Patriotically seeking the sea

Monday, April 20th was Patriots' Day here in Maine, as it was in Massachusetts, both states commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which ushered in the Revolutionary War (Maine was still a part of Massachusetts at that time; hence the shared holiday.) As usual I had closed my little library, and I took advantage of the free day to drive to Boothbay Harbor on the coast. Just needed to go somewhere, and felt the pull of the sea that I occasionally feel, and that living in Maine enables me to respond to.

To get to Boothbay Harbor from Gardiner you drive first to Wiscasset, which I mentioned in my note of June 20, 2008 ("prettiest village in New England"). It's a pleasant drive of green, not-quite-flat farm fields, backed by trees, for the most part evergreens, so that even though the deciduous trees in this part of the world were still in the bud as opposed to the leaf stage, the world was green. The farmhouses were for the most part unprepossessing. In Maine you often see farms with impressively large old New England houses, many with the big barn attached (weather, weather, weather); but these were small farms, newer houses (not new you understand, just newer than the 1800s). There were also plenty of other houses, too, here and there beside the road. This is a thickly settled area, despite being so rural.

It gives me great satisfaction to drive through such countryside. I find it...comforting. Cozy. I compare it to the land I was passing through on my drive to Maine from Colorado in September, 2005. Highway running straight as a stretched-out ribbon across eastern Colorado and Kansas. Flat, flat, flat. Trees a rarity, usually planted as windbreaks around the farmhouses with their tin barns. The overriding color, beige. The land, the wheat, the corn, it was all beige. Certainly you got a feeling of wide open spaces, and I could see how that could appeal, but it was anything but cozy, anything but comforting. When I would get out of the car at a gas station the wind, blowing unhindered from the Rockies to the suggestion of hills in western Missouri, would mess up my hair, throw my skirt around, and lodge grit in my pores.

No, I'll take the central Maine landscape over that of the midwest any day.

At Wiscasset I crossed the Sheepscot River, dramatically wide there, and on that particular afternoon heavily populated with sitting...not ducks...terns. And/or other gull-type creatures. They looked like hundreds of bobbing white buoys, being buffeted by a brisk breeze.

Just beyond the bridge Highway 27, which I had followed all the way from Gardiner, turned right, and made its curving way through a much tighter landscape – hills and curves more numerous, fields smaller, woods closing in more. Passed a small restaurant called the Edgecomb Eatery, thinking my God, someplace actually calls itself an "eatery." Passed a lot of small businesses in homes beside the road – On Board Fabrics (what would they feature, different kinds of canvas?), a place selling handcarved furniture, lots of art galleries.

You hit Boothbay first, skirting around a rather forlorn little common (no trees!), then there's a bit more thickly settled countryside, then the "mall" stretch with the supermarket/movie theatre/Subway contingent. And then there you are in this little village of narrow, tightly packed streets, endless bed-and-breakfasts, art galleries, souvenir shops, all the kinds of establishments that go with a wildly popular tourist destination.

Happily, I was hitting the place before the season started; it was all but deserted. I've been there in high summer, and it's the proverbial zoo: cars creeping through those streets in search of nonexistent parking places, shops so crowded you can hardly move. But now I could park in the big, empty lot in front of the fire station and walk the two short blocks down to what is officially the Public Boat Landing, but is known to everyone as Fisherman's Wharf. There I was able to get a dose of exactly what I was craving: that clean, damp sea smell (what is it, seaweed?), the lonely sound of seagulls calling, the metallic slap of rigging against mast as a boat gently rocks in the water. A fisherman was shutting down his boat, Jazzmatazz. With a name like that you might expect somebody young and hip, but this guy looked like most fishermen: middle-aged, grizzled, saggy, getting into his beat-up old pickup and driving away.

Whale watch excursions are very popular at BBH, and there was an enormous boat, the Harbor Princess, waiting for the season to begin (traditionally Memorial Day weekend). It was anchored next to an equally enormous hotel – long and narrow, rather than tall, and covered with the pale gray shingle you often see on houses near the sea – for which I could see no name. The only sign I saw was advertising a tarot card reader in the ground floor corner unit. However, a dip into that indispensable resource, the Internet, tells me it's The Inn at Fisherman's Wharf. Exactly the kind of place you wouldn't want to stay at if you're a light sleeper, with all the harbor cruise and whale watch boats – not to mention the smaller guys like Jazzmatazz – right outside your window.

A walk up Commercial Street, which runs beside the harbor, took me past Bay Shirts, pining for business on this quiet day, with a large green moose sitting on a fake tree stump out front, wearing a fetching T-shirt. Farther up the street were two of the B&Bs you find mentioned in the guidebooks: the Greenleaf Inn, with a red English telephone booth beside the walk that leads up to the door, and across an expanse of paved-over grass, the Admiral's Quarters Inn. Both are large white houses that have been added onto all over the place. They, too, would not be quiet places to stay at the height of the season, but might be pleasant off-season, and would certainly be convenient for everything.

After regretting that I could not eat in the Tugboat Restaurant across the street (even though I know from experience that restaurants located in unusual buildings – like tugboats – inevitably have mediocre at best food) because it was closed on Mondays, I pulled myself away and headed home. I'd had my small touch of the sea.