By Sarah E. Murphy

I was on a train from Rome to Cinque Terre when I learned about the tragedy in Port Clyde.

While scrolling online in an effort to get an answer about a situation I was dealing with back home, I couldn’t escape the headlines and corresponding photos.

“Beloved Maine businesses destroyed by fire.”

The hunter green storefront of the Port Clyde General Store, neatly trimmed in brick red, now ravaged by orange flames.

I had just been speaking with a nice couple from Ontario who were seated across from me and headed to the town where I was staying. I was excitedly sharing my love of Riomaggiore, assuring them they’d feel the same as soon as they arrived in the bustling seaside village. Now, I found myself fighting the tears that were forming and needing to grieve, more than 4,000 miles away from anyone who could truly understand.

In August 1994, when I was 22, I spent two of the most memorable weeks of my life renting a little white cottage in Port Clyde with Damian, one of my best friends from Falmouth, who was also a college classmate. For reasons unknown, perhaps for the family who owned it, it was called the Bates House, located diagonally across from the General Store, the Dip Net restaurant, and the Monhegan ferry, the epicenter of an equally captivating seaside village.

“The Discovery of Maine” was a two-week seminar that fulfilled the graduation requirement for English majors at what was then Bridgewater State College, now University. It was taught by one of my favorite professors, Dr. Tom Curley, with whom I first began studying as a freshman, and his colleague, Dr. Steve Smalley, an esteemed member of the Art Department, and equally beloved by his students, whom I was meeting for the first time.

But instead of sitting in a circle analyzing poetry while staring absently out the window for a semester, as I was sometimes guilty of at BSC, it was more like something out of Dead Poets’ Society. We left the confines of Boyden, Tillinghast, and Harrington lecture halls to trace the steps of some of the most influential writers and painters inspired by the region while exploring those famous works. Sarah Orne Jewett, Edward Hopper, Henry David Thoreau, Andrew Wyeth, just to name a few.

I was working as a “third key manager” at Buck-a-Book that summer, a dollar bookstore in the Falmouth Plaza, a dream job for a bookworm. In typical fashion, I felt guilty taking so much time off, even though my academic future depended on it, so I requested only enough to account for the course without considering travel time. While Damian was crossing the Bourne Bridge, escaping the oncoming weekend traffic for Route 1 in Mid Coast Maine, I had to work, and since I didn’t have a car, I had to somehow find a ride the following day. And, also in typical fashion, my dad was there for me.

A writer and a professor of creative writing and literature, he was ecstatic for me, living vicariously through my syllabus and the chance to unpack my bags “Down East,” a place he loved. Like the women and men listed in black typeface, he was also inspired by the rugged beauty, which served as an oasis after endless car rides from the Cape on our way to Prince Edward Island. Now that I’m closer to his age on those family trips, or that August morning he dropped me off to meet my classmates, I realize my love of Maine dates back much further. Reminiscent of the landscape of my ancestors, it harkens back to my Irish roots, especially my paternal great-grandparents, who hailed from the wild coast of West Cork and the Beara Peninsula.

My summer in Port Clyde was one of those times the world opened up to me, like cracking open a new book that also feels strangely familiar, an old friend introducing you to new experiences.

Our days were full as we traveled to the surrounding towns – our itinerary carefully curated by Curley and Smalley. We toured the Olson House in Cushing, home to Wyeth’s muse, Christina, the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, a veritable family album of Wyeth art. We had dinner in Camden at the Sea Dog Pub, and I bought a Zodiac birthday card in a gift shop on the waterfront for a Virgo I was pining for back home.

All of our studies were conducted outside, at landmarks like Owl’s Head Lighthouse and Marshall Point, where I gave my student lecture on my chosen subject, Edwin Arlington Robinson. We swam in the quarry in St. George and rode the ferry to Monhegan Island, where we hiked and marveled at the unspoiled beauty surrounding us, discovering artists’ havens around every corner.

One night, Damian and I had our professors over for dinner at the Bates House. I cooked chicken stir fry and felt very sophisticated buying a bottle of wine at the General Store. Another night, Damian treated me to dinner at The Harpoon (now The Black Harpoon), a “fancy” restaurant for Port Clyde, and again felt very grown-up, this time while ordering the salmon.

I spent my evenings on our front porch, observing the village and its characters as though watching a play.

As Damian started up the packed car on the morning of our departure, signaling the completion of the course, neither of us was ready to leave.

We got our three credits that summer and so much more.

When my dad died on September 27, 2015, my family had our own “funeral” that morning before he was taken away. As we sat in a circle around his hospital bed in the Great Room of 36 Grand Ave, my childhood home, my mother asked us to go around and share some of our favorite memories of Dad. One of the things I mentioned was the time he drove me all the way to Maine early one morning, dropped me off, and headed right back home to the Cape, marveling as an adult at where he found the time and frankly, the enthusiasm. As always, not only was he there for me, but he wholeheartedly supported my dreams.

