Maine: Old Orchard Beach & Cape Elizabeth

To kick off Jordan’s first week of summer “vacation” (really, does a one-year-old need vacations from daycare? And who’s taking the vacation, anyways?), we take a Father’s Day weekend trip up to the coast of Maine. We’ve booked a motel room just a block off the ocean at Old Orchard Beach, and this long weekend will mark Jordan’s first time playing on a sandy beach, his first time at an amusement park, and his first Ferris wheel ride, among other wonderful summertime memories.

After a placid two-hour drive up the coast, we check into the Seabreeze Motel and offload our stuff (our life belongings) into the room. After Jane sets up his travel crib, Jordan has a happiness explosion in bed, jumping and laughing and dancing all over his mattress. The little man is developing a liking for new places and adventures, and I’m all for it. After Facetiming his grandparents, driving a few minutes up the road to buy dinner/groceries, and having a snack, we head out to explore the nearby amusement park and arcade. Jordan falls in love with a plush panda pillow at the candy shop next door, which promptly becomes our first trip souvenir. At the arcade, Jordan’s little toddler brain (which we’ve assiduously protected from screen time, minus some nature videos and My Neighbor Totoro) nearly melts from all of the flashing lights, sounds, gadgets, and screens. We sit for awhile in the fairground, Jordan watching all manner of amusement park rides that fling, whizz, and spin. After a brief walk to the beach, we head back to the motel; I drop half of my fruit smoothie on my foot on the way back down the street. After Jordan bathes and goes to sleep, I head back out alone to photograph the beach and amusement park at night.

The next day (Father’s Day Sunday), we spend the early morning playing a local park, and taking Jordan to the nearby Amtrak station so that he can see his first real train. After breakfast, we take a spin on the local town trolley; Jane and Jordan get off early to return to the motel for lunch, while I stay on to go back to the grocery store for drinks. It’s a lovely, warm morning, and I take a pleasant ten-minute stroll from the store back to our motel. In the afternoon, it’s back to the beach to ride the Ferris wheel. I’m probably the most scared of heights out of the three of us, while Jordan is mainly bothered by the relentless sun and the wind; for the first time ever, he grabs his sunglasses (which we’ve been largely using as a random household toy) and demands that we put them on his face. Jordan’s favorite ride, however, is the carousel - or rather, he enjoys watching it spin without riding it. After some time playing in the surf, we buy lobster rolls for dinner and head back to the motel.

On Monday morning, we choose to head north a ways to Cape Elizabeth, to visit the famous Portland Head Light and take a walk at nearby Two Lights State Park. For lunch, we return to Old Orchard Beach and get an enormous platter of fried seafood at The Clam Bake, which Jordan enjoys with a side of applesauce and fries. In the evening, it’s one more spin around the amusement park (Jordan mainly wanting to watch the carousel from the sidelines again) and to the train station to watch the passage of one more southbound Amtrak, before we tuck in for the night.

Vermont: Once in a Lifetime

A little over a year ago, at the height of my sleep deprivation-induced delirium during parental leave, I went through a little phase (or rather, a little elaboration of myself) where I became quite interested in astronomy and astrophotography as another way of seeing and experiencing the natural world. I bought a pair of astronomy binoculars, downloaded a phone app for identifying features in the night sky, and spent a good part of the wee hours (in between baby’s stirrings, I would stay awake since I struggle to fall asleep at irregular intervals) observing the northwest sky from our second-story windows. Even in the heart of a metropolitan area, a few blocks away from the Longwood Medical Area, it’s quite possible to observe constellations and a number of bright features in the night sky. In the midst of this, we took baby Jordan (then not even two months old, and quite sleepy the entire time) to the hilltop at Larz Anderson Park to view a rare conjunction of planets (Venus and Jupiter appearing together) around dusk on March 1, 2023. While I haven’t done much more with astrophotography, owing to lack of time, living in the city, and unwillingness to invest resources for the right equipment, amateur astronomy has really enhanced my appreciation for the world around me, filling in detail and beauty in a realm where I formerly only saw darkness. Around this time, browsing astronomy forums and reading about celestial events, I learned that April 8, 2024, would be likely the last day in my foreseeable lifetime that a vast swath of North America would have the opportunity to witness a total solar eclipse. Short of globetrotting and hunting for eclipses around the planet, this would be the best and only chance for us to put young Jordan in the car and drive a few hours away from home, into the path of totality. So, almost a year ahead of time, we re-booked the same hilltop cabin in Westmore, overlooking Lake Willoughby, where Jane and I stayed for our fall foliage trip just a few months before Jordan was born. The three of us would make a long weekend pilgrimage for a chance to see what might be a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event.

