I feel sorry for our summer residents.

I’m not talking about tourists. I’m talking about folks from away who spend the summer and sometimes the fall in Maine at their camps and houses.

I understand the need for them to quarantine for two weeks after they arrive. But too many Mainers are sending them nasty messages. One summer resident in Mount Vernon, after they arrived here, got a message that someone was going to burn down their camp. That was really awful.

You have to understand that these summer residents love our state and contribute a lot to it. When I was a selectman, I discovered that 80% of our property taxes were paid by our summer residents, mostly because many of them live on our lakes and ponds.

And when I raised money to build an addition to our library, 80% of our individual donors were summer residents. They love our library and the towns of Mount Vernon and Vienna. I encourage you, as the summer residents arrive, to make sure they still feel welcome here.

I’m also concerned about our outdoor industry, including guides and sporting camps. I talked with a Massachusetts hunter who always comes up to hunt turkeys. He planned to rent a camp in Vienna, but when he discovered he’d have to quarantine in the camp for two weeks and not go out to hunt turkeys, he canceled his trip.

I’m afraid most nonresident hunters and anglers will not be coming to Maine this year, and that will be devastating for guides, sporting camps, and lots of small businesses. Many of our seasonal sporting camps were already struggling, something I discovered when I wrote a book about Maine sporting camps, published by Down East Books. I’m worried that this epidemic will put them out of business permanently.

During the seven years that my wife Linda and I wrote weekly travel columns for this newspaper, we got to know lots of owners of small restaurants and inns around the state. Most of them depended on tourists in July and August to maintain their businesses.

Regular readers of this column know I have a strong connection to Lubec, as far Downeast as you can go. At one time Lubec was a bustling community, but sadly, today the town is really struggling. It’s high school closed and even its nursing home closed. Lubec’s businesses depend now on tourists in July and August to sustain them. If they don’t get those tourists this year, I fear some of them will close for good.

And I’m sure this same situation occurs in lots of small Maine towns. I encourage you, this summer, to do what you can to help sustain our small businesses, especially restaurants and inns. If you need some recommendations, go to my website, www.georgesmithmaine.com, select Best of Maine and the town you want to visit, and you’ll get the travel columns we wrote about places in that town.

This is also a great year to visit a Maine sporting camp and hire a guide to go fishing or hunting. If you need a recommendation, grab a copy of my book, Maine Sporting Camps.

I really think Judy Camuso, commissioner of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, has done a great job of encouraging people to get outdoors. For example, she let everyone fish without a license until the end of April, and she expanded the turkey hunt, including an extra day for kids only, and suspended the need to register your turkey, so hunters would not have to go to a tagging station.

I also recommend that you get outdoors a lot. Even though I’m in a wheelchair, every nice day I get outside and ride up and down our road. I’ve even sat outside on sunny warm days reading a book.

And I hope your yard is full of wild animals, like ours is. We have an awesome group of birds, and everything from a porcupine to turkeys.

Of course, Linda was not pleased to see a woodchuck in her garden!

George Smith can be reached at 34 Blake Hill Road, Mount Vernon 04352, or georgesmithmaine@gmail.com. Read more of Smith’s writings at www.georgesmithmaine.com.

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