When your kids grow up and flutter out of the nest, more time to fit in other neat stuff in Maine happens.
After dropping youngest off at the Portland Jetport yesterday, the ride back to Aroostook County meant a diversion. Dial in the GPS for some Maine lighthouses. Have a quest to collect photos, experience settings of the over sixty Maine lighthouses.
Some are small, pint size Maine lighthouses. Others are pretty colorful, painted ladies lighthouses. A few Maine lighthouses more photogenic or better known and circulated around the photo circles. Others a close second in wolf whistle generating or recognizable like Nubble Lighthouse in York Maine.
Bass Harbor Maine’s lighthouse features, boasts a red lens. But yesterday’s four additions to my collection covered finding, shooting images of Pemaquid and Marshall Point, Owlshead and Rockland Breakwater Maine Lighthouses. Pictured above, these are relatively easy ones to access quickly.
But Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse is missing the lawn, the space of an island around it.
With the granite walkway winter ice covered and requiring care in where you step. Coupled with Maine sea breezes whipping, pushing you along. Picking up intensity getting closer and closer to the end of the rocky pier. Hoping you don’t slide into the churning, ice ice baby cold sea water. You don’t see as many tourists in the winter visits. But the ones you do bump into are friendly.
On the way back from the Rockland Breakwater Maine Lighthouse a hand holding older couple approach me. On their way out to the lighthouse. While I was traveling back to the mainland near the Samoset Resort where the jeep was parked, waiting. The lady asked with a smile if they were serving hot chocolate. Although unmanned, I joked the canteen was indeed open. The Jamaican band playing hot hot hot. And the gift shop peddling a huge jewelry selection of Maine tourmaline gemstones at two hundred percent off. She knew the difference and I sensed the couple lived local. Did this visit often year round. Black flies not a concern on today’s habitual visit to the place they enjoyed, shared together because of the take away.
Hitting deeply, the Maine lighthouse experience is unique, unforgettable.
Becomes a healthy addiction. No matter what season you need a healthy fix. To make the time to explore. Find the one that is your favorite. That you revisit, reconnect with any of the four seasons. Maine lighthouses are all different styles, rugged period construction with varied histories. Communications inside a person amplify near the towering lights, walkways, dwellings that are heritage rich, loaded. What’s real, important, special in life gets prioritized. Becomes crystal, illuminated. In winter especially because it is just you and the Maine lighthouse, it’s setting, grounds. No tourists to interfere with your visit. The only chit chat is inside your head, heard in your heart.
You study her from all angles.
Consider what life as the Maine lighthouse keeper must of been like. On sunny summer blistering days, blustery winter snow blizzards. You throw out, cast seaward long thought provoking panoramic gazes. Out over the rock bound, uneven, craggy Maine coastline to the sea lanes she serves. Protects with a powerful light system and a very verbal nautical sea horn.
The mainland models are not as hard to access and collect. The Maine island lighthouses that require a boat ride to get up close and personal more of a challenge. I am determined to seek out, collect all the Maine lighthouses for the personal experience, the take away. For a snap shot to keep inside, to create an 8×10 for the wall to enjoy year round. Here is a map of Maine lighthouses locations, if you have the bug to collect them on vacations too! Maine, her memories never fade. Collect yours, don’t stay away so long.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME REALTOR
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com