ERIK STUMPFEL
Erik Stumpfel is 'from away'. Erik emigrated to Maine from Virginia in 1988, following military service with the U.S. Army. He and his wife Beth have owned and reside in the original Leland-Burgess homestead farm house in pretty east Sangerville Maine since 1995. Portions of the residence date from the 1850s. Erik's poems chronicle the adjustment process undergone by those who come to Maine from other areas of the United States, and touch on central themes of rural life in southern Piscataquis County, Maine.
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.