 Second Finger |
Portland, ME → Newcastle, ME → Portland, ME 126.0 mi (202.7 km) |
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I’m perkin’ up, everyone!
Would you believe, I landed in Portland, Maine just ahead of midnight last night, and I’m already back at it? Even as I retrace my steps from 2024, I’m already learning new things. For instance, the shuttle driver from the Casco Bay Hotel told me that tourism has imploded up along the Canadian border, and the hotels he manages are struggling from a lack of Canadians! It turns out, all the tariffs and trade wars have really made the USA unpopular, and the pettiness at the highest levels of government has meant real consequences for the folks just trying to make a living in this part of the country. And then he dropped me at the Portland International Jetport, one of only a couple jetports in the country, opened by Clifford Strange (a real Doctor Strange) in 1937 and renamed with the arrival of jet planes in 1968! While most air travel hubs have since been renamed airports, Portland’s Strange establishment is still a Jetport to this day!
Anyway, with a whole day before my next flight, I moseyed northeast from the Jetport, recognizing the Androscoggin Swinging Bridge in Brunswick and Red’s Eats in Wiscasset, where I’d been too impatient last time to wait in line for a lobster roll under a 103˚ heat dome. I figured I’d try again on the way back. But all of this was to go back to a place I’d bypassed in 2024, only six months before President Biden proclaimed it Frances Perkins National Monument. By timing alone, that made this my final Middle Finger Monument!
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Who was Frances Perkins, you may very well ask? Well, she’s someone who deserves a whole lot more credit. Exploring her family’s 1837 Brick House, now the Frances Perkins Center, I learned that she was not only the first female Cabinet member but also the longest serving Secretary of Labor ever! You might recognize some of her during the New Deal: minimum wage, social security, unemployment insurance, and overtime pay! She built policies to protect Jewish children during the Holocaust and eliminate child labor at home! And yet, it was by luck and careful timing that this monument snuck onto the roster when it did, because only a month after President Biden shook hands with Ms. Perkins’ gay grandson, Tomlin, at the dedication, Executive Order 14151 ended diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government! Being here on Juneteenth drove that home even further!
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Since this monument was proclaimed, the 57 acres of Frances Perkins’ ancestral homestead have been divvied up, with the 2.3 acres surrounding the Brick House and barn now federal property, and the other 54.7 acres under the stewardship of the Frances Perkins Center. They manage the 1.3-mile loop trail across the rest of the estate, where different stages of settlement have stood since the mid 1700s when this estate spanned 200 acres! Being mindful of summer tick season, and having terrible memories of deer flies near Katahdin, I headed very cautiously down the trail!
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It’s not that it was crowded here, per se, but on a holiday Friday, at the height of lupine season, there were some huge telephoto lenses set up along the South Trail to capture the towering wildflowers! Unfortunately, my height and the absence of good stumps meant I couldn’t share the sprawling meadow of rich pink and purple lupines, towering a good four feet in the air, but I hope you can get a sense of just how tall they were by seeing them lining the path!
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The gentle path took me down toward the shore of the Damariscotta River, known as “river of fishes” by the Wabanaki, and the place where the early Perkinses made bricks from 1795 until 1896! In a dry creek bed just off the Shore Trail, I could see some of the timber of what was probably an old wharf now long collapsed since the days when they were shipping bricks!
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And wonders of wonders, tons of those bricks were still strewn across the riverbank, covered in barnacles! These were the bricks that built both the family house and the 1848 Second Congregational Church upriver in Newcastle! They were making bricks here for 16 of Ms. Perkins’ summers, and long after her childhood visits to her grandparents were over, Secretary Perkins continued to come here for respite from the stresses of public life. Looking around at the peaceful riverfront, I could see why!
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After years of lengthy trails and steep climbs, this was a very mellow walk. As my stomach started to rumble for lunchtime, I completed the loop via the North Trail, stopping to appreciate what remained of another former Perkins home, built in the 1760s. It is amazing to think of how many different ways the same place can serve families across the ages, from the thousands of years contained by Russell Cave to the pomegranate tree in my own backyard that’s fed my neighbors for three generations!
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And then I returned to Wiscasset, where the line at Red’s was just as long as I remembered it, so even though the heat was less intense this year, I opted to walk across the street to Sprague’s Lobster. As food costs have gone up across the country this year—a $30 lobster roll in 2024 was now $40—I nonetheless decided to savor this last buttery moment in Maine. After all, as inconvenient as these three Middle Finger Monuments had been, they had forced me to take closer looks at places I’d never considered and second looks at places with more layers! The Treats bakery across the street from Red’s, for instance, still had delicious cardamom sticky buns but had replaced their enormous communal dining table with a chic bar setup! I wonder what other places have changed since I visited them…
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With plenty of time between lunch and my 7:16 flight back to Virginia, I decided to make one little detour into the Bald Head Preserve, down a long, dirt road to a very isolated parking area. In some ways, that was a little unnerving, especially as the mosquitoes started to buzz, but that was going to be part of the experience in visiting a 296-acre nature preserve. But I wasn’t going to make it all the way to the ridge called Bald Head. My sights were set on something specific at the end of this 0.7-mile trail!
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In figuring out where I should spend my afternoon, I went looking for places related to beavers, but finding none of those, I settled on a different rodent. Squirrel Point was going to be a nice stroll through second-growth woodland and wetland to a historic lighthouse!
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Maine was especially reliant on maritime transportation and the buildings that made it possible, so in 1892, the Light-House Board proposed adding four lighthouses along the Kennebec River, one of which would be at Squirrel Point! The little complex that rose up here on the river’s shore got its start in 1898 with a light tower, keeper’s house, and barn, which were later joined by a boathouse in 1901 and an oil house in 1906, build a safe distance away in case of a fire!
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The light tower itself was pretty petite, shaped like an octagon and covered in wood shingles, automated since 1982! Beyond it were pastoral views of wooded hills and historic riverfront of Phippsburg, and while it was not nearly as spectacular as the Portland Head Light, its shape reminded me that I had now seen the three Middle Finger Monuments, and my path toward the completion of my quest in July was clear!
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I thought a lot about this on my flight back to Dulles, and on another journey aboard the airport’s “moon buggies.” I had a big bash when I completed my original California Landmarks Quest in 2016. Ten years later (holy cow), I hadn’t even made plans for how to properly conclude my National Parks Quest! Luckily, I knew exactly who to talk to in order to make this grand party a reality!
Off to Piggy House!
Second Finger |
Total Ground Covered: 372.0 mi (598.6 km) |
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