maine characters

Artists, poets, fisherfolk, and sailors have long sought refuge in the northeastern corner of America. On a visit to his home state, Darrell Hartman discovers it's still a haven for dreamers and doers

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from the upper reaches of Mount Megunticook, I gaze out at the islands of Penobscot Bay. Cloaked in a fur of evergreens, some are long and irregular shards of rock; others are as round as gumdrops. Under raked strands of cirrus cloud, the wind scrawls patterns onto the sea. Between the mountain and the North Atlantic lies the postcard-perfect town of Camden, with its thumb-shaped harbor and white church steeples.

The seaward view from the Camden Hills is justly celebrated. It's said to have inspired "Renascence," a poem by the legendary Mainer Edna St. Vincent Millay in 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 past 40 years I've hoofed it up this 1,385-foot mountain dozens of times. Megunticook is arguably the most rewarding easy hike in the state. At the tiered granite overlook near the summit, I take as much comfort in the vast panorama and the Christmassy smell of balsam fir as I would in the arms of an old friend. The Midcoast region, which begins (depending on who you ask) just north of Portland and runs northeast (or “down,” in local parlance) to somewhere around the rural Blue Hill Peninsula, near Bar Harbor, gets fewer crowds than southern Maine. It's less beachy and more Birkenstock-y. The Camden-to-Rockland stretch—the middle of the Midcoast—covers less than 10 miles but combines sea-and-mountain scenery and vibrant town life like nowhere else on the East Coast.