I love Maine. My best friend's grandmother had a farm up in Sedgewick, ME, right on a tidal flat. We could go out on her property, wade into the muck with a hod (to put the clams in) and collect as many big, fat clams as you wanted. Of course, there were the ever present green-head flies and black flies, so once your hands and arms were covered with black tidal muck, they would come in for the kill. You then faced the choice of letting them bite you, or covering yourself with muck by slapping at them.
It was an easy choice. You were already covered with smelly black tidal mud, what is a little more? Plus we picked them by hand, so no matter how careful you were, you almost always would slice a digit, and get bright red blood mingling with the black mud. And having a bad back, there was no way for me to avoid getting back pain.
But the clams, when you steamed them, were glorious. So it was absolutely, 100% worth it!
I created this logo (containing all the elements above) and put it on shirts for those of us who actually picked the clams: 
That night, it was so rural, we would actually go out and lay in the middle of the road and look at the stars. There was an enormous meadow, perhaps 750 yards across, covered with low vegetation, and at the far end, near a rural road, was a gigantic, dilapadated barn, caving slowly in on itself over the years, and in the mooonlight, presented a ghostly silhouette.
But on more than one magical night, that entire massive meadow was just covered with what seemed like million of fireflies, slowly blinking on and off.
The next morning, we would go out and pick blueberries all around the farm, and have blueberry pancakes!
Well, his grandmother passed on at the age of 90 something. The old farm, whose timbers were so soft you could push your fingers in them, was torn down. Her old wood burning stove that filled a good portion of her kitchen was sold off to some collector. From my late teenage years, I went up there many times with my best friend. I was family...they were family. We are going now, as we all do. God, how I loved going up there.
But I will always have that memory of that place. Lying in the middle of the road, looking at the stars, and those fireflies. The fireflies.