PORTLAND, Maine — At the beginning of 2022 Chelsea Diehl, who lives in South Portland, sold a business she had started as a senior in college and then ran with pride and enthusiasm, for more than a decade. Like many others who step away from a job both demanding and rewarding, she soon found herself adrift.
“What if I left the one thing I was actually good at?” she wondered. “Do I know how to do anything else? If I try something new, will people take me seriously as I try to reinvent myself?” Diehl asked.
On the first day of January, Diehl—a resident of Maine since 2018—logged out of her work email for the final time and started crafting a resolution for the new year. Her plan, she writes, was to “complete one hundred new adventures in Maine by year’s end and hope whatever was supposed to be next for me would reveal itself along the way.” The time had come to hit the road.
Those adventures, which took her from Jackman to Lubec, from Kittery to Presque Isle, provided the material for Diehl’s new book, a collection of short essays called “Just Up the Road: A Year Discovering People, Places, and What Comes Next in the Pine Tree State.” Her travels introduced her to hikes, beaches, mountains, cinnamon rolls, sculptures, galleries, restaurants, candles, jams, beers, waterfalls, water buffalo and people—lots of interesting people.
The resolution to break out of her routine and explore turned out to be one of the best things Diehl has ever done. Now she’s sharing her—what she calls her love letter to Maine—with the hope it inspires others “to make the most of whatever amount of time you get to spend in this beautiful state.”