A biography for Sue Hubbellhasn’t been written yet.
“All chain saws are formidable and dangerous.”
“It wasn't that there weren't menfolk in my grandmother's stories. There were lots of them but they died young or were drifters and dreamers who disappeared or turned to drink or succumbed to melancholia or slow mortal diseases. The women, on the other hand, lived a long time and were full of spit and vinegar until the end.”
“A rule about portages: the longer and harder they are, the fewer people will make them.”
“Otherness is what I have always liked about bugs.”
“We humans are a minority of giants stumbling around in a world of little things.”
“Healthy camel crickets spend a lot of their waking hours grooming, so I have learned to recognize the ones that will soon die because they walk about encrusted with sand and bits of litter, having lost all interest in keeping clean.”
“My maternal grandmother, Annie Sparks, lived with our family during the while I was growing up. When I came home from school, after having made a detour to the kitchen to pour a glass of milk and fix a thick peanut butter sandwich on easy-to-tear white bread, I would go up to her sitting room.”
“Strictly speaking, one never 'keeps' bees - one comes to terms with their wild nature.”
“I know a number of coastal trails in downeast Maine, all of them interesting.”
“I am an early riser.”
“We live in a world in which there are many live things other than human beings, and many of these things can seem beautiful and amusing and interesting to us if they can catch our attention and if we can step back from our crabbed and limiting and lonely anthropocentricity to consider them.”
“You have to take springtime on its own terms in the Ozarks: there is no other way. It can't be predicted. It is unsteady, full of promise, promise that is sometimes broken. It is also bawdy, irrepressible, excessive, fecund, willful.”
“Spring starts in January in the Ozarks, lurches on in a complicated way, with spurts and setbacks, until May. Then, early in May, there is a cold spell known as blackberry winter because it comes when blackberries bloom. It is a worrisome week for anyone who farms.”
“I've lived all over the country - Michigan, California, Texas, New Jersey, Rhode Island and, now, Maine - but I never understood springtime until I spent 25 years farming in the Ozarks.”
“Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils. They can be kept anywhere.”
“Great Wass Island Preserve is a 1,579-acre Nature Conservancy jewel, a place of spectacular botanical interest, and Jonesport is situated on a postcard-pretty harbor. Tourism is not serious business in those parts - boat building and fishing are - and there are no signs telling how to get to Great Wass. But I know.”
“The only time I ever believed that I knew all there was to know about beekeeping was the first year I was keeping them. Every year since I’ve known less and less and have accepted the humbling truth that bees know more about making honey than I do.”
“I started collecting crickets to study them. Now I expect they will be my companions for many years to come.”
“Sometimes, I wonder where we older women fit into the social scheme of things once nest-building has lost its charm.”
“Everyone should have two or three hives of bees.”