Camden

We climbed Mount Battie in the wrong shoes. Lia had insisted the trail was “basically a stroll,” which is how she describes every incline she wants me to attempt, and by the halfway point we were both hauling ourselves up sun-warmed granite by the roots of pines. But then the trees fell away, and the whole of Penobscot Bay lay spread beneath us, Camden harbor a scatter of white masts far below, islands trailing off into a blue haze. There is a stone tower at the summit, and Lia read aloud the lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay carved on a plaque, the ones about seeing three islands in a bay. We could see many more than three.

The Harbor and the Schooners

Camden’s harbor is the reason the town exists, a deep notch of protected water where windjammers, the great multi-masted schooners, still tie up between coastal cruises. We spent a whole afternoon just watching them, their rigging a cat’s cradle against the sky, crews coiling lines and scrubbing decks. One captain, seeing us loiter, waved us aboard to look around, and told us his schooner was older than either of our grandparents. Down at the public landing, a small waterfall spills into the harbor right beside the boats, water tumbling out of the millpond above town. Lia dangled her feet off the dock while a lobster boat threaded between the moorings, and neither of us spoke for a long while.

Camden Hills and the Trails

Behind the town rise the Camden Hills, and beyond Mount Battie the state park unrolls a web of trails through spruce and birch. We hiked out to Maiden Cliff the next morning, where a large white cross marks a ledge high above Megunticook Lake. The lake lay dark and still far below, ringed in forest, utterly different from the salt bay on the other side of the ridge. This is the strange gift of Camden, mountains and sea within the same short walk. We ate our sandwiches on the cliff edge, legs hanging over nothing, a hawk turning slow circles below us instead of above. Lia, who is afraid of heights, held my sleeve the entire time and refused to admit she loved it.

The Town Itself

Camden’s little downtown clusters at the head of the harbor, a few streets of brick and clapboard, bookshops and chandlers and a bakery where we ate too many popovers. It never feels like a resort, more like a working town that happens to be beautiful. In the evening we bought lobster from a shack near the harbor and ate at a picnic table as the light went pink over the masts. An older couple beside us had been coming every summer for forty years, they said, and pointed out which schooner they had honeymooned aboard. That is the pull of the place. It makes you want to belong to it, to have a boat you know by name and a table you always take.

Getting There

Camden lies on Maine’s mid-coast, about two hours north of Portland and just over three from Boston, most easily reached by car along coastal Route 1. There is no passenger train this far up the coast, though the Amtrak Downeaster and a connecting bus will get you as far as Brunswick or Bangor. In summer the town is busy and parking tight, so arrive early and leave the car once you have it settled. From the waterfront you can join a day sail aboard one of the schooners, the finest way to understand why this harbor has drawn sailors for two centuries.