Maine, m'heart

Hey wow: I actually felt like editing some footage and so, a year after the fact, let's go back and check out what Maine was like in May of 2019!

Is there anything better than being near water? NOT MANY THINGS, ALTHOUGH SOME THINGS.

First, as usual, some footage with music! Just a lazy ride down a river of lookit-thattitude.

Maine was always my happy place during grad school, really from the first long weekend I took up there in fall 2012. For the most part, with a combo of cheapskatishness and car-aversion, this meant Portland. There was (and is!) a lot to love there - a cruise port that only sees major action three months out of the year (during which I was rarely in New England), it has the food, craft, and art scenes of a decent-sized city but the population numbers of a suburban town. (The food scene especially is ridiculously good - some deep-roots source-to-table restaurants sitting alongside more innovative spots opened by chefs who came seeking a different pace and lower rents than where they came from.) Extremely walkable if you're a walk-happy lad like me, right on the water, it was a perfect unplug from the stress of grad school and the cramped dreariness-to-me of Boston (at least prior to my glorious Jamaica Plain year of finding a source of affection for Bean City).

"Portland: we have murals, although now that we write this caption it occurs to us that this might very well be from Rockland or Bristol or who knows where!" - city motto, Portland ME

This time, though, I wanted to fill in the gaps I'd never been able to in my time at Tufts, by grabbing a car and zipping further north. The goal, really since my arrival in Boston seven years earlier, was Acadia National Park; my family grew up doing most of our vacations via camping, and while my car-free life in Chicago had made that an unlikely proposition through my adult life, I'd really started to crave it again. Hiking, campfires, quiet nights under the stars - even huddling in a tent while it pours outside - this was all the stuff I craved.

Not that cities aren't nice too! Here, for instance, is a li'l bakery converted from a gas station in Portland, which was extremely ideal for book-readin' slowness and the gentleness of a day!

It didn't work out that way for two reasons. The primary hitch was timing; literal days after I booked my flights, I was cast in a show in Chicago that was willing to cut me loose for performances during Tufts's commencement weekend (the reason for the trip), but not for the preceding week that I'd intended to fill with camping and hiking. I'd briefly considered making the trek anyhow, staying in Bar Harbor and hiking rather than settling in for a solid camping stay, but there was the second stumbling block: accommodation that far north didn't open until the weekend after commencement. This was, obviously, a great problem to have ("only a shorter trip to Maine as part of a PhD-commencement trip because I have to take the lead in this play") but just required some tweaking.

Lil' mini-views of the bay from a fort! The joys of slowly traversing!

Ultimately, I did cut north of Portland for a few days of hiking and relaxing, mostly between Bristol and Belfast. As has been the case weirdly frequently the past four years, I lucked into near-perfect weather, lots of blue-skies sun to warm my tromping, and quiet li'l inns for charming retreats in between escapades. I brought some honest-to-god books to browse at oyster bars, coffee shops, and in idyllic spots on my walks, and the whole thing was just a massively pleasant unplug.

WATERFALLS: Whomst could possibly care?

Which, really, is what Maine always was for me: a place to let my brain take a breather, to relax in the nearness of nature, to slow my tempo and recenter myself. It was a perfect grace note before saying fare-thee-well to Boston/Tufts, and still left me eager to return for a longer and more focusd return. Which will probably happen any day now given our current reality! Hooray for knowable futures!

ALSO extremely nice: mom and Kat coming to Boston to join me for commencement! (Dad was off in Europe leading a tour with his choir, but he well knows that I felt him beside me every step of this journey, not least this last one.)

Up next (maybe, eventually?) some quick Minnesota revisitin' from last summer, some Portugal from this spring, or maybe nothing as the site (eventually, maybe?) transforms. Hooray for the march of time and how strange all things become!