The Way Back, Part I

We are renovating our house. Again. The contractors want us out for two weeks, so we decided to take a mini vacation and head to Mt. Desert Island. We vacationed there with our two sons, Will and Greg, from 1991 to 2007, and had not been back since. Unbelievably, as if the gods had planned it, the Gower Cottage, the same one we rented for 12 years, was available for the week. The owners, John and Marie Gower, now in their 90s, were thrilled. The second week we were going a bit more north to Hancock Point, near Schoodic Peninsula, another old favorite for many reasons. One, we loved to bike the 14-mile loop and the other, well, I’ll keep that a secret for now.

As the day of our departure approached, we grew more and more apprehensive. How much had changed since 2007? Would anything be as wonderful as we remembered or would we be sadly disappointed? They say you can’t go back but we did. We found real bits and pieces of the past, like opening tiny presents. We laughed and cried, repeating over and over, I remember! I can’t believe! Mostly we were amazed at how much remained the same, though sometimes we were very, very sad over what had changed, and not for the better. Like the crowds and closures.

The reason we started going to Maine in the first place was a disastrous week at the Jersey shore when our sons were little. A friend owned a house a block from the ocean in Cape May and invited us to stay for a week. She only let us use part of the second floor, a small suite of rooms with a tiny fridge and a stove that looked more like a hot plate. The space was uncomfortable, but it was our first real vacation since the boys were born and hey, we’d had the beach, ocean and sunshine. Only instead of sunshine, it rained for seven days. When we look back on that soggy week, Bill and I ask ourselves why the hell didn’t we just go home, we were only an hour and a half away. But no, we were stubbornly committed to a shore experience. We rented bicycles, ate at ice cream parlors (the one where they sing and embarrass you. You ordered vanilla?) and made museum-like excursions to the hardware store. We made friends with the family three doors down, the Ballards, who turned up again in our lives when our sons went to Chestnut Hill Academy. There were some good moments, but mostly vows on my part to never go back to the Jersey shore again. Ever.

When I returned to Philadelphia, I told George Baker, an incredibly talented artist with an eponymous florist shop on Latimer Street, about our not-so-great vacation, how even the inside of the car was wet from rain. He laughed and then was serious.

“The only place in the world to vacation is Mt. Desert Island in Maine.” He handed me a copy of Bar Harbor Times.

I found an ad for a cottage on Seal Cove, on the “quiet side,” of the Island. The cottage was “historic,” with marble sinks, three working fireplaces and westerly views of a sheltered cove. It sounded wonderful. George confirmed it was a great location. I contacted the owner and sent a deposit.  I had absolutely no doubts about renting a cottage sight-unseen, and going to a place we had never been to before. Something deep inside me said it was the right thing to do. I later found out why.

Through AAA I got something called Maps – do you remember them? A package, called a TripTik, was created specifically for our destination, outlining our route in bright yellow, all 574 miles. We took the 12-hour trip in two legs, ending the first six hours in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was pouring. We listened to the rain pound the air conditioning unit outside our motel room all night, while I couldn’t sleep, worrying about bad omens. How could I have gambled our entire two-week vacation on an unseen cottage and unknown place? The bad omens kept coming.

After our final 6-hour drive, we arrived. It was dark and we barely found the dirt road to the cottage and the cottage itself, nestled in a mass of tall trees. And, still, it was raining. Tired and hungry, we unpacked, put on our rain gear and found a small restaurant that looked like someone’s living room. Campers and hikers, all escaping the downpour, were also there eating dinner in dripping wet ponchos. After dinner we got back to the cottage and fell into bed, too tired to make a fire in the fireplace. Greg was very unhappy about all the spiders and dust in their bedroom. I said goodnight and the shades ripped as I pulled them down. I assured them everything was going to be great and not to worry. That’s what I said, but I believed we’d be right back on 495 in the morning, headed back to Philly, determined not to make the same mistake twice. Even if the drive was 12 hours.

