Flye Point, Maine ~ My Little Piece of Heaven (A Repost)

There's a place in Maine that I consider my own...it's a small little point that juts out into the sea...during low tide, if your brave you can wander out to Goose and Gander Island and if you are terribly brave you can go as far as the Lighthouse on Green.  But you have to be wary of the tides...because you only have a short time before the tide comes rushing in with a force that can sweep you away.

The Inn at Flye Point....one can see Goose, Gander and Green Islands. During low tide you can walk out to them. (This is not my picture.  I have permission from the owner of the Inn to publish it.)

Flye Point is in the town of Brooklin on the Blue Hill Peninsula.  It has been the home of many famous writers...E.B. White and his wife Kathryn lived here in a two story house by the sea.  Robert McCloskey, who wrote many of the books I read my children, resided down the road.  Unlike the Bar Harbor Peninsula, Blue Hills is laid back, easy going, and for the most part free from tourists.  It's a place where you can hang out with a good book on a huge boulder by the sea...or wander through the gardens and fields of The Lookout, an old country inn that graces the Point like an old maternal aunt.  At low tide you can gather a bucket full of mussels for dinner that night...and at night you can toast marshmallows on a fire by the sea.

I took this picture two years ago in June from the hill behind the Inn.

Papa and I discovered Flye eighteen years ago.  A colleague at Papa's work told him about a place in Maine that their family had been going to for years.  At the time, it consisted of the Inn and several beach cottages.  That first year, sight unseen, we rented the "Lean-to", a small two bedroom cottage.  As we drove on to the Point, Aaron, our second son, leaped out of the car with his cousin Neah and ran willy-nilly past the Inn, through the gardens and grass to the rocky shore.  Although we did not know it at the time, it was low tide, and Aaron and Neah made it all the way out to Goose Island.  Coming back to the cabin, they were so excited...it was a whole new world to them.  As for Zach...he was just a little tike and he loved walking the rocky shore and making his collections of feathers and shells.  During our stay that first year we read Zach McCloskey's book, Blueberries for Sal and then we went blueberry picking on the real Blueberry Hill.  Zach was on constant lookout for bears.  That week we also read Charlotte's Web and went to the Blue Hill Country Fair where Charlotte had made Wilbur famous.  Meanwhile the adults were reading The Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons, a novel about a wealthy colony down the road from Flye, inhabited by Boston Brahmins.  It was a glorious week in the sun...with little rain or fog and we were hooked...and decided a week in the summer at Flye  was going to be an annual  thing.

That first summer we also met Buff and  Herb Brigham, an older couple from Denver, Co.  and  Los Cruces, New Mexico.  They inhabited their own cottage, The Flying Jib,  up the hill from the Inn.  Buff had inherited the summer house from her aunt Helen who had bought the place in 1920.  We chanced to meet when their big St. Bernard came bounding through the screen door of our cottage one morning when he smelled bacon frying on the stove.  Within minutes, his mistress knocked and casually said, "Oh, I'm lookin' for a St. Bernard dog...hey you people should tell Butch to fix this door, the screen is all torn.  This wouldn't happen under Lottie Flye...but Butch, he's another story...letting the place run down!"  This was our introduction to Buff, an amazing wonderful lady...a bit eccentric...sometimes trying...but always meaning well.  At home in Denver, Buff wrote book reviews for the newspaper as well as taught English and French at a college.  Her husband Herb was retired chemist who had worked all over the world with Gates Rubber Company.  Both had contracted polio early in their marriage...and although they had many years "polio-free", the effects of the polio were coming back.  Buff favored her left side but it didn't get in the way of her hiking and visiting around Flye; whereas, the polio had really affected Herb's hip and he did little walking except with a cane. During the day, Herb would be on the porch of the "Jib" reading his newspapers and books...Buff, gadfly that she was, would be visiting all over the Point and bringing little tidbits of gossip back home to Herb.  After the screen door incident, Buff would come by each day and we would meander through the gardens and down to the beach as she told me the history of the Flye Family.  We would stop and visit with other long time summer families who came from all over the country...and I would learn their stories.  In the evening, Papa and I would be invited to the Jib for wine and conversation. Herb loved the fact that we were "hippies" and had lived with the Inuits of Alaska.  Over the next five years, as our family returned to Flye Point, a strong friendship developed between the two families but that is a story in itself and can wait for another day.