On Saturday, we make an easy drive up from Boston back to the Northeast Kingdom - thankfully ahead of any appreciable eclipse-related traffic, and a vast improvement from our Friday-night-before-Indigenous-Peoples-Day-disaster in 2022. It’s baby Jordan’s first time crossing state lines (Hello New Hampshire! Hello Vermont!) and he is an absolute champ during the three-hour ride, by far his longest car trip yet, taking a good two-hour nap and only barfing once at the very end (in the context of Jane simul-gavage-feeding him bananas and kefir and reading a book to him while I drive along Vermont’s winding back roads - poor kid!). After arriving, we leave the car at the top of the long dirt driveway leading to the house (the region got nearly 2 feet (!) of snow in a surprising April nor’easter this week) and get settled into our new home, giving Jordan the downstairs bedroom while Jane and I occupy the loft. While the two of them get settled in, I go out for additional supplies and snacks from the Willoughby Lake Store, where an assortment of eclipse-related souvenirs and stickers are on sale. The next day, we make some brief trips out to take family photos on the driveway, and on the south and north shores of Lake Willoughby. On the north shore, in the process of wildly flinging my arms in the air (to make Jordan laugh and smile) and sprinting from my tripod to join a family photo, I nearly lose my wedding ring when it flies off my hand and lands somewhere in the deep snow. Fortunately, the sun is out, and I am able to spot the ring after a harrowing few minutes of digging around aimlessly in the increasingly packed snow (along with some help from some Good Samaritans and their dog).

On Monday (Eclipse Day), the sky over most of the Northeast Kingdom is a crystal-clear blue (a genuine rarity for April in Vermont, we are told - perhaps as rare as the eclipse itself!). We stay home, resolved to not move the car an inch more than necessary; I watch on Apple Maps as the highways leading up to Vermont from the rest of the Atlantic seaboard become snarled-red with traffic all morning. In the afternoon, while Jordan finishes his second nap, I walk out to the driveway to set up my gear and watch the partial phase of the eclipse.

Truth be told, I debated for awhile whether I should try to photograph the eclipse (with all the attendant performance anxiety related to equipment, technique, and composition), or whether I should just sit back and enjoy the brief few minutes of totality. After much deliberation, I chose to approach this event no differently than I approach the rest of my life. As I have written before in my ramblings on this site throughout the years, I have found that photography - while it can be painstaking and labor-intensive - helps me experience and make meaning of the world around me. Far from being a distraction, photography encourages me to stay present and grounded; there is something about the act of attempting to capture beauty in the world that makes the world seem even more beautiful, not less. In the end, I chose to approach the three-minutes-or-so of totality (an event that I might never see again my lifetime) the same way I would approach a weeklong trip to some farflung corner of the globe (a place that I might never see again in my lifetime). I would photograph the damn thing.

Out on the driveway, on the tripod, I set up my older Sony RX10 II (the camera of the Adirondacks, Moab, and most of the pandemic) with its medium-range lens to capture a timelapse of Lake Willoughby and the westward mountains, with the sun arcing above in the sky. As for my Sony RX10 III (originally purchased in 2022 for the Colorado Plateau, having since recorded my first year of parenthood and now recently my sole companion to Oregon and Arizona), I keep it in hand, practicing lying back on the hood of our car to stabilize the 600mm telephoto lens. I had considered buying or renting a second tripod, so that I could stabilize more effectively in the pitch-black of totality; however, something about that strategy did not sit right with me. I like (and have always liked) to move around with the camera, to read the scene and quickly shoot where there is interesting light, form, or colour. As a result, I have become a slight rebel (or idiot?) as far as landscape photographers are concerned - someone who mostly shoots handheld and risks motion blur for the tradeoff of speed and creative mobility. As far as I care to self-judge, I feel like my work has not suffered as a result. Yet. On Eclipse Day as with all days before, I choose to go with my instincts and keep the big camera in my hand.