The next morning was life changing. I opened the dark green French doors to a magnificent view of a cove, sparkling blue ocean, cloudless sky, and soft whispering birches. On the dewy green lawn that stretched to the cove, patches of ground spider webs sparkled like diamonds. A lone spruce tree, standing right in front of the cottage, seemed like a sign post, a flag staked in the ground: This Is Where You Belong. I have felt that way about Maine ever since.

I always thought my love of nature was what attracted me to Maine. The experiences hiking, swimming in lakes, pretending I was Pocahontas, biking through balsam-scented forests were spiritual. Whether I stood on a boulder, or walked through the forest, the trail a maze of moss and twisted tree roots, I was connected me to the earth in a direct and visceral way. What I learned, years later, was that the connection was blood.

We were probably into the fourth of our five years at the Seal Cove cottage. I was sharing pictures and stories with my mother at her home in Hershey’s Mill when she put a sepia-toned postcard in my hand. The image was a large summer cottage on the ocean, named Maxwell Cottage, Hancock Point. It was a grand house, in the Maine cottage tradition. My mother suggested I take it with me next summer and find the cottage. The postcard was addressed to my grandmother, and sent by her sister-in-law, Charlotte, known as Lottie. I remember looking at my mother in disbelief. Who was Aunt Lottie and how did she come to live in Maine? My mother wasn’t sure. At first she didn’t remember, but it finally came to her.

“I think my father was born in Maine.”

I could not wait to get back to Maine. The next summer we took a day off from swimming and bike riding and drove to up Route One to Hancock. I kept thinking, my Maine heritage! My cottage! I will walk in and claim it as the true and rightful owner. It was easy to find the point of land, the rocky bluff below the cottage on the postcard but the cottage itself was gone. At the Hancock Point library, we learned Maxwell Cottage had been torn down in the late 1920s but photos in the two-volume, “The Sun Never Sets on Hancock Point,” by Sanford Phippen, tells a different story. More about that in my next blog.

As soon as we got back to Philly, I drilled my mother for more information. Why didn’t she tell me before, when we first started going to Maine, that there was a family connection? She shrugged my questions away but did admit she wanted to come visit us in Maine. Of course, I replied eagerly, we’d love for you to come see our special place. Growing up, my parents had taken my sister and I all over Europe and Turkey so I imagined this might be the ultimate journey, my parents and my family, all of us together having another great adventure. It was a disaster. I won’t go into details now but picture this: my mother in her Ferragamo’s trying to navigate the massive boulders on Schoodic Point.

So here Bill and I were, so many years later, back in the Gower Cottage. It was much worse for wear fifteen years later. The floor was sinking, the fuses kept blowing, the internet connection was terrible and one of the two bathrooms was out of order. But the view of Goose Cove was still spectacular and looked the same. The cold and rain kept us indoors for three days but we managed to get on our bikes (me, after 15 years) and ride around Eagle Lake.  On a beautiful sunny day, I did my traditional lake swim at Long Pond, like swimming back in time. We also had dinner at our favorite restaurant XYZ,  the host and owner as gracious as ever, recalling many dinners and fun times with Will and Greg.

We had a lovely dinner with John and Marie Gower at their favorite restaurant in Southwest Harbor. Bill bought me a beautiful pair of earrings at Sam Shaw, an incredibly multitalented artist. We hit all the old places, Sommes Sound, Long Pond, and Southwest Harbor where we met up with our dear friend Bob, owner of Southwest Cycle, and experienced a wild parade, New Orleans-style with thrown candy and floats. I regret we did not make it to our favorite lobster pound, Thurston’s, but the seafood store we had gone to forever was still in business. As much as we loved the Gower cottage, it did feel a bit like camping. We were ready for the next adventure on Hancock Point but not ready for the remarkable discoveries we would make. Stay tuned for Part II.

Bill getting ready for our Eagle Lake ride; the view of Cadillac Mountain from Eagle Lake; the Flamingo Festival parade in Southwest Harbor, going strong for 20 years.

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