It is approaching high summer now all across Maine, a welcome respite to the trials of living in the north country for the rest of the year.

The wonderful profusion of plants now crowds out, as only nature can, some of the detritus and debris of our daily lives so visible in other seasons. It, no doubt, offers for some the possibility of a future harvest for crops, but in other cases, it simply hides the signs of our failures and diminished dreams as it helps to screen our dooryards of broken dreams.

While urban poverty tends to be concentrated and localized and thus always visible in certain places, rural poverty is widespread and nearly ubiquitous in so many corners of Maine. Somehow, there is also something extra-poignant about seeing it one family, one yard at a time.

Of course, the rural landscape of Maine shows industry and hard work and an independent spirit as well. The earliest settlers, be they Native Americans or Europeans or later native born Americans, hacked out livelihoods out of the great wilderness. There are still signs of that struggle and the dreams that succeeded in the hustle and bustle of the small towns and in the easy regularity of the prosperous farming communities.

But rural Maine also contains many – too many – dooryards of broken dreams. As one drives around the state, one sees the signs not just of poverty and hardscrabble living but the decayed and rusted hopes of the past. They often represent now unrealized and depressing symbols in their “could of, would of, should of” essence.

There are broken snowmobiles and large satellite dishes no longer in use. Assorted farm implements lie rusted and unused here and there. There is a persistent pattern of worn out or discarded machinery as well as junk cars and trucks. There are boats and canoes with holes and boats with no bottoms as well as boats and canoes with weeds growing in them. Power lawn mowers and hand movers no longer useful or useable appear to be almost ubiquitous.

There are unfinished projects, porches with ripped screens, sagging roofs, broken or sagging gutters and other signs of rural decay. Often there are even piles of rotted fire wood, cut with undoubted enthusiasm long ago, but then forgotten or at least left unused until the fiber became rotted and rotten, no longer usable.

If one drives throughout most of western, northern and eastern Maine today, one sees the signs of economic decline everywhere. Almost every major center – Dexter, Milo, Strong, Dover-Foxcroft, Lincoln, Millinocket to name just a few – that once had a textile or shoe factory, wood processing plant or paper mill has lost that facility during the past 30 years.

With those manufacturing plants have gone the highest paying jobs in the entire area as the best jobs have simply gone away. Thirty years ago, when I traveled the 2nd District for then Congressman Bill Cohen, these were thriving, often bustling shire towns, county seats and centers of economic activity. There were significant economic challenges then, of course, but there was hope, hope that government could, should and would do something to make for a better future.

But the last 30 years have witnessed precious little positive political action of a scope necessary to cope with the closures and the reasons for them. For with these closures, there have been a series of tremendously debilitating ripple effects coming out of those once prosperous locations. The major industry is gone and with it, the many satellite facilities and small businesses that fed, supplied and distributed those products. Store fronts are vacant, sidewalks cracked and young people leaving. Signs of decline are everywhere. Economic bases have shriveled and withered. A great deal of the quality of life has slipped away for many.

These scenes are not just from some other “other Maine” of dusty economic reports. They are scenes from all over the state. They are not just the broken dreams of others. There is something in the decay and decline that diminishes us all. We are all Mainers and the decline in rural and peri-urban Maine lessens the state, both its present and its future for all of us.

Those of us connected to the political world should never forget those dooryards of broken dreams. The dooryards of broken dreams are part of our political, as well as our economic, reality. It is not enough to blame the Legislature and political leaders. They, after all, give us what we say we want. Too often, in partisan bickering and clashing ideologies, we miss the possibilities of pragmatic solutions that would better the lives of so many.

We in Maine need to refocus our energies in the coming years as we rededicate ourselves to provide meaningful help and opportunity to the working poor who every day confront, often with great courage and resolve, their dooryards of broken dreams. And, as Maria Fuentes puts it, “We must make sure that all the men and women who seek political office really look at those dooryards and care what happens in them.”

Chris Potholm is professor of government at Bowdoin College, president of a national polling company and a writer, analyst and speaker on Maine’s political scene. He can be reached at The Potholm Group, 182 Hildreth Road, Harpswell, Maine 04079 or by e-mail at [email protected].