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.
Bartender Steel Kilgore at The Norumbega hotel in Camden
Christian Harder
Curator Consignment, a boutique in Rockland
Christian Harder
The reverse view, of Camden Hills from Penobscot Bay, is just as astonishing. The many-islanded bay itself is a sailing heaven. Camden, Rockland, and Rockport (the seaside hamlet that lies between them) have long carried a cultural weight that belies their size. In the annals of American landscape painting, Midcoast Maine is right up there with the Hudson River Valley. In addition to sustaining farmers, sea captains, and fisherfolk for centuries, its rugged landscape has also lured generations of artists, not to mention deep-pocketed summer residents, preservationists, and patrons of the arts. Now a fresh group of makers and entrepreneurs have arrived to update the Midcoast lifestyle, aided by remote work and the spending power of “summer folk,” as some old-timers still call the part-timers. I’ve come to my favorite stretch of coast to experience this gentle reinvention of my native state firsthand.
“In some other towns you see distressed main streets and a struggle to shift to something a little cooler and more eclectic,” says Aaron Britt, publisher of The Midcoast Villager, a community news site and weekly periodical founded last year by combining four historic newspapers. “Camden’s ability to avoid that is something a visitor feels, even if they’re just in town for the Lobster Festival.”
Grilled sardines at The Alna Store
Christian Harder
An oarlock cast at the Apprenticeshop in Rockland
Christian Harder
Britt, whose wife was born in Portland, worked in New York City and San Francisco as an editor and style columnist before moving here five years ago. We chat over fried-haddock sandwiches at the Villager Café, a pine-floored breakfast-and-lunch spot operated by his employer. Its offices are upstairs. I’ve come to our meeting via the scenic route, through the gently sloping Harbor Park, completed in 1931 by the Olmsted Brothers (sons of the visionary behind New York’s Central Park). The summer sailboats haven’t arrived yet, but still the scene—brick and clapboard storefronts, the Colonial Revival public library—is absurdly picturesque. There’s even a waterfall, where the Megunticook River empties into the harbor over a 250-year-old dam. The river also has a footbridge over it, conveniently located next to an ice-cream stand. Britt has the perfect term for this storybook mash-up of charming features: “the Camden snow globe.”
Colin Page, an artist I meet later that afternoon, looks to the sea for his subjects. A Baltimore native, he moved to Maine after studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and New York City’s Cooper Union, and bought a 28-foot sailboat so that he could reach hard-to-access spots and paint them. Hanging on the wall toward the front of Page Gallery, which he co-owns, is one result of those excursions: a tide pool scene alive with pink granite, purple shadows, and neon surfgrass. But Page admits that he was also drawn to sailing for the same reasons anyone else is: “Being out on the water for a couple hours at the end of the day, just focusing on the sea and what you’re doing—there’s nothing better.”