Basic setup complete, I chat a bit with Phil, a local New England photographer that has joined me on the driveway with his own tripod and homemade solar filter. We swap back and forth between regular sunglasses and eclipse glasses, watching the eclipse unfold above; the glimmering snow on the hillside below us begins to glimmer less and less intensely. It is an eerie sight; unlike typical dawn or dusk, there is no change in hues in the landscape, no refraction of color throughout the sky. Only a subtle sense that the sun is fading; that someone is cutting power to the big generator in the sky.

With fifteen minutes to go before totality, Jane and Jordan come walking up the driveway from the house. Jordan, wearing his floppy baby hat, looks quite ruddy-cheeked (having just woken up from a warm nap), and he is quite bemused and confused about why we are all standing around staring at the sun. Then, the last crescent sliver of light disappears behind the encroaching moon, and we remove our eclipse glasses. Even though I’ve described a hundred sunrises and sunsets on this blog over the years, it’s hard for me to adequately describe what happens next. From the west, a curtain of dark sweeps over us, moving so quickly that it is upon us just as soon as we perceive it in the distance. Unlike typical nightfall, this darkfall does not move horizontally (from horizon to horizon); it just drops, like a dead weight crushing our local portion of the planet. Visually, the landscape transitions from pure daylight to thirty-minutes-after-sunset, in the span of less than ten seconds. A few wisps of cloud on the far horizon glow crimson and gold (photo above), but the colours do not have the fire and luminosity that one normally associates with golden hour and its low, refracted sunlight; rather there is a certain oppressiveness, a heaviness of darkness and shade. It feels as if the sky has fallen down entirely. In another moment, Venus appears, followed by a few other twinkling stars not normally seen in this hemisphere, in this season, at this time. You’re not supposed to be here, is the thought that hits my brain. Then, before I can say it, I see the sun and the moon. The brilliant corona flaring around a perfect sphere of black. It is a mind-boggling and awe-inspiring sight.

I work as quickly as I can with the long lens, trusting that the timelapse firing on the tripod will turn out (spoiler: it did not; it was way underexposed because I was shooting the damn sun and had no idea how dark it would get). In rapid sequence, I take long shots of the eclipse, grabbing a mix of slower shutter speeds to emphasize the corona and faster shutter speeds to reveal the pink flares (solar prominences) around the rim; some medium shots of the landscape together with the eclipse; and a few quick shots and videos with Jane and Jordan using my phone. Jordan for his part, stares up at the bizarre dark sun in confusion, but otherwise seems to have zero reaction to witnessing one of the most profound celestial sights of his young life. Then, as quickly as it disappeared, the slightest crescent of sunlight appears again, and daylight washes back over the land. Totality is over, having lasted less than three and a half minutes.

We stay in the cabin one more night, finishing the last of our food supplies and packing our bags to depart for home the next morning. It turns out to be a very smooth ride all the way until we reach Boston, where Red Sox opening day has snarled most routes to our home. Our three-and-a-half hours in the car, however, cannot compare with the legendary stories of 12-hour rides from northern Vermont and Canada back down south the preceding night; we are thankful that we had the foresight to stay an extra night, and not subjectJordan to bumper-to-bumper traffic across multiple state lines. So we end yet another long weekend family getaway, and one of the most remarkable natural experiences I could dream of seeing in my lifetime.

Day 1: Arriving at the Lake

To cap off a few adventurous weeks of October, I take a few days away from home to head up to the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Although I’ve been on a few short trips to or through Franconia Notch and the White Mountains, I have always bypassed the Lakes Region, a vast area of forests, mountain ranges, and crystal-clear waters both large and small. I am especially glad for the chance to disconnect for a few days from the familiar rhythms of daily life, re-connect with my expressive self through exploration and photography, and get back outdoors in a more substantial way (sans baby gear and nap schedule). I invite my old friend Lindsey to join me on a brief foliage and hiking trip, and we agree to meet up midweek after she spends time with family in Massachusetts. Retracing my drive from three autumns ago, I leave Boston on a Tuesday morning, stopping by Indian Lake in Worcester to photograph the colors along the lakeshore before meeting up with Lindsey.

