Quietside

Another exploration, another excursion, inland this time, though that's not a concept frequently associated with Acadia or with Mt. Desert Island. Nevertheless, there is an “inland” unlike the island's more famous coast, and there, and around the “Quietside,” the southern half of the island less frequented by tourists, I ended up.  Driving back roads to hike Beech Mountain, different sort of lovely landscape emerged.  There were golden fall fields and still-active farms backed by dark hills, tiny old graveyards in quiet corners, their small clusters of aging headstones relics of communities gone before, simple, weatherworn houses whose beauty is not in decoration but in their bones. Plain, sturdy things in whitewash or cedar shingle, these old houses in their fields and villages have stood a century and more of stern New England weather, and intend to stand a while longer yet. 

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Emerging onto Rt. 102, traveling south and east, more and more modern houses lined the roadsides among their historic counterparts. In large part, the people who live along southern and southeastern edges of Mount Desert Island really do live here. These are not the enormous “cottages” of the rich and famous, “rusticators” present or past who summer elsewhere along the shore. There are average homes, and some tiny, some even verging on ramshackle in construction and upkeep, concessions to a love of place or way of life that far outstrips earning potential, or to a lack of funding that makes escape to another place impossible. While this is hardly the venue for a discussion of economy or gentrification, it bears mentioning that among the dreaming vacationers, the wild park, and the seaside palaces, there are also regular people working and living on Mount Desert Island, and there is sometimes poverty too.  Tourist or wandering tech, with means or none, it seems visitors come to places like Acadia with visions often very different from the reality of those who live here. It's an odd thought, comparing the two, an odd experience when they collide, and one I find I'm not yet prepared to comment on more intelligently. But it was definitely on my mind, rounding the final bend in the loop that is 102, back toward Acadia and Southwest Harbor, back to the bubble of hiking trails and harbors filled with sailboats, followed by a vague, uncomfortable sense of intruding in that doesn't happen sightseeing among wealthy seasonal playgrounds seemingly built for show.  It's something to think about.