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My tweet last week was simple:
Consider this my OOTO reply. Also, a message that I may never come back.
And I was only half joking. <Maybe>
So consider this my postcard from Maine...
We stopped at a coffee shop so I could write this. The wifi password is blueberry. Because, Maine.
We enjoyed the charm, funk, and ambition of Portland. It’s a small town that thinks it’s a much larger city. Also, the food and brewery scenes are epic.
We made a mecca to the L.L. Bean mothership.
We hiked Camden Hills State Park and were rewarded with incredible views. We hiked through clouds up Pemetic Mountain and had no visibility and thus no view, but a lot of laughs, and a pretty great time regardless. We went sea kayaking in Penobscot Bay and were treated to a seal showing us a fish he caught, loons saying hello, and the perspective of a gorgeous, rugged coastline from the sea. We’ve biked, a lot. From Portland to Cousins Island. Around the Schoodic Peninsula. And down almost every carriage road in Acadia National Park. I swam in unseasonably warm glacial runoff, surrounded by pine-tree-covered hills at Echo Lake Beach. And marveled at the beauty of Popham Beach.
We camped for three nights in something called a hobbit hut.
I’ve eaten all the lobster rolls — the lemony mayo one on Schoodic was my fave.
I’m mainly off the grid up here. This means, I currently have 368+ unread emails haven’t been on Instagram or Twitter in days, and have no real clue as to what’s happening in the world. I haven’t read a newspaper in days. And I’m ok with all of that. It’s glorious, actually.
I’ve almost finished Imbolo Mbue’s new book. And started Ed Yong’s new one.
It feels weird, being inside with so much inspiration out there, beyond this screen. It’s a good reminder to unplug more. I didn’t bring a “real” camera. So enjoy the iPhone photos up top. And please, step away from your computer now.
I’ll be back next week. </Maybe>
In the meantime:
Check out Cold-Plunging With Maine’s ‘Ice Mermaids’ and the first-person account of it from photographer Greta Rybus, whose photography I fell in love with when I first saw this piece on Nash Island, but really all of her work on Maine is stunningly beautiful.
No One Photographed Maine Like Kosti Ruohomaa
I was in awe of the work of artist Daniel Minter at the Portland Museum of Art. And really respect and appreciate what he’s doing with the Indigo Arts Alliance.
Speaking of the PMA, they received a gift of more than 600 photographs from the collection of Judy Glickman Lauder. It includes photographs by Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Margaret Bourke-White and Gordon Parks. Looking forward to going back to see that exhibit someday.
If you don’t know about the Sub Park Parks Instagram account, you should. It hilariously pairs illustrations of national parks with the ridiculously unsavory one-star reviews they’ve received online. Here’s the one for Acadia.