Those first few years we rented cottages from the Lookout...although ramshackled on the outside, they were spotlessly clean inside. Wild lupines in purples, pinks and white grew everywhere.  When you arrived at your cozy cabin on a Saturday noon, wild flowers in vases on antique oak tables greeted you.  If it was a cold, foggy day, a fire would be burning in the fireplace.  You really felt as though you were coming home.  Some years, when we were small in number, we rented the "Lean-to" or "the Dorit" and other years we rented the "Boulders", a four bedroom cabin overlooking the rocks.  During the summer of '93,  the Boulders was bursting with our family:  Grammy, my Mom, had one bedroom, Will and Michi, his Japanese girlfriend, had another, Aaron and Sara Jean in the third, Papa and I in the fourth bedroom and Zach and his cousin in the living room in sleeping bags.  But because Flye is so open, we didn't get under each other's skins...the older guys would go off to Bar Harbor or out to the islands or into Blue Hills for dinner.  THe two little guys were having their own adventures...and Gram was happy going to old cemeteries and reading headstones.  She also liked going into Stonington and Castine and spending quality time in old bookstores.  Being a newspaper woman herself, she fell in love with E.B. White.  Papa and I loved to go over to Cape Rosier to the stone home of Scott and Helen Nearing.  Scott and Helen are the great grandparents of the back to the earth movement.  As peace activists and practical conservationists, their book, Living the Good Life, is a Bible to many in my generation.  We also did a bit of kayaking around Naskeag and many days Papa would wander over to the Wooden Boat School.

Fran painting on the porch.

After we had been going to Flye for a number of years, Buff and Herb decided we were "keepers" and had us stay at the "Flying Jib" with them.  The Jib is an incredible huge place.  On the main floor is the living room, dining room, new kitchen and master suite, and all weather porch; on the second floor are three bedrooms and a huge old fashion bathroom with a claw-foot tub.  The walk-in basement has two huge rooms with couches.  Ten years ago, Buff and Herb put in the first swimming pool at the Point. Although many people at the Point thought them crazy at the time, they have all come around and enjoyed the warmth of the pool on a foggy, cool day when swimming off the Big Rock would be brutal to your wellbeing!

The Flying Jib (Buff and Herb's cottage).

Six years ago  Christmas, Herb died of a massive heart attack and we wondered whether Buff would come East.  But that May, we received a phone call asking us to pick her up at Logan Airport and drive her the six hours to the Jib.  She was a bit dismayed when I told her I could drive her but that I had to come back to Massachusetts to finish school and the earliest I could get up to stay would be the middle of June. Having taught college courses all those years, she couldn't conceive how schools could go into June!

When we arrived that week-end in May, Flye Point was abuzz with controversy.  Butch, the owner of the Inn had a brilliant idea of hosting an annual folk concert on the Point.  Some people thought it would be good for the area...others were downright hostile.  "A folk concert...you'll be inviting every druggy in the United States here.  Our summer places won't be secure...they'll litter the place up...we don't want hippies here!"  While we were with a group of diehards, Buff asked me what I thought of the idea? She always liked controversy!  I laughed and said, "Look it's a folk concert.  Butch has Judy Collins, Odetta, Pete Seeger's grandkid, and Arlo Guthrie coming.  Buff, the people who will come to see them are old hippies...hippies like Papa and I...people in their late fifties...do you really think we are still smoking dope and having sex wherever.  It will be a great time...and the people who will come, will have a respect for Flye."

The First Annual Flye Point Music and Arts Festival took place on Saturday, June 26, 2003 on the grounds of The Lookout.  It was a huge success...the sun was shining, the music was sweet and the food abundant and the following day, Flye was back to normal.  Since then, every year at the end of June, Flye once again blooms with music, laughter, great food and art.  As yet, we don't know the date for the 2009 Festival but come June 20th, we will be in residence at "The Flying Jib".  Yesterday I called Lonny, Buff and Herb's son to see if they are still renting the Jib when the family isn't using it, and he said we could have it for a week anytime in the latter part of June or July for FREE.  Yes, FREE.  He said we were good folks and helped his Mom and Dad all those years and he was pleased to offer it to us.  And what do you know, the Jib is connected to the Internet....it has DSL....yahoo....I'm in business.  What a wonderful Christmas present.  I can't wait to show Julia and Sage "my little piece of heaven".

So come the end of school in June, you know where I will be....sitting in this steamer chair reading or just day dreaming or maybe wandering down to the beach with two little girls discovering the wonders of a Maine morning.