(NOTE: An abridged version of this photo essay was originally published in the Spring 2021 Issue of the Maine Arts Journal – Union of Maine Visual Artists / UMVA Quarterly)
“I know of a cure for everything: Salt water. In one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.” — Isak Dinesen
As the pandemic began to surge in early 2020, my wife Charlene and I left our winter home in Southwest Florida and drove back to our primary residence in Ogunquit, Maine.
It was a 3-day journey across a landscape of fear and sickness. We sped beneath coronavirus skies along mostly empty highways; past legions of unkept billboard promises for now-cancelled events and now-closed restaurants.
Digital signs admonishing drivers to “Stay Home” and “Social Distance” glowed with an ominous orange hue. Translucent plastic tarps, tacked up as air-dividers at truck-stop cash-register counters, smudged visibility of the mask-adorned faces on either side.
Inside the car, a miasma of the acrid scent of perfumed hand sanitizer hung in the air as a constant, burning reminder that our lives had changed. On the outside, fields full of grazing cows chewed grass in the sun blissfully unaware of our human crisis.
Over 1600 miles later, when we finally crossed the Piscataqua River Bridge into Maine, we felt that same welcomed rush of calming peace everyone always feels as they pass over the brackish threshold.
A few more turns until we made our way down the Shore Road in Ogunquit, beyond the storied Barn Gallery (home to the Ogunquit Art Association), and on to the historic Thompson Farmhouse (1750) just outside of Perkins Cove.
The rustic old home embraced our return with a cozy warmth. After several days of long miles, deserted roadside hotels, and worrisome pillows our bed that night was as familiar as a cradle song.
In the morning, the “pull of the place” was strong. The hallowed landscapes of the Ogunquit Art Colony called out and I answered. Camera in hand, I walked towards Oarweed Road; following the scent of salt spray and lobster bait towards Perkins Cove.
Ogunquit, Maine. Four square miles of magnificent coastal land with boutique shops, chef-owned restaurants, quaint inns, art galleries, boat moorings, and one of the top ten beaches in the United States.
A buzz-worthy destination that has long drawn visitors from around the globe.
For longer than decades, Ogunquit has been in a continual custody battle between multiple guardians; all attempting to claim part of it as their own. The fishermen. The artists. The residents. The business owners. The tourists.
The tug-of-war face-off between these groups is part of what gives Ogunquit its vitality and color.
Sometimes feathers get ruffled. Other times boundary lines get crossed. Rivalries simmer.
Eventually, like a lobster kettle boiling over, the delicate equilibrium of this “beautiful place by the sea” is temporarily upset and there’s a mess to clean up — but it never lasts long.
In due course, the vibrant personalities behind all of Ogunquit’s boats, paintbrushes, easels, political signs, fried clams, T-shirts, and trinkets return to a state of warily peaceful coexistence.
They have no choice. There are no other options. This town is too small and the money-making season is too short. There are too many competing factions. Too many pressure points. Too many voices. The “real” Mainers. Those “from away”. The daytrippers. The overnighters. The straight. The gay. The young. The retirees. The seasonal H2B and J1 visa workers. Somehow, between them all, the kaleidoscopic parade invariably finds a way to continue the procession.
But on this particular morning walk to Ogunquit’s Perkins Cove during this warm day in May 2020, Ogunquit was unseasonably quiet. Beyond that, it felt different. It LOOKED different.
In his Painting and the Personal Equation, Charles H. Woodbury (founder of the Ogunquit Art Association) advises, “Select something that is capable of interesting variations, and go to it at different times on different days.”
Well, times don’t get any more different than these ones were living in. These are the quarantine days none of us saw coming.
Here were the quintessential salty fish shacks and lobster harbor of Perkins Cove, without the shoppers and restaurant guests. Here was the ceaseless hiss and seethe of surf against the craggy-cliff Marginal Way coastline, without the crowds of walkers and romance-seekers.
Here was the sun-strewn stretch of sandy beach continually kissed by serial sets of sparkling breakers, without the packed parking lot and early-season sunbathers.
Here were places on pause; visible during these early shelter-in-place days in glorious, uncommon, and unexpected ways. Novel context. Striking contrast; a gift akin to a peaceful rainbow borne of menacing storm clouds. Old haunts in a strange new light.
Here were brilliant, blinding shafts of authentic Maine peeking through the disorienting fog of COVID-19 during the social distancing days, with absolutely no one else around to witness them.
This rare, transcendental solitude turns Perkins Cove into my personal playground.
Uninhibited, I climb across slippery rocks towards the base of the iconic pedestrian footbridge to explore the oft-unseen seabed exposed by low tide. I traverse a timeless coastline in the shadow of the Charles H. Woodbury studio; following where the glistening water leads.
“Why do we love the sea?” asks Robert Henri in The Art Spirit, “It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.”
I scramble across boulders and granite outcroppings making my way towards Narrow Cove, home of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.
I turn my camera towards these essential Ogunquit landscapes, long-ago captured for eternity by the brushes of accomplished artists. Bernard Karfiol. Abraham Walkowitz. Anne Carleton. Gertrude Fiske. Mabel May Woodward. Elwyn George Gowen. Edward Henry Potthast. Too many to name.
I slide across slick rocks, slithering closer to the water, deeper into the stone-strewn and rugged coastal ravines where the effervescent waves splash, sizzle, and gurgle; and the wild, rank scent of the squishy seaweed casts its cryptic spell.
“Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art,” states Andrew Wyeth. “It is important to forget about what you are doing – then a work of art may happen.”
Microscopic particles of sulfur, brine, decay, and organic matter swirl through the salt mist air. I breathe it in and feel tendrils of these elements twisting deeper into my lungs, entering my bloodstream, reaching the most primal parts of my brain. The place where life happens. Where memories are made.
For the first time in weeks, my thoughts are no longer dominated by concerns of disease transmission, economic stability, and survival.
I’m completely alone on a vast and spindrift-misted seacoast, knees and elbows on wet pebbles, peering through a camera’s viewfinder, completely mesmerized by the patterns in a mussed tangle of seaweed. Therapeutic. Restorative. A curative vaccine against negative ruminations.
Losing myself in the moment flattens the curve of my anxiety.
I take a deep breath and hold it to steady my body. The simple sensations of color, form, and light pass through the filters of my thoughts, experiences, and memories until some ineffable truth is discerned and I shiver with the aesthetic chills of frisson.
I release the shutter, capture the shot, and exhale. Then I look out at the horizon. Where the sky meets the sea. Across the infinite expanse of undulating, luminous swells.
Good old Gulf of Maine salt water. It’s the cure for everything.
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Featured image (at top of essay) – Detail of: Eric Taubert, “the cure for everything is salt water | perkins cove, ogunquit, maine”, Aluminum Archival Dye Sublimation (Matte) Print, 24″ x 16″
