Wayne Curtis

Once discovered, Maine’s Blue Hill Peninsula and Deer Isle are impossible to forget.

Five wheelbarrows are scattered haphazardly around a large ground-floor workshop in an eccentric, circular building in the woods just a two-minute walk from Maine’s rocky coastline. None of the wheelbarrows looks like the others, and frankly, none looks much like a wheelbarrow. They’re all handmade, four of them by a man named Bill Coperthwaite. (The […]

“Here, take some firewood,” says Raj Bhakta as he offers me a chunk of maple. I tell him, thanks, no, I’ve got plenty at home. He stares at me for an incredulous moment, then says, “No, take it” (the stupid is silent). “We’re going to the top of the hill.” So I grab the log […]

A summer camp is not about place. It’s about time, and time slows down at a Maine summer camp.

Late in the afternoon on June 29, 2000, I joined a club that’s not as exclusive as you might think. Here’s why you should always brake for moose.

We’re rounding a gentle meander on Socatean Stream, a remote and narrow tributary that empties into the wild northwest corner of Moosehead Lake. My guide is deftly piloting his pontoon boat up a winding and elusive channel edged with the bleached skeletons of ancient stumps and floating mats of rustling grasses. Even hard-core city dwellers […]

Eighty years ago this summer, Eastport, Maine, thought it was on the cusp of prosperity and fame as work began on history’s most ambitious tidal project.

Acadia National Park’s landscape is so mesmerizing it will take your breath away. When people think of Acadia, they think of it mostly as a refuge for nature; it’s been viewed as such since the first artists from Eastern Seaboard cities ventured here in the 1840s. But Acadia is no more a work of pure […]

Captain Bob Milne’s tours of Connecticut’s Thimble Islands are big on legend, lore, and history—but what he doesn’t tell you also reveals island truths.

One afternoon last August, I set off up West Grand Lake in eastern Maine, my kayak loaded with enough food and gear for two nights of island camping. No sooner had I dipped my paddle, though, than four canoes occupied by eight beefy guys pushed off from the shore nearby. Loaded with brightly colored coolers, […]

Author and cocktail expert Wayne Curtis searches for New England’s classic cocktails and tries to recreate his own.

An enduring symbol of the North Woods faces threats from technology and a new generation that values efficiency over tradition..