Acadia National Park, as I remember it from my itty-bitty days, invokes cinematic memories, complete with nostalgic lens flares and I’m sure plenty of post production editing. I grew up in Pennsylvania, but it sometimes felt like my parents and I were only “home” between summer trips to Maine. Mom frequently counted down the weeks “‘till Lobster” when the day-to-day grind was too much to bear, and I subconsciously adopted a reverence for the northlands that followed me long into my adult life.
As a child, the drive was LONG. From what little I could see over the door frame of my parents’ red hatchback, the trees grew pointier as we drove North, and at each rest-stop, the air held a bit more chill. For the most part I was absorbed in my coloring book, and otherwise defending the borders of my cramped burrow, nestled in amongst the luggage, from my two sleepy spaniel siblings. My dad taught me to read road maps on our way north, something he probably regretted quickly when I started asking for mile markers every few minutes, but tracking our progress ultimately kept me occupied for impossibly long stints sandwiched between stubborn spaniels and an inflexible car door.
It wasn’t until we arrived in Maine that I realized how foreign the landscape was to me. I clambered over the folded front seat in twilight, eager to MOVE, and took in my new surroundings. To my amazement, the gravel road sparkled in the beams of our headlights while Dad shuffled through his travel papers, eager to find instructions to unlock the cabin door. Beyond the cabin, the headlights were swallowed by the black undergrowth of this tiny island’s forest. This shadowy border was framed by blinding white pillars of birch bark reaching up toward a sky already bursting with stars. I looked at Mom taking her first meditative breath, and she invited me to follow suit. The air smelled clean, cleaner than I’d experienced in my short life thus far, and the wind shook the pines around us, creating an unfamiliar white noise, not quite what I was used to back home.
In daylight, Acadia vibrates. On a clear day, the sun bakes barnacle-crusted, pink granite cliffs, making them a hot-to-the-touch “no-man’s land,” flanked by hammering, ice-cold North Atlantic swells to one side and the achingly slow creep of misty, loamy forest from the interior of Mt. Desert Island. As a child, geologic time was lost on my day-to-day attention span, but scrambling across the ocean cliffs to find every last tide pool provided hours of entertainment. Sure we hiked through the woods, and took breaks in tourist trap cafes and ice cream shops, but this rocky borderland between the ocean and the forest gripped my attention and imagination. I think it was all my father could do to keep me from being swept out to sea after we left my mother in a sunny spot with a lawn chair and a pile of books. Every day we visited, my parents graciously timed our itinerary around low tide, and I gathered scrapes and collected (mentally) sea creatures that were temporarily stranded in little islands of ocean. I think my father enjoyed scrambling as much as I did, and my mother was happy with anything as long as she could read from her stack of books and fill up on lobster at the end of the day.
I credit these week long excursions north with my early obsession with nature. I naturally knew nothing about what I was seeing, but it was all new and exciting, and opened my eyes to the joy of observing and trying to understand natural areas. Fortunately for me, camping trips, backpacking, and kayaking trips would follow as I grew older and reached the typical age to start thinking about college. Another passion took root in this time as well, and I found myself bound for music school, with a cohort of decidedly less nature-inclined music students.
I focused on my studies and experiencing another new environment to me, the city of Boston. It didn’t take long, however, for something to start nagging me. I wasn’t consciously aware of what it was, but I was feeling stressed and drained. After an impromptu train trip out to Walden Pond, it hit me that I’d been living in a “natural” dry spell and craved being surrounded by woods. This gave me a new appreciation for the important role that experiencing natural spaces played in my life and I was equally surprised that my friends did not typically seek this out. Visiting Walden was a pleasant surprise to most of my friends who joined me. I came back feeling refreshed and they came back bitten by the nature bug. I don’t credit myself for their epiphanies, but realizing that heading to the woods wasn’t necessarily everyone’s default “want” was a pleasant perspective check for me. I saw something familiar in their giddy reactions to our hike and resolved to punctuate my college time with them with a trip up to Acadia.
Shooting stars, creaking car, campfire jams, Igloo bar.
Bad Maine puns, naps in the sun, surprise dessert, too much fun.
I was beyond excited. My core friends in school agreed to head north with me, on a shoe-string budget, to one of my favorite places to visit. I was nervous too. What if they did not fall in love with Acadia National Park like I had? What if I was making a big deal out of nothing? I had been talking it up since we set our sights on this trip, and it was now finally time to head north. For better or worse, I packed up a piecemeal kit of my beat up camping equipment on a visit home to Pennsylvania, and I was now picking up my friends around town in Boston. We Tetrised our packs into the trunk, and set off for Maine, my car’s suspension groaning under the weight of five college students, their musical instruments, and enough gear to deal with anything and everything.
The first night set the mood. We rolled up to our campsite late at night. We’d have to set up in the dark and check in with the campground staff in the morning. Setting up camp in the light of my car’s headlights, I quietly said hello to the gravel nearby, sparkling with the familiar light show of what I then knew was caused by regional concentrations of mica silicates. Though I half expected everyone to turn in for the night, I was delighted when they all wanted to rush off to the seaside next to the campground. We laid out for hours, picking out satellites and shooting stars overhead, stretching our cramped legs against the now cooled coastal rocks, and letting our music nerd ears pick out different bells from warning buoys bobbing off shore. I took a deep breath and I was glad to find that the air tasted as pure as I remembered.
