My Favorite Maine Places

Two of them are secrets. The third is the Schoodic Peninsula.

The Schoodic Peninsula, Acadia National Park. Photo by Nick Sarro.

What is my single most favorite place in Maine? I can’t tell you where it is. I go there two or three times a week, but in legal terms, I am not allowed there. It is private property, and my every step is a trespass.

My second favorite place is a harder call. It is indeed a public place, a beautiful small pond in the woods near a short walk from my house in Maine. But its water is shallow and the replacement ratio (how much new water flows in vs. how much flows out) is low, and more visitors would do it no good.

That leaves us with the third place, which I am able to share. It is Acadia National Park. The main part of Acadia, on Mount Desert Island, generally is too crowded in the summer to be much fun. So I used to wait until winter to go hiking there. I stopped doing that because of what happened on a solo hike up a coastal mountain on a foggy December day. The air grew colder as I neared the summit. I didn’t notice that the bare wet rock of the trail had turned icy, and I nearly slid off a small cliff.

So nowadays when I go to Acadia National Park, I usually head for its lesser-known eastern wing, the Schoodic Peninsula. It is lovely place, a piece of land jutting into the ocean, with waves rolling up against its pink granite cliffs. It also has a couple of lovely spots for blackberry picking, but by now, you know the drill—I can’t tell.

And I think that is the true story of Maine. It has many lovely public spots. Yet the best places are always secret. You keep them in your heart and you visit them when you need to. In the worst of times, such as the recent pandemic, it was nature and my family that got me through. And for that I will always be grateful.