Edge of the World

To drive into the town of Eastport on the skinny stretch of route 19o is to straddle two worlds. On your right, the narrow coves and winding rivers of Cobscook Bay beckon you. To your left, the wide open and seemingly endless Passamaquoddy Bay intimidates, as the distant shores of Canada loom under the dark clouds of a late October thunderstorm. You are no longer in quaint and cozy Maine, you have entered a foreign land, a place where wild fields of grass roll on forever, and a giant sky covers the land like a blanket covers a bed. Eastport and its surrounding environs are in their own category. The lobster boats here are bigger, almost resembling Coast Guard cutters, the ones that shear through thick packs of ice. These beastly boats are housed in a watery prison, with 30 foot high wooden walls surrounding the entrance to the town dock. The people are different here. French Canadians are everywhere it seems, even the radio stations are almost all French. There is an Indian reservation at Pleasant Point, home to generations of Passamaquoddy Indians, the "people of the dawn." The houses are different here. Waterfront properties sell for prices that would make real estate agents in Camden and Boothbay drop their jaws in disbelief. The buildings here are old and weathered, rundown in many cases. This is a town that looks like time has forgotten it. There are a few cozy antique galleries and chic eateries, but the surrounding streets sit ripe with trailers, abandoned houses and roadside trash. This is not a tourist town, this is a real town. The word quaint need not apply. On the outskirts of town, there is an old boat school, where wooden relics of the past sit in overgrown fields of grass. "dead" boats, with monikers like "Irish Broad," and "Mrs. TC," stand proud in the yard, where they will probably never leave, until they finally rot away, like so many other vessels on the coast of Maine. There is such stark beauty in Eastport, yet there is such stark poverty as well. This town exemplifies the juxtaposition of people who live hard lives in beautiful places. As a wise man once told me, "you can't eat the scenery." He must have been referring to Eastport.