With the coming of May I’m becoming reacquainted with our very own threshold to the sea, Lincolnville Beach. Walking it every single morning for six months, the necessity for the job Wally and I had, and now I do alone, of emptying the five trash barrels and picking up the litter thrown out the day before, makes those few hundred yards of sand as familiar as my own living room. Except that every spring I’m greeted by a beach that’s been rearranged by the winter storms.

This year a large log, most of a tree apparently, has washed up and lodged close to the seawall, forming its own wall with sand piled high behind it. The concrete steps that lead down the wall are partly buried by new drifts of sand and debris, while a year’s worth of leaf litter and seaweed form a bank of their own on another section. Beach peas seem to be competing with the dune grasses that grow down near the town’s Christmas tree.

I’m seeing our beach with new eyes this spring, after travels during the winter to other shores such as Mexico and Florida with wide, flat, sandy beaches as far as the eye can see, water an improbable turquoise blue. And earlier in the winter, Italy’s western Mediterranean where cliffs a thousand feet high plunge into the sea, pocked with sea caves and grottoes and the occasional little harbor inlet with maybe a rim of sand.

Our harbor isn’t exactly the protected haven of a Camden or Rockport harbor, surrounded on three sides by land. Rather it has the artificial barrier of the ferry slip and fishing dock, protected as much by Islesboro some three miles away from the high waves of the open ocean as anything. Yet, the four miles of shoreland that make up Lincolnville’s eastern border gave our town a leg up over inland settlements with an avenue to the wider world.

A young woman living in the house just north of today’s Whales Tooth Pub, Edith Philbrick, kept a diary in 1880, recording the comings and goings of her mariner father as he sailed in and out of Lincolnville’s harbor over the course of several months. She would later marry Orren Ames, a boatbuilder and operator of a boat to and from Islesboro, delivering passengers and freight. Orren was a brother to Robie Ames Sr., salmon fisherman and farmer, who lived at the town line of Northport. The Ames homestead is Point Lookout’s access to the sea today.

I always stop to admire the double ended boat, planted now to petunias and the like, permanently moored near the Beach kiosk. A plaque dedicates it to Robie Ames Jr., son of the salmon fisherman and a kind man many of us remember for all the work he did around Lincolnville Beach in his retirement years. He along with Albert Mathieson (whose wife grew up summers at Indian Light in Rockport where her grandfather was lighthouse keeper) were stalwarts of the LIA (Lincolnville Improvement Association) and responsible for much of the work done at that building; Albert built the handsome Lincolnville Beach sign.

In the same spirit of that petunia-planted boat, D-I-L Tracee and I plan to haul out from under our barn the small fiberglass canoe Wally and I abandoned after our first voyage in it on Grassy Pond at the beginning of our marriage (a story for another day) and set it up near the road as a giant flower box. This in spite of some harassment from her husband (and my son): “what’s next? Geraniums in a toilet bowl?”

Why not, we wonder.

But back to the Beach, Beach with a  capital B.

Years of sorting through old photos of our town brings me a sort of second sight to our most familiar places. In my mind’s eye I see the wooden sidewalk that ran along the storefronts in a long-ago era. I see David Nichols, later to become a Maine Supreme Court judge, pumping gas in front of his father’s garage (today’s Beach Store), the very spot where, at the age of sixteen, he met Margaret Chase Smith, sitting in the car while her husband was inside talking politics with David’s father.

The Indian Camp tent sometimes appears before my eyes in the Post Office parking lot. Florence Shay is sitting in front, weaving a basket, working in the sweet grass that she picked in the marsh behind the stores. Her husband Leo, in white shirt and tie, is chatting, perhaps with Fred French or one of the other Beach men off to the side. Florence and Leo are Penobscot Indians, who along with their children spend summers at Lincolnville Beach, living in a tent behind the larger, sale tent where they display the baskets she and their relatives back on Indian Island make every winter. Their grandson, Bob Anderson and his wife Jackie took over the business in the 1960s and ran it for another 35 years or so.

Bob’s Ducktrap Baskets just north of the Ducktrap bridge is still in business, along with a fascinating museum of basket making artifacts.

