Let’s play “Jeopardy.” Got the buzzer in hand? OK, here we go.
“I’ll take Maine Geography for $200, Alex.”
“And the answer is: this part of northern Franklin County is home to ten of Maine’s fourteen mountains with elevations greater than 4,000 feet.”
“What are the High Peaks of Maine?” If that’s what you said and you were quick on the buzzer, you get $200 on the board.
John and Cynthia Orcutt, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared on that game show, but they have enjoyed experiences that money can’t buy. In the last decade they have, with cameras in hand, hiked, skied, biked, canoed and kayaked throughout northern Franklin County, an area that includes Rangeley and Sugarloaf. Of the four to five thousand photographs they took while exploring, ninety of their favorites made it into their book, “Enduring Heights.” The images show the mountains in all four seasons, in sun and snow and shadow, in all their remote splendor, captured by two people who know the landscape intimately.
“Being there a lot makes you feel part of the place,” says John Orcutt. All those trips made for more arresting pictures. “We go back to the same place multiple times, different times of the day, different times of the year.”
Photography books aren’t known for their messages. This volume has one. The Orcutts hope readers come away with a new appreciation for the beauty of these mountains. “We all need to work to conserve and preserve them,” says Cynthia Orcutt, “so they can stay this way for generations to come.”