They say the place is haunted. And when you encounter the Vinalhaven Poor Farm for the first time, it’s easy to understand why. It’s a rambling sort of building, with long halls and odd staircases, with forgotten rooms and creaking doors that won’t stay closed. The oldest part of the house is a traditional Cape […]
ME State Route 102 is a two-lane highway that stretches like a lazy figure 8 across the western lobe of Mount Desert Island. It was built in the early 1930s as a continuation of the highway that connected Augusta, the state capital, with down east, via Belfast and Ellsworth along the coast. In the late […]
An article in the New York Times about Derek Diedricken’s Gypsy Junker microshelter reminded me how much I like a hut myself. I didn’t really need reminding–I live with a large Scott Peterman photograph of an ice fishing hut in Maine (Sabbath Day Lake III, 1998)–but the article did get me thinking about how long […]
It may seem odd to still be writing about Maine nearly four months after my return from Vactionland, but the Pine Tree State has a way of staying with you. While this is due mostly to the essential quality of the place (see Genius Loci in Acadia), the quantity of made in Maine products that […]
On an island off the coast of the North American mainland, near the narrows of Somes Sound, across from Norembega Mountain, between Fernald Point and Clark Point, a few steps from the Atlantic, in Southwest Harbor, Maine (at 44.278º North and 68.311º West, to be precise), one is easily, happily, and phenomenologically seduced by the […]