It spoke to his writer’s soul, like the summer he studied at the Yeats Poetry School in Sligo, or his unfulfilled desire to study at the famed Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. On one family trip to Vermont, we did a “drive-by” around the Breadloaf Inn, and at the time, I didn’t understand its significance or why he was so intrigued.

Ten days prior to my dad’s death, as I accompanied him home to Grand Ave in an ambulance from Brigham & Women’s Hospital, we were chatting with an EMT who mentioned he lived in Quincy. Ever the daughter of my inquisitive parents, I had to see if there might be a personal connection, asking him if he knew the only person from college I knew who was from Quincy.

Not only did he know her, he had married her.

She had been the third roommate when Damian and I rented the Bates House.

I finally brought my husband, then fiance, Chris, to Port Clyde in 2009. We were visiting Camden and staying at a little motel in nearby Lincolnville to see the place I spoke of incessantly.

I took photos around the village, trying not to invade anyone’s privacy while standing longingly outside the Bates House.

It had received some TLC since 1994, a paint job and some landscaping, but thankfully, it still possessed the same charm and character.

We sat at the counter at the General Store and indulged in perfectly cooked, medium-rare cheeseburgers as the slamming of the screen door kept sparking memories.

Chris and I visited several times after that whenever we were in the area, touring the Wyeth Gallery above the General Store, finally making it to Monhegan in 2022.

We had plans to go again last summer on our annual Maine Memorial Day trip, but Chris wasn’t feeling well, so we didn’t make it to Port Clyde, opting for the “next time,” taking for granted we’d have that opportunity.

On September 27, 2023, the eighth anniversary of my dad’s death, a fire broke out at about 11 pm in the Dip Net, spreading to the General Store, the Monhegan Boat Line, the Wyeth Gallery, and the apartments of some employees. Thankfully, everyone got out safely. However, the buildings were not spared from destruction. While part of the General Store’s storefront remains, some of N.C. Wyeth and his grandson, Jamie’s works were lost, along with Wyeth family memorabilia and the Dip Net washed into the ocean. The Monhegan Boat Line, the charming building where we had purchased our ferry tickets, destroyed.

It all felt like a cruel joke as I read the headlines, especially in light of the date.

I was traveling around Italy for what has become a personal tradition, a positive, less painful way to spend my dad’s death anniversary. Celebrating his life and love of solo travel rather than being at home, re-living the day he died.

Before I left for my trip, my anxiety started to kick in, as it usually does when I’m about to travel. I always start to worry something bad is going to happen while I’m away. But not to me, to someone I love. I was so fixated about people, I didn’t even consider the fact something tragic could happen to a place.

As the village moves forward and the Monhegan Boat Line begins to rebuild, the community support on display is a further reminder of why Port Clyde holds so many hearts captive.

I wrote the following poem in 1994, when I was back on campus in Bridgewater, calling to mind those nights I felt like Sarah Orne Jewett, whose fictional Dunnet Landing was inspired by Tenants Harbor, a few miles up the road from our cottage in that Country of Pointed Firs.

This poem utilizes “boxcars” in the final stanza, a technique I learned from my high school poetry teacher, and one of my most influential writing mentors, Mike Rainnie. In essence, if something doesn’t work, don’t just throw it away. Save it for that rainy day. One time in class, he instructed us to pick four words from a hat to incorporate into a poem. Mine were: pastel, dust, cinnamon, and stillness.

I played around with them at the time, but five years later, they found a permanent home in this poem…

Reflections from the Bates House

On slippery rocks

we stood like pioneers

encouraging the sun.

The sky was split definitively in two.

Gray and foreboding to the left

upstaged by

red and salmon

to my right.

The crimson close

to the morbid performance of a daunting, sunless day.

Here in Port Clyde

the sun is

my comrade

and days without

are painfully observed.

Hot days subtly shift to chill

and at night

I wear flannel

as I watch the town wind down.

Fishermen flock

like fireflies

and their light

is the bright

orange glow

of waders

secured to their shoulders with

worn leather straps.

They drink coffee at the Dip Net

yelling about the tide

their grandsons slurping milkshakes.

Damian and I giggle over French fries

speaking of a different school.

When evening comes

the sky is a

black satin spread

on which

weary stars rest.

The boy at the General Store

takes out the trash

under twilight shadows.

He hops the fence

and heads to

Village Ice Cream

for they’ll soon be closing.

These porch nights

are pastel dust

streaked with

cinnamon stillness.

SEM, 1994