Don’t all Mainers want the same thing? Happiness and prosperity?

Cuss words punctuated the conversation behind me. They weren’t exactly subtle, but at least they weren’t directed at me, and only sometimes at the kids playing in the lake water that lapped the rudimentary boat ramp here.

The crowd behind me was a humble collection of Washington County locals. My Maine plates did nothing to warm me to them. They were not fooled. I might be from Maine, but I was not from around here, and they could not give a damn (or so I gathered) about me.

The conversation came to a conspicuous stop as I pulled on my spray skirt and awkwardly crawled into the cockpit of a yellow sea kayak.

I was clearly being taken in now, observed. What sort of conclusions were they coming to? I guessed: peacenik? Tree-hugger? Left-winger? Southern Mainer? Gay?

They remained quiet (after a solid half hour of yelling at their kids and making neighborhood talk about neighbors who weren’t present), drank beer, and blew out cigarette smoke. All was quiet for a brief moment as I scuttled my way into the water.

I politely nodded, embarrassed, for no reason other than that I was on stage, and paddled away without looking back.

Presumably the conversation resumed. Maybe they discussed the fruity color of my decidedly uncool watercraft. On this lake, a shoddy aluminum lake boat with a tired outboard was the order of the day.

But who was more prejudiced? They or I? After all, for whatever they thought of me, I pegged them back as duped-Republican voters, unhealthy, ignorant and poor parents. They drove miles out of their way to buy cheap crap at Wal-Mart, smoked too much, and generally set poor examples for their children.

The cussing was but a small example. I was sure of it. They packed coolers of cheap beer for their outing on the water. I packed the Economist for my reading in the tent and contemplated bio-diesel. Wasn’t that better?

It was another example, from my experiences, of an ever-widening rift between people in our country.

My ilk was out of place when I traveled through Nebraska, Wyoming or other red states. And now here, much closer to home, existed a divide between this crew of locals (whom I was interrupting and whose backyard lake I was enjoying) and me.

There was little to say. I did not like their brand of corporate country music. I did not like their politics. And, while I respected their kids’ roles in Iraq, I resent that they were sent there. The “love it or leave it” stuff I abandoned long ago.

Yup, our moral and, in turn, social, communities were well-etched and pretty geographically well-defined as well. I was the visitor a scant 200 miles up I-95, and a jog east from my home.

But didn’t we want some of the same things ,anyway? Somewhere wasn’t there something that united us as humans, Americans and Mainers?

Turn off Rush, or Savage or the talking heads on NPR, and the silence is only interrupted by your own voice, or that of your neighbor. I was kayaking to a distant shore to camp. My distant neighbors were casting a quiet cove for bass. We were each looking for a break from the madness. We were all escaping the pressures that our homes embody – marital, financial or worse.

More specifically, I venture to guess that we all want most of the same things today: better schools for our kids, better wages and more secure jobs for our manufacturers, fishermen, or policemen, affordable mortgages, health insurance for our families, even a healthy environment (if it doesn’t mean unemployment, and it doesn’t have to) with healthy fish stocks and timber supplies that don’t run out, or rivers that are safe to swim in.

How about an economy that doesn’t leave pockets of the state broke and unnoticed, while others prosper?

These are all values that Mainers across the geopolitical spectrum cherish. These are values that Mainers need to talk about, together, reaching out to create a dialogue where there is none.

Maybe we can set an example for the rest of the country as well, because surely our elected officials in D.C. will not set it for us.

First, however, we need to put aside stereotypes and stuff our judgments of the other side somewhere well below waterline. There will always be two sides and always debate, but disrespect and, ultimately, distrust leave everyone out on the hook.

I paddled in the next morning ahead of a threatening skies and distant booming. I packed up and cinched down everything for the ride home, just ahead of a raucous squall.

I noticed an old-timer hustle in and hurriedly back his truck and trailer down. He was by himself. I went out in the rain and helped the man get his boat in deep enough waters, lined up and cranked back onto the trailer.

We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries just as the lightning started in earnest – me in my red sandals, he in thigh-high rubber boots. I reverted to dialect when we spoke and adjusted my grammar out of habit from days on lobster boats and in boatyards myself. We laughed, parted ways and headed home.

I was starting my own re-education today.

Matthew Klick is preparing for a graduate program in Northern Studies at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. He lives in Freeport.