Camping on Hermit Island, Maine
Hermit Island in the autumn has the feel of a folk taleBy Stacey Bloomfield
The air has changed to the cooler tones of September but it is still warm enough that my son has stripped off all of his clothes and has claimed this beach as his own. At one he can already tell that this is a special place. He doesn't realize how lucky it is to have an entire beach to ourselves, especially one with such soft sand that glitters in the sun light. But here we are alone on a beach listening to the lapping of the water and the occasional lobster boat coming in. The three miles of shore line on Hermit Island is spotted with sandy beaches, like the one we have claimed, rocky shores and cliffs all which over look Casco Bay.
For three days my family has wandered and loafed, meandered and basked on various of the beaches and rocky outcrops that are connected by mossy trails that criss cross the island. While it is only a mile long it is possible to spend a good hour or two following fairy tale trails over giant boulders and through grassy copes only to pop out on a cliff that over looks the sea. One trail deep in the center of the island feels almost like a rain forest with misty turns and rises. Another traverses the the western edge of the island wandering along cliffs and rocky shores. While you can drive across the island to the beaches we found once we were there we didn't want to get in the car at all.
Campgrounds usually bring up thoughts of humming belching RVs and bathrooms full of teenagers blow drying their hair, but there are no national forests to plop your tent down on on the coast so we were campground bound. Hermit Island had neither RVs or crowded bathrooms. In fact there are no RV or trailer camping on the entire island. The whole experience of Hermit Island is about being on your own. Our campsite under an old birch tree is on a wooded hill where the sounds of the bay have put us to sleep each night. Occasionally we have run across someone on a trail (in fact there were ten schools on a senior retreat) but everyone is here for the same thing so there isn't the loudness I usually associate with a campground.
The one time we have gone down to the camp store was to pick up a few pounds of freshly dug clams. Steamed over our camp stove these salty sweet jewels disappeared before we could sit down. We could have had lobster too but the stand up dinner of clams was all we needed to satiate our seafood craving. The store supplies the normal camping needs as well as a few organic products and fresh shellfish.
Of course the summer may be different on Hermit Island but our Autumn trip has the feel of a folk tale that we have somehow stole into. Packing up and going back to the mountains is tempered by the fact that the leaves are starting to change and we will be welcomed home to their sight, although a piece of my mind will take a while to return fully to our everyday life.
Stacey Bloomfield is a staff writer for TravelsInParadise.com and lives in Bennington, Vermont. She can be contacted at
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