True Maine

April 2003

For the best of down east Maine without the crowds, set course for Castine, a well-preserved colonial village of 1,343 situated on a narrow peninsula that juts into Penobscot Bay.

Towering elms arch over the antique homes that line quiet residential streets where strollers find a history lesson on every corner, and a handful of galleries and stores featuring antiques, books and gifts provides ample opportunity for window shopping and browsing. On fine summer days working boats and luxury yachts share the historic harbor with flotillas of sea kayaks and small sailboats that are dwarfed by a state-owned merchant ship now used to train a new generation of seafarers.

Discovered by French geographer Samuel de Champlain in 1604, Castine boasts a large, sheltered deep-water harbor that was coveted by four seafaring nations—France, Holland, England and the United States—which warred for ownership for the next 211 years. In August 1779 an American invasion force that included Col. Paul Revere suffered what is still considered the worst defeat in U. S. naval history when a British fleet bottled up the Americans, who were forced to scuttle their ships.

Today the historic harbor is a quieter place, with the docks dominated year-round by the 500- foot T.S. State of Maine, the training ship of Castine-based Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year college that trains deck and engineering officers for the nation’s merchant marine.

Harbor visitors sometimes include the rich and famous. On one of our summer visits to Castine, the 103-foot Blue Guitar from London rode at anchor in Smith Cove but the owner, rock legend Eric Clapton, was not aboard. On another, singer Jimmy Buffett arrived by sea plane for a cruise aboard the yacht he’d sent ahead.

Above the harbor, Castine climbs a hill dominated by the remains of the Revolutionary War-era Fort George, one of four grass-covered military earthworks still visible in the village. On still August nights, local legend claims, the ghost of a drummer boy haunts the British fort and his martial beat can be heard by passersby.

Castine’s restored 18th and 19th century Georgian and Federalist homes mark their age with dated shingles. The oldest, the 1665 John Perkins House, stands beside the harbor and is open to the public as is the Wilson Museum next door.

Blooming on nearly every street corner is a sign detailing the bloody history of this or that location. My favorite is found at the quiet intersection of Tarratine Street and Battle Avenue, where local historians record the agonizing deaths in 1692 of three Europeans held in slavery by Chief Madockawando: “tortured by fire, compelled to eat their noses and ears and then burned to death at the stake.”

Castine’s centuries of bloodshed ended on April 15, 1815, when the British evacuated the town after a final three-year occupation, leaving the Mainers in peace at last.

For the first two days of a recent summer visit down east, we shared Castine with dozens of paddlers who’d convened on Backshore Beach for L.L. Bean’s annual sea-kayaking symposium. Sea kayaking is a growth industry on the Maine coast, which features a multitude of bays, coves and offshore islands just waiting to be explored.

We launched into Eggemoggin Reach, a famed channel between the sailor’s meccas of Penobscot and Blue Hill bays, on an outgoing tide on a hot July afternoon. These are the waters made famous to generations of children by Robert McCloskey’s books “Time of Wonder” and “Burt Dow, Deep Waterman.”

The Reach was a parade of sail, alive with boats ranging from tiny masted dorries and glitzy motor yachts to triple-masted schooners and working lobster boats. A hard mile’s paddle across the busy Reach brought us to a small cove where smooth, sun-warmed rocks that slid into the sea offered a tempting picnic spot.

After lunch, we paddled up the coast, pausing now and again at a buoy to assess through crystalline water the catch in the lobster pot below. For a time, a trio of dolphins joined us, their fins rising above the sea like small black sails. Back across the Reach, we stopped to explore a tide pool, teasing green hermit crabs that tried to melt into rocky crags and gently handling infant starfish that could hide beneath a quarter.

At the end of the day, we dragged our kayaks across the expanse of low-water beach exposed by a 12-foot tide and headed off for a well-deserved feast from the sea, complete with mussels, clams and lobster.

Maine’s only national park is an easy, 54-mile day-trip from Castine and offers some of the nation’s most spectacular biking and hiking on the scenic carriage roads and challenging granite cliffs of Acadia National Park. On our first visit to Acadia in October 1998 we spent two days biking the 44-miles of wide gravel carriage roads ribboned among mountain, lake, river and sea on Mount Desert Island, which were built by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. But the real challenge for me proved to be two unusual trails that literally ladder to the top of 1,058-foot Champlain Mountain.

The more difficult Precipice Trail shares Champlain’s sheer cliffs with peregrine falcons and is closed to hikers if nesting pairs succeed in hatching chicks. The shorter but no-less-steep Beehive Trail is generally open. Both trails head straight up sheer cliffs in a series of harrowing switchbacks – here a level ledge no more than 18 inches wide and there, where the ledge runs out, a ladder of iron rungs fastened into the cliff face that leads up to the next narrow ledge and then the next iron ladder.

On a sunny October day with the blazing fall foliage mirrored in the blue waters of Frenchman’s Bay below, I started up the Precipice but was overcome by my fear of the edge. On my next visit mist shrouded the park on a showery summer day and I powered up the Beehive trail without pausing, cocooned from fear by a blessed fog. Although the view had vanished in the mist, the exhilaration of conquest remained, and I celebrated by feasting on the ripe blueberries that dotted the smooth granite summit.

Copyright 2003 © by Beth Quinn Barnard of text and photos. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.