The next day, I brought my friends to the cliffs I loved from my childhood and let them lead the way. Any nerves I might have had about sharing this place with my friends instantly dissolved with the first gasps that I heard as we turned a corner to the first sweeping view of my beloved cliffs. I had to work to keep up with them after that moment, and our pace quickened as we came upon the first tide pools. I could see we were going to spend all day at this spot and I happily found a big flat rock to lay out on. Closing my eyes, absorbing the heat of the sun and the sounds of the waves beating the cliffs below, my soul was vibrating to a familiar rhythm. We napped there longer than we should have, but we rolled up to Bar Harbor for some dinner, sun soaked and beaming from within.
I noticed new things about Acadia on that trip. Operating with college student finances, we stayed (camped) in an entirely new part of the island than I had before. We spent less time taking touristy breaks in towns because we simply weren’t spending money on anything other than basic food. This focused our attention on the natural spaces around us and, somewhat scathingly, on the marketing employed by the shops and services that we found out-of-reach from our wallets. Tired Maine puns abounded and we spent our hikes trying to one-up each other with new ones, turning them into goofy songs that we’d jam on later by the campfire.
The trip ended with a surprise dessert from my friends. As a small thank you, someone had told the staff at one of the few restaurants we enjoyed that it was my birthday (it absolutely was not) and I was almost brought to tears. Thinking about it later, I realized I was around people who had discovered music at the same young age that I had discovered Acadia. Music was important to me, but I had underestimated how equally important experiencing nature was to my happiness, and perhaps how insecure I was about my commitment to music. I think I unwittingly bared a component of my soul that I hadn’t really had an opportunity to share with these friends before that moment, and they had accepted it, accepted me. I felt fully me with them and it was transformative.
We hopped back in the car the next day, having gorged ourselves on blueberry pancakes, and we set off to return to Boston. Content with my first trip as an “adult”, my mind nervously refocused on someone I had been texting with whenever service allowed on this trip. Shortly before we piled into my Subaru to head north, I had met someone new through this same group of friends. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d be revisiting Acadia National Park with this person in a number of years, on the anniversary of our marriage.
Fancy food, foggy moods, eagle flights, dorky dude (me).
Sea lion friend, windy views, foggy bends, sailboat crews.
Remy also grew up in an “outdoorsy” family and was no stranger to New England. Camping was their summer staple as well and we quickly started getting outside together. Dates for us were often improvised camping getaways to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where Remy shared their stomping grounds with me. Remy was also tangentially aware of my friend-trip to Acadia so a return trip was always on the back of our minds. When we eventually married, we were still living on a very modest, post-college budget and as a result couldn’t manage a honeymoon. Instead, we coined the term “honeymooniversary” and planned a trip north for a year later.
I felt similar nerves to bringing my friends to Acadia, though I was much more confident that Remy would feel the same as I did for this magical place. We mixed camping with a nice hotel stay and built out a budget for good food. While our nights were spent enjoying what Bar Harbor had to offer, we hit the coastal sections of the park with a familiar fervor. We spent hours soaking in the warmth of the cliffs, watching seagulls harass fellow tourists while a friendly sea lion bobbed in the surf nearby. This time, Acadia felt deeply familiar, and something about sharing it with my new partner in life, at this moment in time, felt eerily perfect. We daydreamed about other parks we wanted to visit, almost whispering so Acadia wouldn’t feel slighted. Remy’s interest in rock climbing led us to try the famous “Iron Ring” trails, hugging wind-blasted, mountain cliffs with only iron rings and bars to steady ourselves. The views were breathtaking and entirely new to my experiences of the park. We were blending the familiar with the uncharted (for us) which felt hopelessly romantic and symbolic on the anniversary of our marriage, but also refreshingly led by the moment in a world that was becoming increasingly scheduled with our new job commitments and responsibilities.
The importance of this park, and revisiting it (and other natural spaces) throughout my life became all too real when we found a small, easily missable plaque on the edge of one of the cliff faces on our last day of hiking in the park. The inscription escapes me now, but it was a memorial. Someone, equally struck with the natural beauty of this place had had their ashes spread off of the cliff to punctuate the end of their life. I imagined a small group of cherished loved ones swapping stories of visits to the park while they said their last goodbyes. Perhaps during a sunrise, with the morning glow slowly warming the pink granite around them. I took a moment to appreciate the moments in my life that I’d punctuated with a visit to Acadia, and I wondered how many others had done the same over the years.
Established in 1916, Acadia has played host to generations of people looking for a prime example of coastal wilderness, a fun day hike or two, or even happy local shops with lobster bottle openers, buoy ornaments, and no shortage of moose shirts. What I love about places like Acadia, is that they mean so much to so many people, and they mean such different things to those same people throughout their lives. While I often feel the pull to visit other parks, ticking off a checklist to “collect them all,” I take comfort knowing that places like Acadia are protected, and know now that revisiting them is just as important as seeing new places and experiencing new things. I don’t doubt that I’ll visit again, I’m already itching to be honest, and I look forward to sharing the park with other people I love at new chapters in my life to come.