Maine: Visiting Rachel Carson

Despite living for the past two years in Boston, Jane and I haven’t been to Maine since October 2015, when we took a brief but long-awaited autumn excursion to Mount Desert Island, spending four days living in a Bar Harbor bed-and-breakfast (alas, the Yankee Lady Inn is now gone) and exploring Acadia National Park and its environs. This past weekend, we finally returned to the rocky shores and pine-clad islands of Midcoast Maine, spending two days and two nights on Southport Island. Growing up, both of us admired the writings of Rachel Carson. Jane and I actually became friends in high school while competing together on our school’s Ocean Sciences Bowl team and in the Ecology and Oceanography competitions for the Science Olympiad; our present-day interest in the natural world (and my pursuit of landscape and nature photography) are in some ways the long after-ripples of those youthful, nerdy afternoons during which I sat in a public library in sunny suburban California and first read Carson’s beautifully poetic books, The Edge of the Sea and The Sea Around Us. In some ways, our paths have paralleled Carson’s, who lived in Maryland and studied at Johns Hopkins before establishing a seasonal home here in New England; I have long wanted to visit the coastal Maine island where she fell in love with the ocean and wrote some of her most influential works. In addition, after some vacation schedule changes (due in part to my new responsiblities at work, but in larger part to expecting our first child), Jane and I were in search of a more relaxing getaway than the rugged fall hiking trip that was originally planned in the Canadian Rockies. So it was that we wound up taking a weekend drive “down” the coast, making our way up from Boston, through New Hampshire, and to the coast of Maine.

After setting off from the city on a Saturday morning, we arrive at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, Maine, a small but lovely parcel of coastal wetlands and woodlands which is encircled by a flat walking trail. We explore the refuge for a few hours, taking photos of the lovely trees, late summer wildflowers, andpastel-pink and red viburnum berries growing all along the path at eye level. In the distant estuarine meanders, Jane spots waterfowl with her binoculars, while I take pictures of Canada geese and great egrets in flight. Afterward (having sustained more than a few mosquito bites), we return to the car and spend the rest of morning browsing a local antiquarian book store (I pick up two titles from my wishlist) and eating a two-foot (!) lobster roll at a local restaurant, Bull and Claw.

In the afternoon, we continue our drive, passing through Portland and encountering weekend traffic as we head east down the coast. Turning off Highway 1, we reach Southport Island, an archipelago sandwiched between Sheepscot Bay and Booth Bay. We stop in Boothbay Harbor to check out the waterfront, which even in September has all the air of a summer carnival - pizza joints, ice cream parlours, touristy gift shops, and boat charters being advertised up and down the dock. We sit outside and enjoy a giant banana split with strawberry, peach and crushed orange-pineapple ice cream. After picking up a Boothbay magnet for our fridge collection, we’re back on the road, making the brief drive to Cape Newagen at the very tip of the island. Here, we’ll be staying for two nights at the Newagen Seaside Inn, which Rachel Carson frequented during her summer sojourns in Southport. After checking in and showering, we eat an early dinner (burger for Jane, chowder for me) in the pub downstairs.

On the advice of the inn’s concierge, we close out our first day of travel by walking down a short path leading from the inn down to the waters of Sheepscot Bay. We join a few other inn guests who have gathered here to watch sunset, and to pay their respects to Carson at the spot where her ashes were scattered by some of her closest friends and neighbors here in Southport. It’s an absolutely beautiful place - a rocky, kelp-covered shoreline battered by the waters of the Atlantic; pine trees dotting the coast and outlying islands as far as the eye can see; the sunset gleaming, its warm golden light reflected in the tidal pools. We watch monarch butterflies gliding between the wild asters, wings flapping in the evening breeze as they continue their long, multigeneration migration along the Atlantic flyway. The scene seems reassuringly timeless, unchanged from what Carson described in her personal letters and writings from Newagen. We take some photos at the water’s edge, pondering this beautiful piece of landscape, feeling all the more grateful for the incredible woman, writer, and advocate for environmental justice who inspired us to visit it.

