Every couple of years or so, I visit the coast of Maine where I stay in a small cottage that has belonged to my family for more than a half-century. Although my busy schedule rarely permits me to spend more than a couple of days there, I always leave the place feeling renewed, refreshed and relaxed. I love Maine. My husband hates Maine.
But because he’s a good sport and an overall nice guy, he usually agrees to go there with me. Each time, however, the obvious charms of coastal Maine continue to elude him. Take the weather, for example. While I may enjoy bundling up in a cozy sweater and going for a brisk walk on a misty afternoon, he remains genuinely puzzled by my pleasure. “Why,” he asks, “does anyone want to go to a place in July and August that is like February everywhere else?” He is referring, of course, to the frequent gray skies, the arctic temperatures that blow in out of nowhere, the notorious fog that can blanket the area for many hours — OK, days. “But you love the beach, you love the ocean,” I point out, “and we’re surrounded by ocean here.”
“True, but what I like is beaches made out of sand, not rocks,” he explains patiently. “And I like an ocean you can actually swim in rather than one so cold that only a lobster can take a dip in it without succumbing to cardiac arrest.”
Now, when my husband says the word “lobster,” he is not, as the rest of us are prone to do, conjuring up the image of a delectable, poached crustacean lying supine on a dinner plate. No, the sad truth is, the sweet, delicate white flesh of a steamed lobster just doesn’t smite him. “Yeah, it’s OK,” he’ll shrug. “But I can’t see getting too excited about eating a lobster. Seems to me a lot more trouble than it’s worth.”
All right, back to the weather. I suggest to him that one of the appealing things about a damp gray day is that it offers an uninterrupted opportunity to sink into a comfortable chair in front of the fire with that long book he’s been trying to find time to read. What comfortable chair, he wonders? It’s true, the house in Maine is furnished with the rigid Victorian furniture the original owners bought for it a hundred years or so ago. As for the fire, it burns feebly in a tiny (and possibly dangerous) black iron stove that produces more smoke than warmth.
I am mentally reviewing my husband’s catalogue of complaints now as we sit on the plane flying northward toward Maine. Maybe this time he’ll like the place better, I think hopefully (I think this every year). Perhaps the weather will at least be more temperate this summer — I mean, aren’t we supposed to be feeling the effects of global warming? On the other hand, I could just forget about trying to make him like the place. Since he recently mentioned that he’s always had a secret yearning to vacation in the Seychelles, I probably ought to do some research on the Internet and try to figure out, first of all, where the heck the Seychelles are, and secondly, how much it might cost me to treat him to a vacation there.
Meanwhile, things in Maine aren’t looking good. After the plane descends through dark, drizzly cloud cover, we have a long wait before our rental car shows up. By the time we finally reach the coast, after slogging our way through traffic, it is raining steadily and a thick fog blanketing the road makes visibility difficult and progress slow. It is well after midnight when we get to the house.
In the dark, we haul our gear up the granite slope that lies between the driveway and the house and then grapple with the stiff locks on the front door. We stash the few groceries we’ve picked up along the way and then collapse into bed, to be lulled into sleep by a deep silence broken only by the foghorn’s muffled moans.
Deer Isle, the second largest island off the coast of Maine, seems about as remote a place as you can drive to on the eastern seaboard. Until about 60 years ago, it was accessible only by boat, but today one can get there by driving over a narrow suspension bridge that soars high above the Eggemoggin Reach. A maze of skinny roller coaster roads connects the various villages on the island, many of which were established in the 18th century. Painters, writers, musicians and other artists and artisans have settled here in droves over the years, attracted by the natural beauty of the sea and the spruce crowned granite islands, by the simple (and still relatively inexpensive) life of fishing villages, and by the proximity of other artists, many of whom come to study at the Haystack Mountain School of crafts and never leave the area. There are at least 20 galleries on the island, and a surprising number of them are well worth a visit. There are still more lobster boats than yachts in the harbor. There are no fast-food establishments here, no movie theaters other than the Opera House in Stonington, which occasionally features a movie, no bowling alleys, and only one golf course, which is exceedingly modest by any standard.
