Waiting for Spring

Waiting for Spring is a celebration of life in one of America's most unforgiving and beautiful corners - southern Piscataquis County, Maine. Written by a self-described man "from away," these poems chronicle the experience of making a home in a place where winter arrives uninvited and stays far too long, where neighbors measure trust in decades, and where spring, when it finally comes, feels like a gift earned rather than given.

From the quiet comedy of a weather lecture cancelled by snow, to the philosophical depths of splitting wood no one will ever burn, to an unforgettable encounter with the aromatic evidence of a sleeping moose, Erik Stumpfel captures the rhythms, characters, and landscapes of rural Maine with wit, warmth, and a poet's eye for the telling detail.

Illustrated throughout with the author's own photographs of the ponds, streams, forests, and back roads of Piscataquis country, Waiting for Spring is at once a love letter to a place, a meditation on belonging, and an honest reckoning with what it means to arrive somewhere as a stranger - and slowly, quietly, become part of it.

For those who know Maine, these poems will ring true. For those who don't, they may just make you want to go.