After an early evening and a long rest in our room at the inn, we wake before sunrise on Sunday, and drive up to the settlement of Southport proper. In the darkness of early morning, we pass by the lane where Carson’s old cottage is located, and we park at Hendrick’s Head Beach, exploring the beach at low tide and photographing the nearby lighthouse. We take a brief, easy stroll through the woods in the nearby Hendrick’s Head Preserve and walk up the road to Carson Lane before returning to the Newagen Seaside Inn for an indulgent self-serve breakfast: big plates of bacon and eggs, potatoes, and waffles, all washed down with juice and coffee. After breakfast, Jane and I take a walk down the lawn of the inn to the harbor at the tip of the cape. It’s a completely cloudy and overcast morning, but the subtle, subdued light - the sun shining through in places like a faint halo - makes for a beautiful scene at the water’s edge. We spot more butterflies in garden, gulls in the harbor, and a short-tailed ferret foraging for its own breakfast among the kelp-covered rocks before slinking away into the water. Afterward, we return to our room to take a leisurely, mid-morning nap.

In the afternoon, we set off walking down the inn’s driveway to see the town’s tiny library and to take a tour of the nearby Cape Newagen Alpaca Farm, a home-based alpaca-raising business run by a husband-and-wife team who moved from Connecticut to coastal Maine in search of a more grounded, natural way of living. Mike tells us their story while we meet the herd of girl-alpacas and their babies, who are generally adorable, social, and oh-so-quiet. They regard us with an air of pleasantry but disinterest (indeed, the entire herd turns its butts to us when they hear something moving about in the woods behind the farm, a moment which I photographed below) - disinterest, that is, until Jane begins to offer them handfuls of their favorite dried hay. The alpacas come to the fence, happily munching away at everything we offer them. Jane and I each pick up a lovely pair of wool socks in the farm’s gift shop (along with a magnet of our favorite alpaca, Zara) at the end of the tour.

We end our day with an early dinner at Cozy’s Dockside, an eatery and seafood joint located on the water near Cozy Harbor. We split an appetizer of calamari, a bowl of chowder, a lobster roll, and a plate of fried clams, in addition to a Maine blueberry milkshake. Jane’s appetite has really taken off in this second trimester, and she is coming close to (but not quite meeting) my usual, non-pregnant level of gluttony. In the evening, we retreat to the inn. We make a failed attempt at taking a rowboat out into the harbor before spending the sunset hours playing decidedly safer lawn games (cornhole and checkers). In the morning, after breakfast, we make the long drive back to Boston and are home by noon.

Vermont: Autumn in the Mountains

Fall foliage is upon us in New England. Now more settled into our new digs in the city, Jane and I head north to greet the season as it descends from the Canadian border. We’ve plotted a long-awaited weekend driving trip to Vermont, to wander some backroads and photograph woodlands and villages bedecked in their glorious autumn dress. After setting out from Boston before dawn, we stop briefly in New Hampshire to photograph the Franconia Range over Lafayette Brook and the morning mist rising over the valley to our northwest. The colours are astounding: tawny oaks, a sea of golden alders and elms, and crimson maples and brilliant red sumacs, standing out like individual little flames on the hillside. From Franconia, we continue north and west to the state border with Vermont. At Moore Reservoir, we leave the highway and follow Monroe Rd across the countryside, following the course of the Connecticut River and crossing over into Barnet. After half an hour of driving, we reach the little hamlet of Peacham, whose white-steepled church and outfields form a lovely scene for autumn photography. From the hillside behind the Peacham fire station, we photograph the morning light over the village before crossing the road to explore the cemetery on Academy Hill. The beautiful, stately trees surrounding the cemetery, and the sweeping, distant views beyond it to the south, form some of my favorite shots from the weekend.

