guide and quite honestly, I often find the answer difficult to effectively express. Becoming a Registered Maine Guide is like being inducted into a family of like minded outdoors men and women, all sharing a bond and common passion for Maine’s woods and waters. With both Grandfathers, Father, Uncle and a Cousin all Registered Maine guides, for me becoming a guide was about being able to carry on the proud heritage and traditions, perhaps someday even inspiring my own children to become Maine guides.

 A career steeped in custom and ritual, being a Maine guide means doing your small part to ensure that the guiding traditions, ideals and oral history are forever preserved. This directive of course is no easy task, for as society has changed, so has the Maine guide also found it necessary to evolve or else risk certain extinction. This becomes a conundrum of sorts between the “old” guides and the “new” guides, as they both independently struggle to decide how to best preserve traditional guiding practices, in the face of a society no longer fully embracing these same principles? At its heart, the issue equates to simply adapting to ensure the survival of the Registered Maine Guide. This skirmish line is were we see a divide between the old wool wearing guides and the new guides sporting Gore-Tex.

HISTORICAL SIDE NOTE: It is my understanding that this same dividing line occurred when the REALLY old guides began watching the “young whipper snappers” no longer paddling their Grand Lake canoes but instead using fancy outboards. In other words, change is inevitable and must be embraced rather than ignored. A guide may change his mode of transport, a cell phone may replace a VHF radio, a GPS may be used for navigation and Gore-Tex may even replace wool but under all of the clothing and technology, it is the heart and soul of the Maine Guide that really matters. It is their innate knowledge and love of Maine’s wild places, gregarious nature and Yankee ingenuity that makes them uniquely iconic.

There are of course many young guides who are adapting and many old timers who are not. Eventually, it will be society who will ultimately will chisel a new breed of guide out of Maine’s course granite and it will be this modern, new-fangled and perhaps even contemporary Registered Maine Guide that will lead an entirely new generation of our society in its exploration of Maine’s wild lands and waters.

We as guides need to set aside our difference, we must learn to embrace and nurture young guides, especially those individuals where guiding is not their livelihood or primary source of income. “Full timers” will often chastise these individuals as not being “real” guides and it is this particular level of arrogance that really gets up my dander. Is it justifiable to belittle the half time teacher just because they don’t teach a full day? Does the half time teacher not have a passion for teaching and a love for their students? When did time become an indicator that someone is more or less valuable then another human being in his or her efforts in a particular career or cause? I may not have the time to guide more then a few “sports” every year but those are the moments I most cherish, for in those times I have a chance to show people Maine’s subtle intrinsic beauty and for me that is what guiding is all about.