Everyone has their favorite Ogunquit, Maine season.
For most it’s the midsummer, with throngs of tourists and bustling activity. Others love the foliage season of autumn, with its fiery trees and the first wisps of woodsmoke carried by the coastal breezes. Still, others prefer the Holiday season. Small town storybook snowscapes. Norman Rockwell streets adorned with Old New England Christmas decorations.
Oddly enough, early spring is the Ogunquit season people celebrate least often – but, to me, an early spring walk through Ogunquit is an essential experience for those who truly want to know our “Beautiful Place By The Sea”.
Early spring Ogunquit isn’t the same picture perfect place you’ve come to know in the other seasons. This is an honest time, a time of authenticity, when you get an opportunity to see further into the true soul of this village and beyond the buttoned up tidiness and perfect grooming of the more formal tourist months. This is the Ogunquit the locals know and love…and work hard on so everyone else can come and enjoy.
The streets are eerily devoid of traffic as the winter freeze begins to break.
As you head down Shore Road towards Perkins Cove, past The Hartwell House B&B, the local carpentry crews are hard at work everywhere with the sounds of their hammer strikes and buzz-saw squeals, reversing winter damage and upgrading for the coming season.
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The Pearl getting a facelift in Perkins Cove – Ogunquit
The seagulls begin to speak in the early morning hours, again. Business signs which had been stored for the winter are hoisted anew. And the sound of trickling snow melt fills the space between the Josias River and the Gulf of Maine.
The long thaw begins. Once the snow reveals what lies beneath, the town shows local signs of life and starts the work of preparing for the summer onslaught, the tourist season, the activity season, the money season.
It’s a lovely time to walk the Marginal Way, as the ice recedes from the rocky cliffs and the landscape is still something you can own alone.
Near the Perkins Cove terminus of The Marginal Way
Rocks, Sea and Sky on The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine
No need to share your journey. The crowds have not arrived yet. Hundreds of millions of dollars of pristine oceanfront real estate and you can wander at your leisure, experiencing Ogunquit and all of nature in a quiet and meditative fashion.
A Marginal Way Vista in Early Spring – Ogunquit, Maine
Low Tide on The Marginal Way in Early Spring – Ogunquit, Maine
Spring Thaw on The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine
The craggy coastline, battered by crystal clear icy waters. The sound of waves hissing and seething in effervescent explosions against the rocky outcroppings.
Looking back towards Perkins Cove in Ogunquit from The Marginal Way
A stone filled cove on The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine
A battered lobster trap on The Marginal Way of Ogunquit, Maine
Further down the trail, the stones give way to sand, you leave the paved Marginal Way and head down onto the beach.
Early springtime surfer near Lobster Point on The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine
Comfort zones be damned, you slip out of your sneakers and feel the cold wet sand beneath your feet, the exhilarating rush, slightly painful, when the wavelets rush up against your bare skin. Something inside you tells you to retreat, to return to dry land…but this experience is embraced by very few, so you stand steadfast and allow a new facet of this beloved place to reveal itself through your physical senses.
A sandy section of The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine
There’s a break in the clouds and the slick dark clumps of seaweed and melting ice draped along the rocks catch the light. The Beachmere Inn’s Victorian Building rises above the scene like an elegant postcard from the past. The white froth of breaking waves glistens as millions of carbonated bubbles explode in a symphony of wild sound.
On a section of Marginal Way beach – Ogunquit, Maine
Receding ice with The Beachmere Inn in the distance – Ogunquit, Maine
You look across the Ogunquit River, towards the main beach. In the summer it’s crowded with color, squirming with life. Right now, it’s a broad expanse of empty sand, surrounded by bright blues and tinged with white, the sky and sea and residual snow are reflecting each other, becoming each other.
Looking from The Marginal Way towards Ogunquit Beach – Maine
So much beauty. So much natural splendor. So few people.
There’s part of me that can’t believe how lucky I am to have this seascape all to myself. There’s another part that thinks you’re all crazy for missing out on this.
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