Maine stuff in my California apartment No. 10 – hearing ‘Acadia’

Scan of the cover of "Acadia," a CD by Jim Chappell inspired by Maine's Acadia National Park.

Today’s photos – scans really – are of a CD cover and a couple of pages from the accompanying booklet. It is an instrumental CD by Jim Chappell that came out in 1996, I believe, and was inspired by Acadia National Park.

The CD, of course, is called “Acadia.”

My mother gave me the CD as a gift many years ago. I don’t recall if it was a birthday gift or a Christmas gift or just a gift from out the blue. Moms do that from time to time, give gifts for no reason at all.

The music is very soothing, relaxing and comfortable to listen to – piano, violins, cello, French horn, flute, that sort of thing. It’s not Radiohead or The White Stripes, but not everything has to be.

The CD had been lost among other CDs on a bookshelf that I recently went through. I’m listening to the CD at the very moment that I am writing this entry and I’ll very probably hit replay once it plays through.

Part of the booklet reads:

“The quiet solitude of the deep woods … the rumbling roar of surf crashing on the rocky coast of Maine … the silent sweep of a falcon high above a shimmering lake and the whelping sound of seals on tiny inlets. This is Acadia National Park. It is a meeting of mountain and valley, forest and meadow, ocean and land in a symphonic splash of salt, spray and foam. It is sunrise from the glacier-flattened top of Cadillac Mountain, bathing the sea and nearby cliffs with a caress of soft pink and gold as lighthouses flash like fireflies from the surrounding headlands.”

Scan from the booklet that came with the CD "Acadia" by Jim Chappell. The music was inspired by Maine's Acadia National Park.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been to Acadia National Park, but that passage hits it pretty well on the head. I don’t recall the part of “lighthouses flash like fireflies,” but it was a pretty long time ago. It is Maine, after all, with lighthouses on nearly every other coastal bluff.

The CD carries song titles that will be familiar to those who have visited Acadia National Park: “Cadillac Mountain,” “The Carriage Road,” “Southwest Harbor,” “Long Pond Canoe,” “The Loop Road,” and “Jordan Pond,” among others.

Scan of another page from the booklet that came with Jim Chappell's CD "Acadia," with music inspired by Maine's Acadia National Park.

For total disclosure, I am again stretching the whole Maine-stuff-in-my-California-apartment thing with this entry. The album was inspired by Acadia National Park as Chappell spent a week hiking around Acadia and humming into a cassette recorder – remember, this was in 1996 and it was a little early for digital recorders – the melodies that became “Acadia.” But the booklet indicates the music was recorded in California – Sebastopol and San Anselmo. Let’s just agree that it is Maine-inspired stuff in my California apartment.

I tracked down what seems to be Jim Chappell’s official website, where you can find more information about the guy and order his music. Apparently, he’s still at it and his latest CD is being released later this month.

The booklet also mentions Friends of Acadia, a nonprofit organization working to preserve Acadia National Park. According to the booklet, 15 percent of the profits from the sale of the CD go to the group. Donations to Friends of Acadia can be made by mailing them to the group at 43 Cottage Street, P.O. Box 45, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609. There’s also information about the park, how to join Friends of Acadia, and more on its website.

This is an occasional multipart series of photos of things related to Maine that can be found in Keith Michaud’s California apartment. All photos in this series are shot by and are the property of Keith Michaud.