Latest news with #PenobscotBay
Condé Nast Traveler
a day ago
- Condé Nast Traveler
How Artists, Makers and Fisherfolk Are Still Shaping Midcoast Maine
From the upper reaches of Mount Megunticook, I gaze out at the islands of Penobscot Bay. Cloaked in a fur of evergreens, some are long and irregular shards of rock; others are as round as gumdrops. Under raked strands of cirrus cloud, the wind scrawls patterns onto the sea. Between the mountain and the North Atlantic lies the postcard-perfect town of Camden, with its thumb-shaped harbor and white church steeples. The seaward view from the Camden Hills is justly celebrated. It's said to have inspired 'Renascence,' a poem by the legendary Mainer Edna St. Vincent Millay in which the speaker gazes out at 'three islands in a bay' and hears 'The creaking of the tented sky / The ticking of Eternity.' I grew up about an hour's drive inland, and over the past 40 years I've hoofed it up this 1,385-foot mountain dozens of times. Megunticook is arguably the most rewarding easy hike in the state. At the tiered granite overlook near the summit, I take as much comfort in the vast panorama and the Christmassy smell of balsam fir as I would in the arms of an old friend. The Midcoast region, which begins (depending on who you ask) just north of Portland and runs northeast (or 'down,' in local parlance) to somewhere around the rural Blue Hill Peninsula, near Bar Harbor, gets fewer crowds than southern Maine. It's less beachy and more Birkenstock-y. The Camden-to-Rockland stretch—the middle of the Midcoast—covers less than 10 miles but combines sea-and-mountain scenery and vibrant town life like nowhere else on the East Coast. Bartender Steel Kilgore at The Norumbega hotel in Camden Christian Harder Curator Consignment, a boutique in Rockland Christian Harder The reverse view, of Camden Hills from Penobscot Bay, is just as astonishing. The many-islanded bay itself is a sailing heaven. Camden, Rockland, and Rockport (the seaside hamlet that lies between them) have long carried a cultural weight that belies their size. In the annals of American landscape painting, Midcoast Maine is right up there with the Hudson River Valley. In addition to sustaining farmers, sea captains, and fisherfolk for centuries, its rugged landscape has also lured generations of artists, not to mention deep-pocketed summer residents, preservationists, and patrons of the arts. Now a fresh group of makers and entrepreneurs have arrived to update the Midcoast lifestyle, aided by remote work and the spending power of 'summer folk,' as some old-timers still call the part-timers. I've come to my favorite stretch of coast to experience this gentle reinvention of my native state firsthand. 'In some other towns you see distressed main streets and a struggle to shift to something a little cooler and more eclectic,' says Aaron Britt, publisher of The Midcoast Villager, a community news site and weekly periodical founded last year by combining four historic newspapers. 'Camden's ability to avoid that is something a visitor feels, even if they're just in town for the Lobster Festival.' Grilled sardines at The Alna Store Christian Harder An oarlock cast at the Apprenticeshop in Rockland Christian Harder Britt, whose wife was born in Portland, worked in New York City and San Francisco as an editor and style columnist before moving here five years ago. We chat over fried-haddock sandwiches at the Villager Café, a pine-floored breakfast-and-lunch spot operated by his employer. Its offices are upstairs. I've come to our meeting via the scenic route, through the gently sloping Harbor Park, completed in 1931 by the Olmsted Brothers (sons of the visionary behind New York's Central Park). The summer sailboats haven't arrived yet, but still the scene—brick and clapboard storefronts, the Colonial Revival public library—is absurdly picturesque. There's even a waterfall, where the Megunticook River empties into the harbor over a 250-year-old dam. The river also has a footbridge over it, conveniently located next to an ice-cream stand. Britt has the perfect term for this storybook mash-up of charming features: 'the Camden snow globe.' Colin Page, an artist I meet later that afternoon, looks to the sea for his subjects. A Baltimore native, he moved to Maine after studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and New York City's Cooper Union, and bought a 28-foot sailboat so that he could reach hard-to-access spots and paint them. Hanging on the wall toward the front of Page Gallery, which he co-owns, is one result of those excursions: a tide pool scene alive with pink granite, purple shadows, and neon surfgrass. But Page admits that he was also drawn to sailing for the same reasons anyone else is: 'Being out on the water for a couple hours at the end of the day, just focusing on the sea and what you're doing—there's nothing better.'
