HARPSWELL — Spend enough time out on the water, and you’re bound to experience some weird stuff. Especially, as is the case for many fishermen, if that time is spent alone.
That weird stuff—occurrences that can’t be explained, life-or-death drama or maybe a sense of impending doom or disaster that prompts a change of plans—will inform Amy Haible’s masters thesis.
At least if fishermen are willing to share those stories with her.
Haible, 59, got to know many fishermen in the Harpswell area during the fight over a proposed LNG terminal there ten years ago. She was among those speaking out against the project, which ultimately was defeated by local voters.
“A lot of my friends are fishermen,” she said, whom she got to know during the LNG fight.
And now she’s hoping local fishermen and those along the entire Maine coast will tell her about those experiences as she prepares to write a thesis for a post-graduate degree in trans-personal studies from Atlantic University, based in Virginia Beach, Va.
For decades, Haible worked in a very different world, one marked by rules, regulations and lines on maps. Moving to Maine in 1982 with a masters degree in urban and regional planning, she worked in the state development office during the Brennan administration. That work was followed by municipal planning work in Brunswick and Lisbon, and work for then-Sen. Bill Cohen.
After the LNG struggle, she was elected to the town select board and served a three-year term.
But a new marriage and an adopted child led to a change in thinking, she said, and 14 years ago she became a licensed shiatsu massage therapist. That helped awaken an interest in what she calls the spiritual realms.
For a year, Haible had been thinking about how to focus her thesis, and hit upon the idea of gathering fishermen’s stories of extraordinary experiences.
One kind of experience falls under the “sixth sense” category, she said. In Iraq, Haible has learned, some troops were known to have a preternatural sense of where an improvised explosive device might be, and other soldiers would trust those soldiers’ instincts.
Fishermen work hard, “very much in the physical world, yet relying on their sixth sense,” she said, and likely have these extraordinary experiences. “They’re in the environment, they don’t have a lot of distractions,” and so “this quiet voice that’s always there can rise to the level of being heard,” Haible said.
They may have dreams that lead them to conclude, “Maybe I shouldn’t go out today,” she said. People often dismiss such feelings, but Haible believes they are exceptional and have the power to changes people’s lives.
“It’s a feeling or an emotion that gives us a sense of our higher self,” she said, “something that’s bigger than our self.”
Another kind of experience, the life-or-death kind, was endured by a friend whose scallop boat flipped over, trapping him in the cabin. The man, then in his 20s, twice tried to find the cabin door and failed, and “pretty much decided this was it,” she said. But he began to have a vision in his mind of his then-girlfriend, and the children they would have, and it inspired him to find a way out.
Today, they are married with two children, she said.
“I really want to focus on stories that have deep meaning,” she said.
Haible is willing to travel the Maine coast to meet and talk with fishermen, and will keep their names confidential if the participants desire. She hopes to include an even dozen in the thesis.
“I have to cast my net far and wide,” she said. “I really want to hear their stories and honor their stories.”
Haible can be contacted at anhaible@comcast.net, 123 Spy Rock Road, Harpswell ME, 04079 or at 729-4029.