Some
landscapes seem to become imprinted on your soul - especially when they are
filled with childhood memories. These are places you keep coming back to in
your dreams, even though sometimes you actually return to find them changed beyond
recognition by new roads and buildings.
It
has been a great blessing for me to be able to return to Watts Cove in St.
George, Maine, summer after summer and find it essentially undisturbed.
August 1962 photo
When
my brothers and I were young, the field south of this part of the inlet off the
St. George River belonged to Harold Watts, who sometimes pastured his dairy
cows there. Earlier members of the Watts family built a dam across the channel,
harnessing the tides to power a saw mill and grist mill.
Mid-tide - showing dam across the cove
Our land by the cove is
on the south edge of the field, along boundary lines established around the
time of the Revolutionary War.
Whenever
I come back to Maine and see the cove I experience a profound feeling of
homecoming, of being where I belong, even though I actually live far away most
of the time, and always did.
My
mother left St. George for a job in New York City, so we were raised in
Manhattan. But we were lucky enough to spend every summer at the old Pierson farm
up on the hill above Watts Cove, where my grandfather grew up. 
It was a place
that provided us with almost magical opportunities for unsupervised play and exploration,
as well as a deep sense of family roots. I still often think of it as a
possible safe haven when the world seems threatening or overwhelming.
Although
the dairy cows have been gone from Watts Cove for over 50 years now, the lay of
the land and water remains the same, and I am grateful to the Shorb family for
allowing me to walk freely through what is now their field. I find new pleasures now in observing and
learning more about the place and its wildlife, while also recalling treasured
memories from earlier times.
One year we built a raft out of boards from an old
shed and our father launched it at high tide near the large, sloping rock at
the point on the south shore. We had a few exhilarating moments balancing on it
before, all too soon, it sank to the bottom. Other times, when the tide was
low, we dug clams and collected them in my grandfather’s wooden hod, our legs
painted black by the stinky mud. We also foraged for raspberries and
blackberries, and collected apples from the old tree along the road.
Some
years my brothers and other boys from the neighborhood helped take care of Harold
Watts’ cows, which occasionally were allowed to graze in the lower field near
the water. At milking time they would have to be driven back through the wooden
gate, across the road and up the hill to the barn.
Gate where the cows crossed the road
On
a night when some teenage boys were visiting and no parents were home, we heard
cows munching grass right outside our house. It turned out they had broken
through a fence, and some of them were heading off down the hill. We set out
with flashlights to round up the escapees and make sure they didn’t wander into
the road. For me, the giddiness of that wild cow chase culminated in an
unforgettable first kiss during a slow walk back up the hill in the moonlight.
After
college, and a long time away from Maine because I had to work during the
summers, I brought friends up to share my remembered childhood joys. At the end
of the path through the woods down to the water’s edge, we climbed high up in a
spruce tree, surprising a family of red-winged blackbirds and surveying the
dark bank of trees across the way on Taylor Point, which to us was mysterious,
unexplored territory.
When
I first brought my husband to Maine for the summer, there was an unusual
profusion of blackberries near the apple tree along the road by the entrance to
our path. He went off for a run and returned much later with scratches on his
arms and stains on his mouth and shirt, flushed with berry
fever. Later,
our sons discovered for themselves the pleasures and perils of wading into
enticing thickets of berries.
The older one and I also gathered imaginary
provisions down by the picnic table when we played ‘Gilligan’s Island’. The big
rock was alternately the boat or the deserted island where the passengers were
marooned, and there were plenty of pinecones, shells and leaves available for
us to use as makeshift supplies.
Last
summer, we cleared a space through the trees to create a view of the cove from
our house. My mother had always talked about wanting to be able to see the
water from the kitchen window, but when we were small the woods around the
house had seemed impenetrable. Now, virtually every place can be viewed on Google
Earth, and an aerial photo allowed us to identify a narrow, partially treeless area
that could be opened up to provide a glimpse of the cove and the mill dam.
Then,
after spending almost a month in Maine, I went off on an unexpected and
somewhat disheartening business trip to China. While I was there, I kept
finding myself wishing I was out for a walk looking at birds around the cove,
and felt a powerful yearning to be safely back there. When I returned from
China, I almost immediately went back to Maine, and spent a few days taking
photographs in an attempt to capture the sense of peace and connection I felt
there.
I
imagined a time when I would no longer be able to walk up and down the hill but
would sit in my chair and look at these pictures and feel content recalling a
place where I felt fully alive: 
remembering the light angled across the fields
or sparkling on the water, the songs of unseen warblers, and the unexpected
excitement of a fox running out of the raspberry bushes or a startled heron flying overhead.
Everyday wonders of the world.
male
