goodbye maine

We've come home now - home from our week in Maine - and I am again a sojourner in land-locked life.

I will miss these places (and I didn't even have a chance to visit them all this year): Rock, Paper, Scissors (the town of Wiscasset in general), Sherman's, the Boothbay Library bookshop, the Farnsworth, the A1 Diner, Reny's, Sarah's Cafe, Treats, Cabot Mill Antiques, the Dolphin Marina, the Black Crow Bakery.

I will miss the clapboard houses. Simple lines, telescope houses, shutters, white siding, colorful doors - Maine architecture pleases me like no other. And yet I take so few photographs of it, because we are always driving along when I spy some lovely little abode. The best, I've found, are not the fancy houses right on the coast but the more understated ones along the back roads.

And, above all, I will miss the sea. (Yes, I think I do believe in the power of saltwater.) The Maine coast is more than water and sand - it is ginormous boulders, fine pebbles, balsams and birches and pointed furs that let their roots run right up to the edge of the rocks. Some white birches near where we stayed seemed to be reaching out to the water.

I will miss the people, the culture of Maine. I want to go deeper into, explore it and be part of it.
Because that was my consolation as we pulled away early Saturday morning: I will be back.