Again, Linda Greenlaw's writing about the Isle au Haut, but I think these Islanders may just be a slight exaggeration of what a lot of Mainers do in general. Or at least ones I know...
"Fishermen are not generally fearful of what others would assume to be paralyzingly scary. Islanders, too, I thought... keep a strange distance between themselves and apprehension of real danger. We fear more the collateral circumstances than danger itself. We do not fear burning to death, but we do fear that the absence of a legal fire department may prohibit affordable home-owners' insurance. We do not fear sickness or injury, but we do worry about troubling our neighbors when we need evacuation to a medical facility. We do not fear death by drowning--in fact, many Islanders never learn how to swim--but everyone loves to speculate on how long a body can survive submerged in certain water temperatures."
-Linda Greenlaw,
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