Traveling to a place where time stands still
A return down memory lane with new and old
McGee Island
When I was 4 (1992) and 5 (1993), my parents drove my little brother and me from Chattanooga, TN to Port Clyde, Maine.
From the dock at the old General Store, we took a boat 30 minutes south into Muscongus Bay to McGee Island.
McGee had been acquired nearly a century earlier by a family, who, in 1912, built what was then called a “great cottage.” By the early 90’s the island had been passed down to the second generation of that family, and was close to being passed to the 3rd.
At that time, our connection to the island was that my grandmother had recently married the island’s owner — who was the son of the couple who’d originally purchased the island and built the house.
Memory
I have good memories of the island as a five-year-old, most of which entail watching grown-ups do fun things, like hitting golf balls into the lagoon, shooting skeet, trolling for lobsters, rowing old rowboats between the islands, diving off the docks into the cold water, and searching for stones amidst the little pools at low tide. But I also have memories of my own adventures, like searching for raspberries, jumping on inner-tubes with my cousins, and eating shortbread made by my grandmother.
That was all 30 years ago, nearly to the day.
Creating adventures with young kids and aging parents
Earlier this year, as MH and I were edging closer to the birth of our second child, we committed to trying to take our kids on adventures, even when they were little and probably too young to remember the places we’d take them.
I mentioned McGee Island as one such place, and looked it up to see what had happened to it. It was still owned by the same family, who now rent it out in the summer.
I jumped at the chance to go back, and booked a week for my parents, my brother and his girlfriend, MH and I, and our two young kids.
We just got back, and its eventfulness — from a small Cessna plane from Boston to Rockland, ME, to a hurricane on day 1 that kept us in Port Clyde, to 6 beautiful days on the island, living largely as Mainers would have lived in the early 20th century, to both our kids getting sick, making our 2.5 year old a handful, and our 5-month old very sleep-deprived, to the full-day of travel on either side with tired kids and aging parents — inclined me to reflect briefly here.
The most poignant experience of the trip, were the smells.
When I walked into the cookhouse and then into the main house, the smells were powerfully familiar, returning me instantly to 30 years ago. Olfactory’s impact on memory is wild.
Revisiting the island after 30 years, now with my parents in their latter years, and young kids of my own, I was struck by the passing of time, but also, how McGee seems to be a place where time is as close as possible to standing still (minus the tides and seasons).
The trip was incredibly rewarding in many ways, but it was also taxing with young kids, both of whom were sick.
We joked about whether we’d do it over again when we finally got them down for bed last night.
A day later, the answer is yes, we would.