Winter down the St. George Peninsula is a rather long and harsh experience. There are few prolonged sunny days, and the wind never seems to let up. Clouds fill the sky, and a certain pallete of gray blankets the landscape. Snow falls and temperatures plummet. I can remember one day last January in Port Clyde when the Thermometer read -12 and the wind chill made it feel like it was thirty below. It is hard to even take a breath on days like that, let alone stay warm! Every now and again though, there comes an afternoon when the winds stop and the sun shines. This break in the Winter weather pattern may only last for a day, or even for a few hours. But for a boy who longs to smell the flowers of June and taste the blueberries of August, this momentary lapse of frigid reality is a golden chance to suspend time and daydream a little. Yesterday was one of those golden chances, and daydream I did! Deciding to get out of town on my day off, I flew down 131 to Tenants Harbor and walked along the town's silent waterfront. The Inn and the fish market were boarded up, closed for the season. Hundreds of lobster traps occupied the lawns and driveways. Sailboats sat snug in their hangers, masts down and hulls covered, just hibernating for now. There was not a sound to be heard other than the lapping of the freezing water at my feet. A lone blue punt swayed back and forth on it's line, casting a dreamy shadow on the bright blue ocean. The striking spruce pines that this beautiful place is so famous for shimmered in the afternoon light. The temperature was in the high 20's, but the sun and the lack of wind made it feel downright balmy. It might have been the middle of January, but with a little imagination and a few warm layers, it felt like spring. I snapped my faithful Nikon and moved down the road to check in on our summer house. All closed up for the season, the old wooden structure feels cold and lonely inside. The laughter of Summer has been replaced by the silence of Winter. The beach chairs sit folded in the corner of the mud room, collecting dust, while the windows remain locked tight. It is a ghostly place this time of year, but it is still my house, and I feel at home here, even in the middle of January. Much like Andrew Wyeth would sit for hours in Christina Olson's barren farmhouse, I too will linger in the kitchen and enjoy the quiet of this place. Nothing seems to move in here, everything is still. Outside the house, the tides of Mosquito Harbor ebb and flow and the winter winds blow, but inside the house, time has slowed and the world has stopped. Down in Port Clyde, which has a ghostly feel to it as well this time of year, I walked down to the Lobster Co-Op to see what, if anything, was going on. The daydream was beginning to fade as the harsh reality of Winter was stinging my face in the form of a stiff breeze off Muscongus Bay. January wind off the ocean doesn't hit your body, it slams into you and bites at your exposed skin. You dig your hands deep in your jacket and pull your wool hat down to your eyes, but there is no escaping what comes whipping off the frozen ocean. This is Maine, and it is still January. Bracing my body against the cold, I steadied my Faithful Nikon and shot the barren landscape of the harbor. I noticed two heavily dressed men at the end of the dock. I walked up to them and inquired what they were doing. "Fixing the boat," one said to me in a tone of voice that made pretty damn clear that would be the extent of the conversation. I didn't need to talk anyways, I had my camera to express my feelings. I watched as they dragged a huge piece of metal onto the dock and began to pull and pry at it. Out came a blow torch and a period of intense welding followed. As the two men were bent over, hard at work, I noticed a burly black lab bounding my way. He had decided to jump off the boat and see what the dock had to offer him. He was a great dog! Tale wagging back and forth, tongue lapping at the side of may face, he met me in the way that labs usually meet people-he nearly bowled me over. I snapped away as he interacted with his owner and tried as hard as he could to get in the way of whatever it was they were doing. He was obviously enjoying the afternoon, while it was painfully obvious that most of the humans on the dock were not! I snapped my last shots of the day, and walked back down the road where my warm car awaited me. The wind was now blowing at a furious pace and the temperature had slid back down into the teens. I drove back to Camden on that familiar winding slab of rugged asphalt that is route 131, just as the sun was setting over the St. George River. Later that night, I walked downtown to get some food and was treated to an amazing canopy of stars in the winter sky. What a beautiful day it had been, even if the January thaw had retreated for a few hours. It had been a perfect day for a day dream, custom made for a day dreamin' boy.
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