Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
PETER JON LINDBERG
Summerland
FROM
Travel + Leisure
T
HE PIPER CUB
buzzes back into view, flying just 200 feet over the waves, its red-lettered
banner unfurled behind. All afternoon it's been crisscrossing the cloudless sky. Every day, the
same plane, same offer:
KEN'S MAINE CLAMBAKE—$19.95
. When I first started coming here,
the price was $8.99. Back then I could read it without my glasses.
Each time the plane passes, the kids on the beach look up from their pails and shovels and
cheer. (Today, our friends' son Silas is building a sand replica of Fenway Park.) Soon there
will be Popsicles, a game of foursquare. And later, as the tide comes in, we'll round up our
blanketsandshuffleoverthedunestothehouse,tostarttheeveningritual:fixingMaineRoute
1 cocktails, shucking corn, steaming lobsters, plucking basil from the window box, making
sea-urchin pasta. After dinner we'll have a round of Bananagrams while the Sox game plays
on AM radio. If it's chilly there might be a fire—though we're as likely to doze off before 10,
sun-drenched and surf-pummeled as we are. In the morning the gurgle of coffee will coax us
from bed at dawn, and the whole routine will begin again.
I'm not sure how it started, and I can't say when it might end, but we've been making this
trip together for more than a decade, my wife, Nilou, and I and this group of friends. It's be-
come,unexpectedlyyetunchangingly,WhatWeDo.EveryAugust,westuffourcarswithice-
boxes and inflatable rafts, sharp knives and good wine, and point our caravan northward for
the annual migration to Pine Point.
There may be prettier beaches, with quainter towns beyond, some on this very Maine coast.
Yet this is the one I daydream about, through drizzly Aprils and slate-gray Decembers. I
wouldn'tnecessarilyhavechosenthisplace,givenmypickofathousandothers,butyearsago
this place chose me, and it's lured me back every summer since, so I guess it's settled. We're
together for the foreseeable future.
My friend Mark and I have known Pine Point since we were teenagers; his parents, the
McAdams, own a summer cottage just upshore from our rental. It was my idea to bring
the group. Until their first visit in 2001, Nilou and the rest had never been north of Bo-
ston—couldn't crack a lobster, couldn't name a single Red Sox. In the years since they've be-
come localized, loyalized: converts to the cult of Maine.
Constancy is the most underrated of virtues, in people but also in places. You can revisit Lon-
don or Tokyo every six months and find an entirely new city in place of the one you re-
membered, such that even your 18th trip feels like a first date. Returning to Pine Point, we
