From the higher reaches of Mount Megunticook, I gaze out on the islands of Penobscot Bay. Cloaked in a fur of evergreens, some are lengthy and irregular shards of rock; others are as spherical as gumdrops. Under raked strands of cirrus cloud, the wind scrawls patterns onto the ocean. Between the mountain and the North Atlantic lies the postcard-perfect city of Camden, with its thumb-shaped harbor and white church steeples.
The seaward view from the Camden Hills is justly celebrated. It’s mentioned to have impressed “Renascence,” a poem by the legendary Mainer Edna St. Vincent Millay by which the speaker gazes out at “three islands in a bay” and hears “The creaking of the tented sky / The ticking of Eternity.” I grew up about an hour’s drive inland, and over the previous 40 years I’ve hoofed it up this 1,385-foot mountain dozens of instances. Megunticook is arguably probably the most rewarding simple hike within the state. At the tiered granite overlook close to the summit, I take as a lot consolation within the huge panorama and the Christmassy odor of balsam fir as I’d within the arms of an outdated good friend. The Midcoast area, which begins (relying on who you ask) simply north of Portland and runs northeast (or “down,” in native parlance) to someplace across the rural Blue Hill Peninsula, close to Bar Harbor, will get fewer crowds than southern Maine. It’s much less beachy and extra Birkenstock-y. The Camden-to-Rockland stretch—the center of the Midcoast—covers lower than 10 miles however combines sea-and-mountain surroundings and vibrant city life like nowhere else on the East Coast.
The reverse view, of Camden Hills from Penobscot Bay, is simply as astonishing. The many-islanded bay itself is a crusing heaven. Camden, Rockland, and Rockport (the seaside hamlet that lies between them) have lengthy carried a cultural weight that belies their measurement. In the annals of American panorama portray, Midcoast Maine is true up there with the Hudson River Valley. In addition to sustaining farmers, sea captains, and fisherfolk for hundreds of years, its rugged panorama has additionally lured generations of artists, to not point out deep-pocketed summer season residents, preservationists, and patrons of the humanities. Now a contemporary group of makers and entrepreneurs have arrived to replace the Midcoast life-style, aided by distant work and the spending energy of “summer folk,” as some old-timers nonetheless name the part-timers. I’ve come to my favourite stretch of coast to expertise this mild reinvention of my native state firsthand.
“In some other towns you see distressed main streets and a struggle to shift to something a little cooler and more eclectic,” says Aaron Britt, writer of The Midcoast Villager, a group information website and weekly periodical based final 12 months by combining 4 historic newspapers. “Camden’s ability to avoid that is something a visitor feels, even if they’re just in town for the Lobster Festival.”
Britt, whose spouse was born in Portland, labored in New York City and San Francisco as an editor and model columnist earlier than shifting right here 5 years in the past. We chat over fried-haddock sandwiches on the Villager Café, a pine-floored breakfast-and-lunch spot operated by his employer. Its workplaces are upstairs. I’ve come to our assembly through the scenic route, by means of the gently sloping Harbor Park, accomplished in 1931 by the Olmsted Brothers (sons of the visionary behind New York’s Central Park). The summer season sailboats have not arrived but, however nonetheless the scene—brick and clapboard storefronts, the Colonial Revival public library—is absurdly picturesque. There’s even a waterfall, the place the Megunticook River empties into the harbor over a 250-year-old dam. The river additionally has a footbridge over it, conveniently positioned subsequent to an ice-cream stand. Britt has the proper time period for this storybook mash-up of charming options: “the Camden snow globe.”
Colin Page, an artist I meet later that afternoon, seems to the ocean for his topics. A Baltimore native, he moved to Maine after finding out portray on the Rhode Island School of Design and New York City’s Cooper Union, and purchased a 28-foot sailboat in order that he may attain hard-to-access spots and paint them. Hanging on the wall towards the entrance of Page Gallery, which he co-owns, is one results of these excursions: a tide pool scene alive with pink granite, purple shadows, and neon surfgrass. But Page admits that he was additionally drawn to crusing for a similar causes anybody else is: “Being out on the water for a couple hours at the end of the day, just focusing on the sea and what you’re doing—there’s nothing better.”