Human habitation on Deer Isle goes back to 11,000 BC. While there is no proof, it is generally accepted that 11th-century Vikings explored Deer Isle, and may even have traded with the native populations. By the 16th century, this was the heartland of the Eastern Abeneki, an Algonquin-speaking group consisting of many sub-tribes.
The first European settlers were a band of pioneers led by William Eaton and his wife, Maribah, who straggled onto the island in 1762 and set up permanent camps. Indeed, why would they leave what must have seemed a paradise whose shores were banked with clams and whose sea teemed with fish and lobster? There was a profusion of game, including enough ducks to provide a steady source of protein. Land was cleared for dairy cattle and sheep, corn was a staple and nuts, wild blueberries and strawberries were abundant.
Eventually, roads were built, often along old Indian trails. Deer Isle’s forests provided lumber for boat building during the 19th-century’s golden age of sailing. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the islands’ economic life revolved around the granite that was quarried there. In the days before cement and steel, granite was the load-bearing anchor of construction for most of the booming cities along the Eastern Seaboard. Manhattan’s curbstones and the abutments for its major bridges are made of Deer Isle granite, as are the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the U.S. Naval Academy and the Kennedy Memorial in the Arlington National Cemetery. The demand for granite countertops in today’s fashionable kitchens has breathed new life into many of the old moribund quarries.
Commercial lobstering began on Deer Isle in the 1860s, around the time of America’s Civil War. In addition to fishermen, the island produced a sizeable task force of able seaman who operated the yachts of wealthy tycoons during the notorious Gilded Age. The entire crews of the America’s Cup yachts “Defender” (1895) and “Columbia” (1899) were from Deer Isle.
The island’s first summer visitors began appearing in the 1870s, arriving by steamer connections from Boston and New York via Rockland. But until the bridge was built connecting Deer Isle to the mainland, the place remained relatively isolated. Even today one can still trace — through the strong local accent, and through the inhabitants’ fiercely held streak of independence — a society still somewhat removed from the influence of the outside world. Many of today’s island inhabitants — the Eatons, the Haskells and the Greenlaws — bear the names of the earliest European settlers.
These Downeasters, as Maine residents are called, are known for their taciturn manner, their streak of sly humor and their inclination to spin a good yarn. My friend Emily recently described a classic retort she overheard when an obvious tourist, out for a stroll, attempted to strike up a conversation with a retired fisherman. After the city slicker’s first few questions were met with mere “yups” and “nopes,” she chirped, “And have you lived here all your life?” “Not yet,” the old man answered.
We could actually use a little Downeast humor now to help us get through our first day. It has rained off and on since dawn. My husband passes the hours huddled next to an electric space heater (did I mention that there is no furnace in the house?), working at his laptop on the kitchen table. I am sitting on a bed upstairs wrapped in a comforter, with my computer propped up on pillows in front of me. Fortunately, the rain slacks off right around the time we’re due at Emily and Chet’s house for a drink. My husband has never been inside their house before, and he is amazed by its simple comforts. He sinks gratefully into an overstuffed chair, and pretty soon he even takes his coat off (Emily’s house has a modern central heating system).
Later in the evening the four of us go to dinner at the Maritime Cafe, a new place right on the harbor. After we’ve all polished off generous servings of plump and tender steamed clams, my husband surprises me by ordering lobster. “I’m curious to see how it is with the Chardonnay,” he explains. We’ve brought our own wine with us; the township of Stonington is “dry”, meaning that restaurants cannot sell alcoholic beverages (this is one of those quaint holdovers from America’s infamous Prohibition era that still exists in certain rural communities). The 2002 Chateau Souverain Chardonnay from Sonoma, Calif., confirms my belief that creamy, full-throttled Chardonnay is the wine of choice to drink with lobster or any other rich, densely textured seafood (by contrast, this wine was almost too big and powerful for the steamed clams — our leaner 2003 Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand was a much better choice for that more delicate shellfish).
