Cory LaForge always liked a particular restaurant space on Main Street in Bucksport, which recently housed My Buddy’s Place and the Friar’s Brewhouse Tap Room before that.

So much so that, when it became available two months ago, he decided to open his own restaurant there.

Salsa Shack Maine, which opened in early December, is a physical location for the food truck business he’s operated out of Ellsworth and Orland for the last two years. The new spot carrying tacos, burritos and quesadillas adds to a growing restaurant scene in Bucksport and is meant to be a welcoming community space.

“I just loved the feeling of having a smaller restaurant,” LaForge said. “It feels more intimate. This place is designed where you can have a good conversation or talk to your customers, like they’re not just another number on a ticket.”

After growing up in the midcoast, LaForge eventually moved west to work in restaurants at ski areas, where he was exposed to more cultural diversity and new types of food – including tacos.

“It’s like all these different flavors that we’re not exposed to in Maine, so it’s like, I feel like I’ve been living a lie my whole life,” he said. “It was fun to bring all those things that I learned back here.”

When he realized his goal of opening a food truck in 2023 after returning to Maine, LaForge found the trailer he’d purchased on Facebook Marketplace was too small to fit anything but tortillas – and the Salsa Shack was born.

It opened at the Ellsworth Harbor Park in 2023 and operated out of the Orland Community Center in the winter. What started as an experiment took off in popularity and has been busy ever since.

LaForge calls his style “Maine-Mex:” a mix of authentic street tacos in a build-your-own format with different salsas and protein. Speciality salsas include corn and black bean, roasted poblano, pineapple jalapeno and mango Tajin.

The larger kitchen space in the new restaurant has allowed a menu expansion to include quesadillas, burritos and burrito bowls in addition to the tacos, nachos and taco salad bowls sold from the food truck. Regular specials are also on the menu.

More new menu items are likely ahead, according to LaForge, along with a beer and wine license and expanded hours in the spring.

The food truck will live on for now, too; he’s signed up for a few events in the coming months.

Starting Jan. 6, the restaurant will also offer a buy-two-get-one-free “Taco Tuesday” promotion.

“It’s a really fun vibe here, and I feel like everyone finds it very comfortable and easy to come in and order,” LaForge said, comparing the restaurant’s atmosphere to the television show Cheers. “Even if you have to sit down and wait a little while, we always have some fun conversations going on.”

So far, the welcome has been warm locally, he said, both from residents and the other new restaurant owners who help each other out. LaForge’s sole employee, Connor MacLeod, is also a familiar face from MacLeod’s Restaurant, which closed in March after 45 years on Main Street.

When it shut its doors, people in town weren’t sure where they would go, according to LaForge. But four new establishments opened in 2025, offering a range from Thai food to diner offerings.

“It’s kind of fun to see so [many] culinary changes,” he said.

The Salsa Shack is currently open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Nearing the end of December, the streams are shrouded in ice. The trout are there, but they are lethargic and in a state of semi-hibernation. From the middle of November, I spend my weekends cutting, splitting and stacking logs for the woodstove; that is, when I’m not plowing snow off the long dirt drive that snakes off the macadam like a woodland stream, winding through hardwoods and coming to rest beside our home.

I could pay Don from the auto shop to do the plowing and we can heat our home with oil, but the effort to clear the drive and keep the stove full is an excuse to spend time outdoors, which keeps me active and sane throughout the winter months and provides the illusion of self-sufficiency.

By the third week of February, the banks of snow have melted along the dirt drive and on either side of the walk leading into our house. Some hardpack remains under the dogwood tree or in the lee of the outbuildings scattered around the 12 acres surrounding our home.

My jeans bear oil stains that Trish has been unable to remove. The strings from the frayed bottoms trail behind the rubber heels of my felt-packed Sorels like a dry fly reeled against the stream’s current. The fingers of my inexpensive work gloves are worn through in a few places, and I have wrapped them with duct tape to keep the lining from falling out.

This morning, I’m wearing a heavy shirt with a stiff canvas exterior over a long-sleeve T-shirt. The words “Oquossoc Marine” are stitched in black across the front of my cap, the letters rising upward through a grease stain like boulders in a lake around which smallmouth bass might school.

