Seaside Living

After a week of staring out the window at icy streets and snow banks, last Monday turned out to be the Day of the January Thaw! I took full advantage of the 51 degree high temperature to ride nearly 70 miles, with several stops for photos. The best was in the Prince Point neighborhood of Falmouth.

The people living in this neighborhood have spectacular views, and equally spectacular property tax bills.

This home has almost no yard, front or back; sitting hard by the road and the water. But there's no grass to mow.

Instead of ice, the streets and roads are just wet. Very nice for riding!

A view of several of the islands of  Casco Bay 

Another home without much of a yard. No place for a game of croquet or touch football. I think I could learn to live without a yard, though.

Now, here's a house with a huge yard. But it's a good 100 feet from the water!

Melting snow, wet streets, a perfect view - but this is Maine in the winter. Two days after this wonderful ride, the overnight low temperature at my house was 3 degrees below zero. And as I write this, it's snowing.

The perfect yard! I'll bet that if I'd grown up here, I'd have been a better man today. Wait - I did grow up around here. Gee, I should have been a better man.

For the record, below are two photos I took years ago of the summer cabin in which I spent summers with my family until I was in my late teens.

I was standing on the ice, looking up at the camp on Sebago Lake, during a visit to check out how the place was weathering the winter.  I slept every night from June to Labor Day on the porch of this marvelous place.

This was taken in 1981, shortly before the camp was sold. When ever I meet with my cousins, who shared this family place, we talk about our summers on the lake.

A week ago, my Aunt Sena died, aged 97 years. She was the last member of the Jensen family, who built the camp in the early 1930s; she and my mother were youngest and third oldest girls in the family, respectively.

After Aunt Sena's funeral, several of us were talking about those unforgettable, long-ago summers. My cousin Jonathan summed up the deep feelings we all share:

"What a childhood ..."