Travel

The Shore Path

I walked away.

I’ve been doing this more often of late.

The Shore Path in Bar Harbor and the quiet serenity it offers

Leaving my family on a park bench in Bar Harbor’s bucolic Village Green, with ice cream cones in hand, I set off down Albert Meadow in search of two scoops of private tranquility, away from the sound of other people’s children, away from the t-shirt shops woven into the fabric of this town and the bad puns run amok therein.

I joined The Shore Path in progress at Grant Park.

The walkway is a mile stretch of crushed grey stone extending along the rugged Atlantic coast from the pier, past the showpiece hotel with its sweeping terrace and mustard yellow Adirondack chairs encircling a fire pit, and forming a public barrier between the sea and grand New England clapboard residences you can barely even allow yourself a daydream of calling home.

The Shore Path in Bar Harbor and the quiet serenity it offers

It was 6:30pm on a Tuesday and the clock was ticking on the hour I had before needing to meet my wife and kids on Cottage street, when the door to the Improv club would swing open.

The Shore Path was as quiet as a cup of coffee before dawn, save for the sea lapping against the rocks like a jazz drummer keeping the beat with his brushes, and I was alone with the exception of a pair of young lovers; their clamdiggers still damp from a dip they’d shared around the bend.

The Shore Path in Bar Harbor and the quiet serenity it offers

Balance Rock is the featured attraction for those who venture east from Main Street and while the protruding ice age relic that seems to emerge from the sea, from nothing really, is a worthy photo opportunity it is the first word of the natural attraction that is most prescient.

The Shore Path in Bar Harbor and the quiet serenity it offers

An hour earlier I wandered off in hopes of discovering a counterweight to balance rampant tourism, parking struggles, and $6 ice cream cones. I found exactly that in the form of a big rock, an ocean, a few sailboats swaying, some fog and the peace it carried to shore.

The Shore Path in Bar Harbor and the quiet serenity it offers

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