I walk the short distance across the yard to a small shed, the lawn crunching under my boots. The morning frost glistens like tiny diamonds sprinkled among the blades of matted grass as the sun edges over a line of spruce to reveal a flawless blue sky.

Lifting the latch, I open the door. The smell of grease and oil hangs in the cold stillness. I reach past the chainsaw and grab the maul from the corner of the shed, walking back outside, passing the near-empty lean-to that contains the remains of two cords of stovewood. By this time of year, the pieces that remain are stacked against the back wall, some littering the floor, a few wedged into the corners.

Throughout November and the early part of December, the sound of my chainsaw fills the air as I down trees, hauling them from the woodlot across the earthen dam of our little pond and cutting them into stove-sized pieces. By January, I’m spending my time splitting the 12-inch logs, allowing them to season in the open air throughout spring and summer until the following fall when I stack them, row upon row, under the eaves of the empty lean-to.

When I was younger, I split wood from morning until three or four in the afternoon, breaking only for lunch, a mountain of billets rising quickly, leaving the remainder of the winter for feeding birds, exploring the woods, tying flies. These days, I wear a back brace and work for no more than three hours a day, taking an entire winter of weekends to raise my mountain of split wood.

I can rent a gas-powered log splitter and form the pile of logs in days instead of months, but where is the honor in that? No, I prefer this six-pound maul, the one I now cradle in my hands, the same maul I have used to create 40 winters’ worth of firewood. Once, I replaced the shaft when an errant blow splintered it against the side of a stump, only later learning a trick used by hockey players to protect their sticks — duct tape wrapped around the base of the blade.

This morning, I stopped at the three chopping blocks frozen to the ground in front of the rising summit of wood. Chinks and grooves cut into the edges of each stump wherever the maul’s sharp blade has powered through a log. The bark has fallen away, lying in shreds, mixed into sawdust with pieces of kindling, wood chips, shavings and twigs, creating a ligneous gazpacho.

On either side lies a pile of logs, mostly sugar maple, white oak, shagbark hickory and ash; the type of hardwood that splits easily and burns slowly, providing an efficient source of heat for the woodstove. There is a smaller amount of soft wood that is stringy, more difficult to split and faster burning like poplar and tulip.

I like the smell of the resin, the feeling of the sawdust, spongy under my boots, the maul, familiar in my hands, but it is the sight of the growing mountain that I most enjoy, with its base of split logs, ridges of sticks and crags of twisted branch.

Feet spread apart, I grasp the maul, my left hand around the bottom of the shaft, my right around its base. I take pleasure in the power that spreads from my legs up through my shoulders and down through my arms, the motion of the heavy blade as it swings through the air, the crack of the log as it splits in two. After 20 minutes, I unbutton the canvas shirt, remove the baseball cap and run a hand through my thinning hair.

A few feet from the woodpile a chickadee flits among the branches of an ironwood tree. Landing on the metal rung of the tube feeder, the little bird cocks its head sideways, its black eye looking like a tiny plastic bead. As the bird flies off with a seed, a titmouse appears with its gray breast feathers puffed outward, a little dun-colored pompadour shooting up as it chirps a complaint.

I swing the maul down, the blade striking off center. A quarter of the log splits away while the remaining piece falls over on its side. While the titmouse plucks a seed from the feeder, two goldfinches and a nuthatch impatiently chatter from the branches of a nearby sugar maple.

Clouds have moved in from the west and without the sun there is a chill in the air. Even so, I’m sweating. I hang the outer shirt from a nail hammered into the side of the woodshed and roll up the long sleeves of my T-shirt.

The next swing of the maul fails to split the log. Aiming for a fracture, I try again, causing a chunk of wood to fly end over end across the frozen ground.

I develop a rhythm — bend, pick up a log, split. Bend, pick up a log and split. There is ample time for reflection. Today, I fancy myself an aging samurai, past my prime, without a lord to follow or battle to fight, but still able to wield a weapon with grace and skill. After a while, I stoop down, tossing the scattered billets toward the top of the pile, the mountain growing high under the ashen clouds.

When snow begins to fall, I remove the canvas shirt from the nail and slip it back on. The flakes are light, dry. They settle on my shoulders, the chopping blocks, the woodpile, covering the branches of the ironwood tree and sticking to the ground.

The birds are now darting back and forth grabbing seeds without hesitation. In the stillness of the afternoon, I hear the flutter of their wings.