If a single sound and a single scent can hold the essence of a New England summer, surely they’re the crash of the surf breaking on our shores and the salty tang that hangs in the breeze as you get ever closer to the sea. Nature and geography have bestowed many gifts on our New […]
maine
Without a school, a year-round island would lose its families, and then its character.
Lynne Cox’s strange and wonderful relationship with the coldest waters on the planet began as a youngster turning blue on the coastal beaches of Maine and New Hampshire. She went on to set world records for duration and distance in a variety of exotic cold-water settings, first as a teen crossing the English Channel, and […]
Deep Dish
Pies have been a staple of the New England table since the Colonial days. Bring them to a modern-day table in Seal Cove Pottery pie plates ($38). Lisbeth Faulkner and Edwin Marshall Davis’s studio/store/art gallery on Mount Desert Island in Maine is laden with blue, green, and red pottery on the shelves and nautical watercolors […]
L.L. Bean: 4:48 a.m. It’s nearly 5 a.m. and you’re standing at the gateway to Maine’s North Woods. Well, actually you’re wandering through the hunting and fishing annex of the vast L.L. Bean retail empire in Freeport, joined by bleary-eyed, coffee-fueled hunters who have been driving all night from Connecticut and New York and have […]
America’s Bloodiest War
In 1600, southern New England was home to approximately 90,000 Indians. Approximately 12,000 were Pokanokets, a tribe living at the head of Narragansett Bay. From 1616 to 1619, bubonic plague, introduced by European fishermen in Maine, killed up to 90 percent of the Indians in some areas along the New England coastline. Massasoit, sachem (leader) […]
Who Was Rufus Porter?
Most people think of Rufus Porter as the itinerant muralist who traveled New England from the early 1820s to about 1845. His vivid landscapes are characterized by rural and coastal images and the open brushstrokes used to achieve his signature feathery trees. Porter’s art is so closely identified with the region that he has achieved […]
It has been said that art is the signature of a civilization. Like all signatures, it is unique and personal and binding. When a civilization vanishes, it is art that leaves an indelible imprint to tell the story of a people’s existence and their eventual demise. Such is the story of Tomah Joseph, a Passamaquoddy […]
Is Squam Lake Still Golden?
Twenty-six years after the film, the image still lingers: Henry Fonda and Kate Hepburn, in the twilight of their lives, come for another glorious summer on Golden Pond. The movie and its 10 Oscar nominations created a valentine to a certain kind of timelessness, and a certain kind of lake. It was based on screenwriter […]
As dawn broke over the lake this morning, your daughter caught her first perch. A few hours later, your son paddled to Loon Island with a new friend while you read several chapters (in one sitting!) of a novel you’d been meaning to start for years. At dusk, after a gourmet lobster bake, you and […]
Cape Ann, Massachusetts: The Other Cape
It happens often as you drive around Cape Ann, the rocky headland jutting into the Atlantic 30 miles north of Boston. You round a corner or crest a hill and wham! — suddenly you’ve driven into a painting. It’s something about the way the light refracts off the ocean on all sides, making ship masts […]
A Letter to Our Readers
This special travel guide issue is a conversation between Yankee and you, our readers. We are talking about places we love in a unique corner of the world: New England. We all know that surge of excitement when we discover a new place and, whether by foot or bike or car, we set out and […]