Owls Head Revisited

Along the coast of Maine, fame and fortune abound; the town of Owls Head has little of either. Its people occupy a gorgeous peninsula in Penobscot Bay but have raised only two-and-a-half tourist attractions. The businesses in town with multiple employees are the general store and two lobster wholesalers. The Town Comprehensive Plan modestly states, "There are no sidewalks in Owls Head." For nearly 20 years the author and family used their house in Owls Head as not much more than a vacation spa to recover from the stresses of suburban Massachusetts. But when he retired, with time to explore and think and write, he crossed some kind of line, into much more intimacy with the place. Owls Head is ordinary, except if you walk through its neighborhoods, on ocean shores and country lanes, on points of land, undeveloped woods and saltwater marshes, even through a couple of housing developments, and then Owls Head becomes the kind of place many may seek: magically ordinary, a place of beauty and history, contradictions and community. Over the course of a year, the author visited anew, walking every lane and road and trail, even a few driveways, in town. The record of these modest walks became a book of discovery and enlightenment.