After a pleasant two-hour drive east and then north along 93N, we cross over the New Hampshire state line, pass Manchester and Concord on the highway, and make our way toward the town of Laconia, NH, on the shores of massive Lake Winnipesaukee. Here, we stop for a delicious plant-based lunch at Trillium Farm to Table (soup and grilled cheese, an autumnal quinoa bowl, blueberry soda, and a baklava treat courtesy of Lindsey). Laconia is delightfully empty on this random Tuesday afternoon in the middle of October, its Main Street seemingly abandoned despite a fairly full public parking lot one block over, its old grist mills and lumberyards underscoring the feeling of nostalgia and bygone days. Reminiscing about Bar Harbor (2015), Rehoboth (2016), and Rock Hall (2017-2018), I tell Lindsey how much I enjoy visiting dead, off-season towns because of their ambience, and the ability, in a quiet place, to break away from the sightseeing mindset and feel more connected with one’s surroundings. Lindsey introduces me to Raffi as we discuss Jordan’s musical tastes in the car. Continuing a few minutes north across the channel to Paugus Bay, we arrive at Weirs Beach, where the atmosphere of quiet and lonesomeness is even more accentuated by the lakeside’s completely deserted boardwalk, shuttered arcades, and a pier lined with pizzerias, bars, and stores that are all closed for the season. Lindsey and I stroll on the beach (where a pair of dogs are playing in the sand and in the lake water), and walk back and forth along the boardwalk. The Winnipesaukee Scenic Rail, followed shortly by the M/S Mount Washington cruise ferry, arrive at the dock and disgorge their (elderly-leaning) passengers. As the season’s few remaining cruises are fully booked, we resolve to return and ride the railroad in the distant future - whenever whichever one of us suffers our first hip fracture.

Up a steep hill from the beach, we check into our condo for the next two nights, a perfectly cromulent little place two hundred feet down the road and around the corner from a large chocolate and dessert shop. After throwing down our belongings, we head back out to take two afternoon walks exploring the woods around the southern lake.

To get a feel for the northern deciduous woods, we head first to the Prescott Farm Environmental Education Center - a farm, summer camp, and wildlife center located a few minutes away, in the woodlands at the foot of the Belknap Mountain Range. The farm is inactive for the season, but Lindsey and I pick out a short, one-mile loop through the woods. After poking around the children’s camp in the woods (including one of the more elaborate treehouses I’ve been in), we finally locate the (rather well-hidden behind a dumpster) trailhead and go for a ramble along the Pond Loop Trail. The walk is a casual one, winding along pine-covered dirt paths through upland deciduous stands, which are colorful at this time of year with beautiful yellow birch leaves, rusty oaks, and occasional flashes of iridescent maple. There are a number of stately, old, gnarled trees that I photograph in portraiture; we walk along downhill to Alan’s Overlook (a somewhat underwhelming little view of a boggy pond in the clearing below - thanks, Alan) before circling back uphill past the modern-looking farm building, shedding layers as we go.

Back in the car, we head a few minutes east along Lake Shore Road to reach the trailhead for Lockes Hill, a north-facing prominence on the south shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Although the skies remain socked in (as they have since our arrival at the lake), conditions are still lovely for a short hillwalk and sunset views, and I am surprised (though not upset) that there are hardly any other cars at the trailhead. Lindsey and I climb through the forest along a well-maintained dirt path (switchbacks - a luxury in the East), arriving at a panoramic overlook that opens from the west to the east across the lake. After continuing to the true summit of the hill (where there is another overlook, albeit a less open and photogenic one), we return to the first overlook to watch sunset colors develop. To the north, a rainstorm envelopes and then dissipates over the mountains across the lake; to the east, the clouds begin to take on mauve and lavender hues as the sun falls lower, imperceptible behind the curtain of high cloud. A family of three comes along and joins us at the overlook before sunset; we trade pictures of each other, and I take a few portraits of Lindsey and telephoto shots of the distant islands in the lake.

As the light fades, we make the quick return downhill, taking a joke-selfie next to a sign that warns hikers to “Wear Blaze Orange for Safety” (Lindsey is wearing all black and I am literally camo green from head to toe) before getting back in the car. After scouting out dinner locations, we drive a few minutes to The Breeze, a restaurant beside the town docks in Glendale. We have a nice dinner (grilled fish, mocktails, some tasty apple pie à la mode) before returning to the condo. We watch a mild amount of TV before I (still on baby schedule) pass out with an early morning ahead of us.