After buying coffee and an apple muffin from the Peacham General Store, and two souvenir magnets and a bag of maple sugar candies from the arts co-op next door, we continue our drive across the countryside to the northwest. We stop beside another cemetery, in the Cabot Plains, to photograph a covered bridge, and proceed just a mile down the road to Burt’s Apple Orchard, where we buy a half-dozen cider donuts and a jug of apple cider. We briefly explore the farm’s corn maze and play with the rotten apple slingshot beside the parking lot before continuing on our way.

Our next stop of the morning is the top of Owl’s Head Mountain, in the Groton State Forest. During the day, a fire road leads to a car lot quite close to the mountain’s summit; we park and set off on the steep but short climb, with a bevy of other sightseers and leaf peepers. The conditions are utterly glorious for woodland photography here, with the high morning light filtering into a beautiful golden glow upon the forest floor; by comparison, the open, airy views that greet us at the mountaintop, of Kettle Pond surrrounded by foliage (though quite beautiful), are flat and lacklustre by comparison. We take in the sights and descend swiftly down the trail. My favorite images from this location (the vertical foliage scenes below) are respectively from a few steps up the trail, and from a stand of maples located literally in the center of the parking lot.

Back on the road, we continue west, stopping in Montpelier to have a lunch of Vietnamese rice and noodle soups. In the afternoon, we continue north to the little ski resort town and fall foliage capital of Stowe, encountering what could only be called a dispiriting amount of traffic (bumper-to-bumper from Waterbury all the way into the valley). Exhausted from a long morning of driving, we choose to have a relaxed evening at our inn, watching TV and going to bed early.

Vermont: The Green Mountains

The next morning, Jane and I head out early to photograph Stowe’s church at sunrise. The clouds are socked in, so the morning light is quite subdued; the church is still quite beautiful, though, against its backdrop of bronzed autumn trees and mist on the neighboring mountains. We also park in the lot behind the church and walk down Sunset Street to the trailhead for Sunset Rock - a small westward overlook across the town’s main street after short climb through the forest. The light is quite flat and miserable, so we take a few photos and selfies before descending the hillside to grab breakfast. Stowe, for all its pomp and popularity, is no larger than most of the small villages we’ve driven through in the past day; a single main street, a single traffic light intersection, and a few coffee shops, restaurants, and stores. It’s hard to imagine how crowded the area gets throughout the day in autumn, but we start to get a sense: by eight in the morning, several of the local breakfast joints have lines stretching out the doors and onto the sidewalk. Jane and I grab croissants and drinks at the nearby coffee shop and eat these on a nearby picnic bench before deciding to ignore Stowe and Smuggler’s Notch, opting instead to get out of town as soon as possible. We turn off the highway onto some backroads in Stowe Hollow, where we find beautiful, fog-laced hillsides covered with autumn foliage. But it is an easy consensus: Vermont has many scenic places, idyllic villages, and beautiful autumn landscapes. Stowe itself is far, far overrated, especially when it is a parking lot. Don’t center your photography travels around Stowe.

Heading south out of the Lamoille Valley, we turn onto VT-100, a famed driving route that cuts down the east flank of the Green Mountains. We stop to photograph Warren Falls and Moss Glen Falls, both looking beautiful against a cloak of golden foliage. Jane tries to ford the creek below Warren Falls against my advice; I have a good laugh a few moments later when she lands butt-first in the water just a few feet away from the creek bank. Further south, we have lunch at the Rochester Café and Country Store and browse the combined bookstore/café across the street, which has a wonderful collection of local memoirs and naturalist writing. Back on the road, we continue south, taking backroads to bypass Woodstock (another madhouse of foliage traffic). We spend a quiet afternoon and evening in a barn-converted-guesthouse on a farm in Reading, reading and watching movies into the night. The next morning (perhaps disillusioned by recent experience), we again choose again to ignore some of the area’s famously photographed farm scenes. We head homeward early, taking country roads overland into northern central Massachusetts and heading along Rt. 9 into Boston to avoid the pandemonium of this year’s unusually timed Boston Marathon.