The Maine Attraction

December 12, 2006
3 min read

Feel like winter just crept up on you? Not quite ready for the holidays? Herewith, IT provides the ultimate antidote to light-festival-and-Christmas-market overload, a description of photo editor Linda Meyerriecks’s summer vacation in

Maine

:

We rented a house on Rackliff Island not far from Rockland, in the middle of Wyeth country. One of our favorite museums in Rockland, the Farnsworth, houses much of the Wyeth family’s famous artwork, and we try to visit every time we’re in Maine. Last summer, though, we were surprised and delighted to find Victoria Wyeth giving a tour of her uncle Jamie‘s paintings when we arrived. Victoria, who leads tours at the Farnsworth during July and August, provided a whimsical look into her uncle’s work, their family’s life in Maine, and Monhegan Island, where Jamie spent a lot of his time painting.  We were able to follow the local children growing up in his paintings; the boy with the Dead Cat Museum was especially intriguing.

We visited the museum after a day of hiking on Monhegan along the Whitehead Trail past the lighthouse and school to see the 160-foot cliffs on the ocean side. We sat on huge boulders eating cod tacos from the Hot Fat roadside stand and watched a young boy intensely reading a book laid open on an old wooden wagon. Several painters were out that day, and one was painting the same red building that Jamie Wyeth caught in one of his Monhegan paintings. The passenger ferry ride—accompanied by fresh sea breezes, the sounds made by seals sunning themselves on rocks, and the laughter of local kids jumping off the ferry dock—was a highlight of visiting Monhegan. The captain delicately maneuvered the boat around the lobster buoys in between the private islands of both Andrew and James Wyeth.

Top places to actually eat lobster are Miller’s Lobster, the Dip Net, and Conte’s on the working waterfront in Rockland, where I could have sworn the sea captains of yore still hang out. Conte’s daily menu is written on a very long scroll of white paper that hangs at the door as you enter, so you order before you go to your table.

Next time we return I want to stay at the Island Inn, where we rocked on the porch overlooking the wharf while everyone waited for the return ferry back to Port Clyde (where N.C. Wyeth first brought his family to live in the early 1900s) on the mainland.”

Too bad the Dead Cat Museum doesn’t exist anymore. IT would come along.

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