Notice the large flat rock at the base of the P.O. flag pole.  It’s the very rock that was the stoop to Fred French’s store which stood on that site, preserved because David Nichols, who never moved more than 100 feet from his boyhood home over his father’s garage, made sure we younger ones knew its significance.

But the one landmark I look for every year is a certain plant, a peony that sprouts up through a thicket of wild day lilies along a hidden path down through a tangle of rugosa roses that leads to the Beach. I imagine, though I don’t know for sure, that it’s a remnant of what was once part of a Bangor family’s summer place. They called it the Fir Wigwam; today it’s the Spouter Inn. The Halletts, who owned it in the early 1900s, had a structure down near my peony, a cabana-like thing to change into swimming gear and to sit in the shade on a hot summer day. Once again the peony is standing up tall, unfurling its red green stems and leaves.

Mention of all the litter along our roads last week brought a phone call from Dee Boehmer, who along with her neighbor Susie Gerow on Beach Road, have been picking up trash together on their daily walk. Since last winter they’ve filled two of those huge contractor bags, keeping recyclables and returnables separate, bringing in 665 bottles and cans to the redemption center. They range up and down Beach Road, wearing fluorescent vests and carrying those grabber things to get the junk floating in ditches and stuck in the undergrowth.

This past week students were visited by three Maine authors as part of the Partners for Enrichment’s annual Authors’ Day. Licia Morelli visited children in grades K-2, talking about mindfulness and her book The Lemonade Hurricane.

Angeli Perrow focused on tips for better writing, and talked about her Key Mysteries Series with kids in grades 3-5.

Maria Padian worked with grades 6-8, speaking about her daily writing routine, the importance of revision and how to publish a book. She’s the author of Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, Jersey Tomatoes are the Best, Out of Nowhere, and Wrecked.

Hard to believe the school year is almost over, and I’m sure, for parents of graduating eighth graders hard to believe their children’s grade school/LCS years are over in the blink of an eye. The Five Town (Appleton, Camden, Hope, Lincolnville and Rockport) eighth graders gathered at Camden Hills State Park for the first of the high school transition activities, a great way to begin assimilating and getting to know each other.

Wednesday night, 7 p.m. Harborside Harmony, a local women’s barbershop chorus, will be performing at the Library.  Admission is $10; call Rosey at 975-5432 to reserve a seat.

Just one week left to order geraniums. Once again the Library will have geraniums for sale as part of the Memorial Day Book and Plant Sale. There will be a variety of plants at the sale, but the geraniums must be ordered in advance and no later than Saturday, May 19.  They come in red, white and fuchsia, all raised at Evergreen Valley Farm in Searsmont, 4-inch pots, $5 each.

To order, email questions@lincolnvillelibrary.org and include your name and phone number, and how many of each color you want.  Payment and pick up will be at the sale on Monday May 28. Get some dazzling geraniums and also support your community library!

 The Library is looking for donations of books in excellent condition. Drop off at the Library when open, or if not, leave them on the back porch if no rain is in sight. Also, donations of plants, such as those you might divide when digging in your garden, as well as seedlings, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Plants can come in beginning May 19. Leave at porch as well.

 The congregation of United Christian Church is welcoming their search committee’s unanimous choice for new pastor, Rev. Elizabeth Barnum, this Sunday, May 20 at the 9:30 a.m. service. She will be leading worship and all in the community, members or not, are welcome to come and meet her. Following the service, church members will remain in the sanctuary to decide by vote on Elizabeth as the church’s new pastor.

Try This

If you’re interested in adding more vegetables to your diet, here’s a good way to get a whole bowlful; it’s been my breakfast for the past several mornings. Stir fry peppers, onions, mushrooms, celery, garlic, eggplant, shredded carrots – whatever’s in your vegetable drawer – in a little olive oil. Add a few handfuls of greens – spinach, lettuces, kale, etc. – and continue cooking until they’re wilted. Turn off heat. Sprinkle with a bit of an oil and vinegar type dressing, top with cherry tomatoes, some cucumber, and some kind of protein – nuts, ham, chicken, tuna, cheese.

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