The rain picks up again during the night, but the next morning dawns stunningly bright and warm. We hustle ourselves out of the house in time to grab a couple of homemade muffins and some coffee at the Harbor Cafe on Stonington’s Main Street before catching the seven o’clock mail boat to Isle au Haut, an island 7 miles off the coast of Deer Isle.
Isle au Haut (pronounced locally “I’ll-uh-ho”) translates as “High Island” and the name was bestowed on it by the explorer Samuel Champlain when he navigated the Maine coast in 1604. The island’s tiny year-round community swells considerably when summer residents arrive, but it remains a remote and peaceful place, visited mostly by hikers and other nature lovers. Deer Isle seems a veritable booming metropolis compared to Isle au Haut. In “The Lobster Chronicles” (Hyperion, 2002) Linda Greenlaw, an author and commercial lobsterer, says that it is easier to describe her remote community in terms of what it does have rather than what it doesn’t have:
“We have what I believe could be the smallest post office in the country. We currently have 47 full-time residents, half of whom I am related to in one way or another. We have one general store, one church, one lighthouse, a one-room schoolhouse for grades K through eight, a town hall that seconds as the school’s gymnasium, three selectmen, a fishermen’s co-op, 47,00 rugged acres of which 2,800 belong to Acadia National Park and 13 miles of bad road. And we have lobsters.”
There is also an 18-mile network of hiking trails on Isle au Haut. After the “Miss Lizzie” docks at the town landing, we set off on a trail that plunges us into deep forestland. For a couple of hours the path leads us across marshes, through wooded uplands and along stretches of rocky shoreline. Finally, we reach Duck Harbor where we settle ourselves on the dock for the “Mink,” “Miss Lizzie’s” sister ship, to pick us up for the trip back to Stonington.
My husband sits on the warm planks with his head thrown back to catch the sunlight on his face. A small smile plays across his lips. I’d say that he looks suspiciously like a man who is enjoying himself. “You know, going to Emily’s house last night was a revelation to me,” he murmurs drowsily. “It made me realize that perhaps I don’t hate Maine after all. It’s entirely possible that instead of hating the whole state, what I dislike is simply our uncomfortable old furniture.”
The good weather holds, and the remaining couple of days of our vacation pass by in a pleasant blur. We discover nearby walking trails to Barred Island and to the old Settlement Quarry. We stroll up the hill to admire the profusion of lilies carpeting the vast surface of Ames Pond. We check out a few of the local galleries. In an antique store, we come perilously close to buying a splendid Art Deco table, until we realize, in the nick of time, that it’s too long for our dining room. One afternoon we visit Stonington Sea Products, where we purchase smoked peppered trout, succulent scallops and fabulously fresh swordfish, and that night we cook up a pescatory feast. The next evening, we go to the Fisherman’s Friend, a favored Island restaurant, for more treats from the ocean (fish and chips for my husband, broiled halibut for me).
On our last night, we are back to the Maritime Cafe where I have exactly the same menu I enjoyed on the previous visit: steamed clams and a lobster. My husband orders crab cakes. “They’re good, but not great,” he observes. “There are too many bread crumbs and not enough crab.” I taste one and agree. At the end of the evening, as we are strolling back to the house, he startles me. “The crab cakes may not have been perfect,” he says, “but everything else was delicious — the Caesar salad, the roasted tomatoes, the blueberry cobbler. And the view of the harbor from the cafe is stunning. This is a place I’d definitely come back to. But next year,” he adds, “I think I’ll order the lobster.”
Maybe I don’t have to buy tickets to the Seychelles after all — perhaps all I need to invest in is a couple of nice, comfortable chairs.
