As we closed our Maine log cabin for the season, my emotions, as always, were equal parts regret and recognition. Part of me would like to stay forever, even when it’s obvious that summer is drawing to a close. By early September, Maine days are noticeably shorter. The regular morning-walk group was just two of us, my husband and me, and afternoon swims had become embracing endeavors. I had already been the reluctant recipient of a neighbor’s leftover condiments and ice cream when she stopped by with good wishes for the winter ahead. Soon enough, we too were ready to go.
By now, I’m happy to be back home in Vermont. And after a week’s worth of mornings, I feel re-rooted at my familiar writing table, surrounded by windows. The light is good. The approach of fall is as undeniable here as it was in Maine. In my notebook, I’ve registered the leaves as they turn color and the sweet juiciness of peaches from a local orchard. A wool blanket is layered over the summer quilt on our bed.
Settled in Vermont and committed to a day of writing, I’ve gone on to consider the importance of 50 summers in Maine. To ask what it has meant for our family to have come for all these years to this rustic cabin on Linekin Bay in Boothbay Harbor.
Who were we on that August day in the 1970s when we made the audacious decision to purchase the cabin? A family of four, with a father well-established in his job, two daughters ages seven and 11, and a mother about to resume her teaching career in a Westchester County high school after several years of other pursuits. A mother who boldly imagined that the fact of having an income of her own again could make her harebrained idea of a family retreat in Maine a reality. Through an unusual combination of connections and almost lucky accidents, it happened.
During the early summers at the cabin, all that was new gradually became familiar, and eventually, routine. Before, we had been “freshwater people,” both as Midwesterners and as New Yorkers. We knew motorboats, water skiing and wading into lakes with muddy, squishy bottoms.
In Maine, our ocean quickly showed us that it was different, more powerful, at least some of the time. Just months after we had signed the papers conveying ownership of the cabin, a not atypical nor’easter took out our pier. We learned the channels of rebuilding, dealing with neighbors in the same situation, and working with a boatyard we’ve relied on ever since. Our ocean also revealed its pleasures. We became cold-water swimmers as well as good sailors, encouraged by our daughters’ sailing program at a small yacht club nearby. We discovered islands — Burnt, Ram, Damariscove, and started a now extensive collection of beach glass. It was also wonderful to share all of this with Iowa relatives. Low tide dinners on the shore, featuring a campfire and steamers, were an unanticipated delight for them all — and for us.
Those first years also connected us with the richness of a historic log cabin community. The original buildings there included a hotel, the Sprucewold Lodge, which claimed in the early 1920s to be the largest log-cabin lodge in the United States. All of the buildings were built by an eager developer from trees on the property. Our cabin, constructed during that same era, was one of nearly 100 others that were part of the larger community called Sprucewold. Fortunately for us, Sprucewold has remained vibrant. And while it was long-time friends and their families who were the initial pull, newer relationships there are equally important.
For my husband, this place in Maine has enlarged his life in many ways. He’s always been handy and able to fix, even build, many things. With that background, he took on greater challenges, like log replacement and roofing. Even today, he’s good at electrical maintenance and plumbing. He excels at sailing and feels at home on the water.
Over those many years, the cabin has become a magnet that helps hold our family together. Our daughters not only became sailors and developed friendships, but they spent teenage summers employed at businesses in Boothbay Harbor. Both daughters were married there, with the cabin and the lodge serving as anchors for the many activities of those momentous occasions.
Our grandchildren, who have come to the cabin every year of their lives, also have strong connections. They too learned to sail, enjoyed summer employment in the Harbor, and developed life-long friendships. For the older two, the surrounding ocean environment is influencing their career paths. A grandson currently works as the manager of an oyster farm in Freeport, has his Coast Guard license to captain boats of significant size and has just purchased his first house in Portland. His sister became fascinated with marine research, an interest enhanced by a college internship at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay. She now works at a lab in Vermont that collects and analyzes samples of Arctic sea ice and permafrost.
My intimate connection with this singular place in Maine is both grounding and expansive. There is nowhere else I would rather be. That it was truly my harebrained idea that made it a reality brings me joy beyond measure. Never could I have anticipated all that has happened following this momentous commitment. Never could I have known how much this incredible cabin would lend shape and coherence to our lives.
Mary K. Otto, formerly of Norwich, lives in Shelburne, Vt. Readers may email her at maryotto13@gmail.com