Ten days in Maine…

By Caitlin Kelly

Sunrise from our bedroom window

If you’ve never been to Maine, go!

As the furthest northeastern state in the U.S. with only a few regional airports, it’s probably not high on the list of Europeans or Canadians on their first-ever visit to the U.S. but it’s so well worth it, even with the hours and hours of driving on winding country roads that its coastal geography requires — getting almost anywhere can take 30 to 45 minutes, even if it’s only 10 miles or so.

But such gorgeous landscapes.

We’ve been staying in a tiny town called Brooklin, home to Wooden Boat magazine, to several boat-builders, including the grandson of legendary American writer E.B. White, and to Franklin Roosevelt, the American President’s great grandson.

We were last up here about six years ago, visiting our New York friend who owns a rambling 19th century farmhouse here. I love, and am so grateful for, the privilege of settling into an easy and relaxed week of bare feet, a lit woodstove on a rainy evening, nights of total silence, the cold, clean ocean a quick bike ride away.

The kind of place I can leave my bike outside unlocked while I get a library card and take out a few thrillers.

We cook and eat and sleep in and read and play gin rummy. We dry our clothes on a long clothesline. We eat dinner on a long screened-in porch (mosquitoes!)

Dinner on the verandah

Turned out our friend’s next-door neighbor knew my father, visiting from Canada, 30 years ago in small-town Nova Scotia. The world can feel very small!

We’ve also eaten some terrific meals, like very good Mexican food at El El Frijoles, (a Spanish pun on the legendary Maine retailer L.L. Bean), and burgers at Tasha’s a roadside restaurant just past it on Route 15.

Brooklin has a beautiful small library, a general store, a few shops and…that’s it. It’s on the Blue Hill peninsula, a mix — fairly typical of coastal Maine, at least mid-coast — of wealthy second (third and fourth) homeowners from as far south as Virgina and Florida and locals working as lobstermen, clammers and running local businesses.

A bushel of freshly-gathered clams

Blue Hill is a town where you can buy a $300 sweater or $8/pound tomatoes — or just sit and stare at the harbor.

It’s hard not to develop severe house lust here — one enormous, 8-bedroom Victorian home for $239,000 (not cheap but oh this house!) and a pale mauve Customs House on the ocean’s edge for $300,000. Why, remind me, did I choose such a poorly-paid field?

The sky here goes on forever, with views of distant hills, islands and inlets. The closest major city, Portland, is 2.5 hours southwest. The backroads are lined with potters, weavers and artists.

We’ve played golf several times at the local club, founded in 1928; several tee boxes had miniature lighthouses as markers. One misty afternoon we heard a low, moaning sound as we played — a foghorn.

As we were about to turn into the club driveway, we spotted a red fox who gazed back at us.

Seagulls fly overhead, the sun gleaming through their feathers.

Thick yellow-green beds of seaweed line the shore, weathered granite covered with shattered lavender mussel shells dropped from on high.

Rough, boulder-studded fields bristle with blueberries, a Maine specialty — with 44,000 acres of them under cultivation.

I love its timelessness.

Have you been here yet?

A jug of cool water sitting on a table down a nearby road on a hot afternoon