Winter Wonder Land From coast to mountains, holiday spirit permeates state of Maine

loading...

Editor’s Note: Wendy M. Fontaine is a freelance writer living in Hancock. She moved to Maine in July from Newport, RI. Her husband Dan works as a boatswain’s mate at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Southwest Harbor.

Evergreen wreaths hanging along the South Bristol Bridge might have hinted that I was nearing my destination. But I was distracted by waves splashing over boulders and fishing boats dotting one of the prettiest harbors I have ever seen.

A few seconds later, I arrived in Christmas Cove, a quiet village where the seawater is a deep pine color, a fitting hue for a place named after such a special day.

In the cove, on tiny Rutherford Island, neighbors wave to passersby. The roads are just wide enough for a single car and locals are happy to stop and talk to a stranger.

Christmas Cove is also one of a dozen places in Maine with a name reminiscent of the holiday and winter season. You may have heard of some others such as Winter Harbor, Winterport, Garland or the Cranberry Isles. But have you heard of Cider Falls? Joyville? How about Snow Corner or Snow Falls?

Seeking some holiday spirit and hoping to learn more about the state of Maine, I packed up my car and set out to find some of these places, to discover their names’ origins and meet the people who call them home.

Christmas Cove lies on a long peninsula between the Damariscotta River and Johns Bay. It got its charming name from explorer Capt. John Smith, who anchored there on Christmas Day in 1614.

Unless they go by boat, visitors must pass over the South Bristol Bridge spanning a narrow passage called The Gut.

On a chilly morning, Craig Plummer watched over the harbor, ready to swing open the roadway should a fishing boat or other vessel need to pass through the channel. He offered me a peek into the life of a swing bridge operator. He explained how he gets the signals to open the bridge. He showed me the shack where he once worked for 80 hours straight. He even offered me a ride on the platform should I return to Christmas Cove in the summer.

Plummer, whose thick, white mustache wiggles when he talks, said Christmas Cove is the most majestic place he has ever been.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve been all up and down the coast and this is the prettiest spot.”

I think there is a good chance he is absolutely correct.

Another recent day, I found myself walking in a winter wonderland.

No, really.

I was walking at Wonderland, one of the lesser known hiking trails in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, in Southwest Harbor. The route is serene, remote and, as I would come to learn, a bit mysterious.

In the lane, snow glistened, just like the Christmas carol says. I listened for sleigh bells ringing, but all I heard were a few bell buoys in the distance.

I pulled my wool hat down over my ears and ambled along the trail, winding between Seawall and the Bass Harbor Light. The squishing of my boots on the wet ground was noisy but not nearly as loud as the deep rumbling of winter waves coming from beyond the trees.

After a few minutes, the trail opened up to a huge, rocky beach. A loon glided near the shore. Shells piled up in the tidal pools. Two hikers and their dogs disappeared around a wood bend. And then there was me, hopping from rock to rock to get closer to the water.

As it turns out, Wonderland is no trail at all. Technically, it is a fire road. Beyond that, much of the area’s past is as foggy as the horizon around Mount Desert Island.

As a boy, Southwest Harbor boat builder Ralph W. Stanley remembers digging clams at Wonderland. He says the area was once quarried for pavers in the 1800s. Workers cut granite, some of which were loaded onto coastal schooners and shipped to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other cities.

The stretch of shoreline was also a favorite hideaway for rumrunners hiding out during Prohibition.

“It was secluded and it was a good place to drop off liquor in the fog,” Stanley said.

Sometime after 1932, Wonderland became part of Acadia. Even those who are in charge of the trails are unsure exactly how the land became part of the national park. Neither Stanley nor Gary Stellplug, the park’s trails foreman, could say how it got its name.

“That, I don’t know,” Stanley said. “And I don’t know who would.”

There is another mystery at Wonderland. Every so often, someone constructs a chair out of rocks from the beach. Maintenance crews trek out and disassemble it, only to find later that it has been rebuilt. The seat has come to be known as Rockefeller’s Chair, a nod to one of Acadia’s founding families.

Back on the road, bound for Holiday Beach in Owls Head, visions of sugarplums were the furthest thing from my mind when I stepped out onto the sand. Images of suntan lotion, beach blankets and ice cream cones bounced around my brain.

That’s because the name refers to summer vacations, not Christmas.

At the turn of the 20th century, the area became a summer colony when a railroad line enabled visitors to reach nearby Crescent Beach. Entrepreneur Fred Smith saw an opportunity to make a little money. He sold cottage lots, most of them 40 feet by 80 feet, for $50 to $150 each.

“That was a lot of money back then,” Edward W. Coffin, a Holiday Beach resident and author of “The Coastal Town of Owls Head, Maine,” said. “Most people bought one or two.”

Smith made even more money selling water, firewood and other goods to the cottage dwellers. He also chose an alluring name for his new community.

“It was called Holiday Beach because they were coming there for the holiday,” Coffin said. “When you think of Holiday Beach, you visualize warm water, slides and swings, people sitting and smoking cigars – that sort of thing. It was to entice people.”

Today, the houses are bigger and the neighborhood is more exclusive. Most residences are year round. Recently, one of Coffin’s neighbors sold their home for $340,000. “That really amazed me,” he said.

Farther south, Cider Hill was named for my favorite winter drink. The place is just outside of York village and off Route 91. Cider was made there in the late 1800s.

“It’s a very small area,” Old York Historical Society librarian Virginia Spiller said. “People have lived there since the 1600s.”

Like most southern Maine towns, Cider Hill has attracted many new residents in recent years. It’s more populated now than ever before. But the orchards are long gone.

“I believe they grow Christmas trees there now,” Spiller said.

Garland, a rural town about 25 miles north of Bangor, was not named for the sparkly stuff we hang on Christmas trees but for Joseph Garland, one of the farmers who settled there in 1801. His name was chosen because his wife was the first to have a baby in the town.

Garland residents celebrate their town’s agricultural history every September over Garland Days weekend. Festivities include horse shows, chili and home brew contests, and a barbecue served up by local firemen.

“It’s fun, for the kids mostly,” Fred Donovan, an accountant who moved to town in the 1980s from Massachusetts, said. He bought an old farmhouse, which he spent five years renovating. “There are a lot of friendly people in town.”

In Hermon, about 20 miles southeast of Garland, you’ll find Snow Corner. The junction where the well traveled Fuller and Billings roads converge, derives its name from the Snow family, who lived on three of the four corners.

No Snows live there today. But if you go to Snow Corner, you’ll see an unusual sight. Deb Curtis, who lives in the 200-year-old farmhouse there, keeps three pet llamas in a pen just beyond her family’s redemption center.

I stopped by one afternoon with a burning question: Do the llamas mind the snow?

“Not at all,” she said. “They’re from Peru.”

My holiday journey took me 600 miles along the back roads of Maine, through snow-covered fields and stunning coastal villages. I saw a Christmas tree made of wooden lobster crates, Santa Claus greeting children at a small-town bookstore and more colored lights than I could count in a lifetime.

And while the excursions were fun, I realized that Christmas – the true feeling of Christmas – wasn’t in those towns any more than it was in my own backyard. The meaning of the holiday lies not in the name of any particular community but in the hearts of the people who call those places home. The spirit of Christmas lies in how they welcomed a stranger who happened to wander into town one cold winter day.

Wendy Fontaine can be reached at wendymfontaine@msn.com.