Page 7 - Spring 2026

The Children of Houlton, continued . . .
all day and your
parents weren’t
worried because
the whole town
was watching
out for you.
We had four
real seasons
that taught
us patience,
resilience, how
to find joy in the
quiet moments
between the
chaos.
The ones who stayed know something the rest of us
had to learn the hard way: that boring is a blessing.
That slow is sacred. That cold builds character in a way
that seventy-five and sunny never will. Some became
firefighters, serving their community for decades.
Others found their way, made their peace with limited
options, built lives that mattered in the town that
made them.
The rest of us? We’re scattered now, living in places
where the cost of living is higher but somehow life
costs us more. Our children and grandchildren have
never felt snow like that, never known a community
like that, never experienced the particular magic of
growing up in a place small enough to hold you close
but big enough to let you dream. We tell them stories
they can’t quite understand, about a town called
Houlton that exists now more in memory than reality.
Some of us came back. After thirty years away, after
forty, after watching the world and deciding it wasn’t
better after all—just different. They moved back to
Houlton and found it changed but somehow exactly
the same, the way home always is. The storefronts
are different, the faces have aged, Market Square isn’t
quite as bustling, but the soul of the place remains.
That slow, steady, stubborn soul that refuses to be
anything other than what it is.
www.houltonalumni.com
Others of us can’t come back. Arthritis doesn’t forgive
northern winters. Seasonal Affective Disorder makes
those long dark months unbearable. Our spouses
could never love it the way we do. Our careers are
elsewhere, our children are elsewhere, our lives are too
tangled up in other places to extract ourselves now.
We’re too old to shovel, too broken to brave the ice,
too settled to start over.
But we visit when we can. Summer trips to see family,
quick stops on the way through. We drive down streets
that hold more memories than pavement, past houses
where we learned to be who we are, past fields where
we learned what freedom felt like. We sit on the curb
in front of the Temple and think. We walk through a
Market Square that seems smaller now but somehow
still looms larger than any city we’ve lived in since.
And we cry. Not sad tears exactly, but something more
complicated—grief mixed with gratitude, nostalgia
tinged with joy. We cry because we were so lucky to
have grown up there, and so unlucky that we can
never really go back. We cry because Houlton gave us
everything we needed to leave it, and now we spend
our lives missing what we left behind.
There’s a saying: you can’t go home again. But for those
of us from Houlton, home never really lets you go. It
stays with you in the way you treat your neighbors,
in the work ethic you can’t shake, in the values you
didn’t realize you were learning until you met people
who never learned them. It stays in your bones, in your
blood, in the part of your heart that still belongs to
Aroostook County no matter how far you roam.
We are the children of Houlton, shaped by its seasons,
strengthened by its struggles, forever marked by its
magic. And when people ask us where we’re from,
we don’t just name a town—we name a feeling, a
foundation, a piece of ourselves we’ll carry until the
day we die.
We are from Houlton, Maine. And Houlton, Maine is in
us.
Forever.
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