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
PETA sues Maine Lobster Festival saying the steaming of 16,000 live crustaceans is torture
Animal rights group PETA has filed a lawsuit against the Maine Lobster Festival, claiming the event organizers are torturing lobsters by steaming them to eat. The lawsuit, filed July 24 in Knox County Superior Court, claims the festival and the city of Rockland, where the event is held, are acting in violation of Maine law prohibiting the torture and torment of animals, the Penobscot Bay Pilot reported. PETA is asking the court to deem the festival a 'public nuisance' and ban organizers from steaming lobsters on public land, WMTW reported. PETA argues in the suit that the festival is 'one of the most egregious violations of Maine's animal protection statutes occurring anywhere on public land in the state: the systematic torture of approximately 16,000 live, sentient animals at the Maine Lobster Festival held annually at Harbor Park in Rockland, Maine.' The group's attorneys argued that PETA also filed the lawsuit on behalf of Rockland residents who lose access to walkways, public kayaking and canoeing, intertidal lands, and related civic spaces during the festival. "These individuals cannot access public trust resources without encountering and accepting intolerable conditions: the illegal public torture and killing of thousands of individual sentient lobsters via live steaming." In the suit, PETA argues that because lobsters are sentient beings, they are able to feel pain, and should be protected under Maine law, which requires any method used to kill a sentient creature must cause instantaneous death. PETA argues that the lobsters remain neurologically active and can feel the pain, suffering for several minutes when they are steamed. Meanwhile, event organizers say they're going by the books. An event organizer told WMTW they use 'traditional, lawful and widely accepted cooking methods' when steaming lobsters, and that there is no scientific evidence the crustaceans can feel pain. A hearing has not yet been scheduled for PETA's request for an injunction to stop the steaming of the lobsters. The annual event begins July 30, and runs through August 3.
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Travel + Leisure
02-07-2025
- Travel + Leisure
This Hidden Maine Destination Has the Best Pizza In the State—and None of the Crowds
I lived in New York City for a decade, but the pizza I dream about is not in the five boroughs, it's in Maine. Yes, Maine. And not in Portland, the northern state's city that has been enjoying a rich culinary renaissance. The pizza that haunts my dreams is in a part of the state Mainers refer to as "Down East," in a rural community on the Blue Hill Peninsula called Brooksville, population 923. For over a decade, Tinder Hearth has been a destination unto itself, serving fresh, seasonal pizzas to those who make the trek to its hidden corner of the world, and it's what I think about all winter long. Those who have been lucky enough to eat at Tinder Hearth tend to get a little misty around the eyes when they talk about its charms. Sourdough pizzas, made with the freshest local ingredients, and baked in a Quebec-style clay oven, are served on mismatched dishes collected at local thrift stores and donated by neighbors. Dozens of picnic tables are spread across a multi-acre garden surrounded by vegetable and flower beds abutting farm fields and meadows. A bird's eye view would show you a mowed postage stamp of grass in the wild landscape of Maine bordered by the Penobscot Bay not too far away. The magic of Tinder Hearth is the alchemy of Tim Semler and Lydia Moffet, husband and wife Mainers who began their business by selling homemade sourdough bread at local farmers markets and shops. Eventually they started making sourdough pizzas for events around the area, and in 2012 they transformed the grounds of Semler's childhood home into a casual al fresco restaurant. News spread locally in Brooksville and the surrounding Blue Hill Peninsula, an area with deep ties to the farm-to-table movement, and today Tinder Hearth serves upward of 300 people per night during the short high summer season of July and August. 'It wasn't that we set out to make the best pizza in the world,' Semler says. 'You try to do your best with the materials you have, and we're really lucky to be in a place where there's just really great farmers around.' Inclusion on the 2023 New York Times' Restaurant List brought in people from farther away in the state and "from away." Yet despite their increasing recognition, Tinder Hearth's remote location—about half an hour from the closest inn or motel—has reigned in the popularity, slightly. While the Blue Hill Peninsula sees nowhere near as many tourists as elsewhere in the state, such as Kennebunkport of Acadia National Park, like much of coastal Maine, Brooksville's population swells in the summertime. Those who make the trek to the rural restaurant have a small selection to choose from—there's a meat pie, a veggie pie, and a special, all dependent on what the area farmers and purveyors have told Tim and Lydia they have fresh that week. The produce shapes the menu, which always also includes salads, freshly shucked oysters from Deer Isle Oyster Company, wine, and ice cream. Reservations go live once a week, on Monday mornings, and book up almost instantly. Those looking for a slightly quieter experience, which doesn't involve Olympic-level efforts to score a reservation, might visit in the shoulder season of June and September or even in the winter when they serve pizza once a week on Friday and breakfast pastries twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday. 'One of the things I really love about pizza, specifically, is that you don't have to explain to anybody what pizza is,' Semler says. 'All different kinds of people are really passionate and obsessed with pizza.' And it turns out a lot of them are willing to travel for it.
