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Stonington side of Deer Isle
Copyrighted photo courtesy Marilyn McClellan
Deer Isle - Solace for the Soul
By Marilyn McClellan
Published: October 15, 2005
WHEN my friend Jennifer suggested that I use their
Deer Isle home for a
retreat following my husband's death, I decided that running away to
Maine might be therapeutic. It's not that I craved a water view.
I live in the state of Washington on the Puget Sound. Sailboats
and tugs, barges (and occasionally whales), parade outside my living
room window. But, I needed to run away from the sadness and bleak
emptiness of my home in those first difficult months.
I'm so acclimated to an entire life spent on the west coast, that I cannot fathom going north without the ocean on my left. When I visited my daughter and family during their six years in Connecticut, I was constantly directionally disadvantaged. During that time, I enjoyed two visits to Boston. I now jumped at the chance to travel further north to Maine.
I enticed my grown son with the offer of an island home, a week's retreat to write, a new adventure, and the exploration of the Atlantic coastline! He was ready to travel, so we flew east into Manchester, New Hampshire, to spend a delicious week in a two hundred year old farmhouse, woods, a pond, and a week of writing. He edited his novel, and I edited a parenting manuscript. In between, we fell in love with Maine.
Our adventure began as we drove Highway 1 up the coast of Maine. As we reached the town of Wiscasset, we were hungry and ready to stop for a meal when we spied a long line of customers in front of a little food stand. We impulsively stopped and joined the line because we figured these people must know something we didn't. We were at Red's Eats - known for its lobster rolls. And, they were large, delicious, and worth the wait. My son, who did not inherit our family's love of seafood, enjoyed a steak sandwich which presented the first clue about food differences in Maine - sandwiches were simply a toasted bun and meat! West coast sandwiches tend more toward the Dagwood variety. We wandered the town for an hour then resumed our trip north. We forced ourselves to push on in our determination to cross the Reach into Deer Isle before dark since we were unfamiliar with the property and had to search for the key to the house. That was a tough decision. The passing view tantalized us with antique stores, book shops, and charming towns. Of course, we did have to stop at the Freeport Book Shoppe where Martin gleefully found several old hand typeset books, and I bought a 1925 book on my home state of California.
Our first evening, we walked over to the Pilgrim's Inn. Because of the beautiful weather and the end of the tourist season, we waited well over an hour to be seated for dinner which was ample and very tasty. Flashlight in hand, we strolled back to our farmhouse on the dark country lanes past summer houses closed up and prepared for winter. For the next few days, we explored our farmhouse with its old wallpapers and nooks and crannies, and explored Deer Isle which, we found, is roughly sixty percent as large as our local destination - Orcas Island nestled in the San Juan Islands. Orcas, however, lacks the lobster boats, the New England colonial homes, attached barns, and two centuries of family histories.
On the recommendation of our hosts, we attempted to eat at Lily's on the Stonington side of the island, but it was closed for vacation. We did try the Harbor Café which was welcoming and the Inn at the Harbor on a day that it was so windy that the staff was chasing the sun umbrellas. We returned to the Inn the next night and enjoyed a lovely and more formal meal in the dining room. Unfortunately, we did not know that Stonington is a dry town. We glanced covetously at our fellow diners who were locals and had knowingly brought their own wine and paid the modest $3.00 corkage.
At the farmhouse, we amused ourselves with writing breaks and reading Down East Magazine and the New York Times. Martin perused the book shelves and thought it was an appropriate time to tackle Moby Dick. I enjoyed books by two Maine writers, Sarah Graves and Linda Greenlaw. A couple of afternoons we hopped over to the mainland where this former library trustee fell in love with the beautifully appointed Blue Hill library which supplied the wireless internet for us to send emails to our family and friends. We had one of the best meals of the trip when we lunched at the Prescott Forge before roaming through the town's gift and antique shops. The pumpkin soup with carmelized onions and the chicken salad sandwich were delicious.
We set aside one day for more extensive sightseeing and drove as far as Camden where we spent a delightful hour in the enticing ABCD Books. As we worked our way north, we tried a fraction of the antique stores, art and pottery shops, and visited the Windsor Chairmakers. We were disappointed because we particularly saved the Penobscot Books and Gallery in Searsport for the return trip back, but they closed early that day. It broke my graphic designer son's heart to have only fifteen minutes in a store with so many volumes on art and design. He didn't even make it into poetry. We had to make do with delightfully losing ourselves for a few hours in The Big Chicken Barn Books and Antiques between Bucksport and Ellsworth.
On our last few days on Deer Isle, we roamed the country roads and explored the island. The weather was warm and sunny, the water blue, and the views spectacular. We drove over to Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and enjoyed many of the island art galleries. Martin bought a small woodblock print and a T-shirt with the Little Deer Isle bridge emblazoned on the front. I bought some Nervous Nellie's blueberry jam at the Periwinkle gift shop and we stepped across the street for some ice cream cones.
Finally, our time came to an end, and we sadly turned south to return to the airport on the same day that hurricane Ophelia nudged the coast of Maine. Before the deluge, we ate breakfast at the Rockland Cafe, were especially dazzled by Jamie Wyeth's paintings at the Farnsworth Gallery, took the requisite tour of L.L.Bean and some factory stores, then satisfied any residual homesickness with a brief Starbuck's stop. We made it to the Portland Head Light just in time to have a quick walk around before the sky broke open with torrents of rain, the light wrapped fittingly in the gloom of the day. One last stop at the amazingly friendly Douglas N. Harding bookshop in Wells and we uttered a sad farewell to a state which will call us back again and again.
We found that Maine and Washington share many
characteristics besides Starbucks. They both embrace oceans, both have a
myriad of offshore islands once populated by Native Americans, both are
big on boating and fishing, and both boast of temperate climates at
least half of the year (Washington lacks the snowfall of winter and
humidity of summer). They both attract tourists as well as artists
and writers. Each place stands tall, like bookends, on the sides
of our nation. While Washington is young and fresh, Maine is
deeply mythic. Its architecture transports us back to our origins,
its layers of history are anchored as strong as the granite once
quarried on Deer Isle. It was my first trip to Maine, but I felt I
was returning to my British and American roots. It was deeply healing
and therapeutic. I returned home with a measure of peace knowing
that, even in the midst of loss, there is so much in this world to be
grateful for.
_____
Copyright 2005. Marilyn McClellan is a retired school
counselor who presently teaches college level courses in psychology and
adolescent development. A freelance writer, she writes books for
Enslow Publishing in New Jersey. Her
books include
The Big Deal About Alcohol: What Teens Need to Know About Drinking