Issues → January/February 2010 → Travel →
Spend a Winter Day in New England
From sunrise to a fireplace at the inn
by Yankee Editors
7:30 A.M.
WHERE THE SUN RISES FIRST
Sunrise from Cadillac Mountain reveals a coastline carved with a crooked knife. From that famous vantage on Mount Desert Island, the coast of Maine comes out of the dark.
It's a complicated affair of peninsulas and coves, a jigsaw of rock and water, a play of motion and stasis. At dawn, the familiar names of famous places don't much matter--Bar Harbor, Frenchman Bay, the Porcupine Islands, the Cranberry Isles. You need pay attention only to the forms of this landscape emerging from night, a natural reciprocity of land and water shaped by climate and honed by weather, attended by the casual genius of sea level expressing itself as a restless edge of tide.
--Christopher Camuto, Time and Tide in Acadia: Seasons on Mount Desert Island
(W. W. Norton & Company; $24.95)
8 A.M.
BREAKFAST WITH THE HEADERS
It's said that in summer you can walk across Marblehead Harbor on the bows of the vessels that crowd this busy, historic port town. The winter, of course, brings a different scene, one that turns the harbor into a sheet of glass: a reflective quiet disturbed only by the fishing and lobster boats of the hardworking folks who still make their living on the ocean. The best way to absorb the light and thoughtful stillness that the morning hour gently requires is with a group of stalwart "Headers" at The Driftwood--a petite dockside restaurant--as you fill your belly with fluffy pancakes and perfect sunny-side-up eggs. There's always less guilt eating extra home fries or bacon in the winter, when deep-fried love just might keep us a touch warmer.
--Annie B. Copps
The Driftwood Restaurant, Marblehead, MA; 781-631-1145
8:30 A.M.
THE BEST VIEW OF ALL
There are Eastern mountains with higher peaks, steeper trails, far more impressive numbers of them than Wildcat Mountain's 47. But from the summit, no ski area gives such a sense of the Northern wild. Polecat, the most scenic Alpine trail in the country, cuts down Wildcat's flank. It's a green-dot trail--beginners all the way--and all that distance, for more than two miles, you look west into Mount Washington's Tuckerman Ravine. Legendary north-country skiers cut the trails on Wildcat, and they knew what they were doing. No trail in New England is more loved by those who know it than Polecat. --Mel Allen
Wildcat Mountain, Pinkham Notch, NH.603-466-3326; skiwildcat.com
10 A.M.
ICY SCULPTURES
Very seldom while snowshoeing do you come across a bronze Eve emerging from a snowdrift, a pile of powder resting on the apple in her still hand. Rarer still do you find a museum as dedicated to the interaction of nature and art as the DeCordova. Its sprawling sculpture park is a wonder throughout the year, but it takes on a new life in winter, when the museum invites snowshoers (either on guided tours or alone) to trek through its hills and to appreciate its collection to the sound of softly crunching snow. --Justin Shatwell
DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA. 781-259-8355; decordova.org
11 A.M.
EAGLES IN WINTER
The highest concentration of eagles in the Northeast winter on the shores of the southern Connecticut River. Here, they find plenty of fish in open tidal waters. On this morning the sky is just a bit overcast, so viewing isn't obscured by a sunny glare, and it's early enough in the season that the eagles haven't begun to head north again. Hope is in the air.
Aboard the RiverQuest, our guide, Andrew Griswold, director of the Connecticut Audubon Society's EcoTravel program, offers one-and-a-half-hour boat trips from early February through the end of March. We head north from Essex along the winding Connecticut River. Towns skirt the shore on both sides: Deep River and Brockway, Chester and Hadlyme. The river is narrow here, the coast dotted with trees and golden marsh grass. Griswold points out nests, eagles perched in trees, a pair with their white heads glistening, some young ones, too. We get so close to the birds that he stops speaking into the microphone. He whispers so as not to disturb a second-year eagle, which he identifies by its white belly and ragged wings. We lose count of our sightings after a good dozen.
The turnaround point is Gillette Castle in East Haddam. This imposing building was once home to American actor William Gillette, famous for his stage performance of Sherlock Holmes. The giant stone structure sits on a bluff well above the river. For most of the trip, we've turned our eyes upward. Now, jarred from nature's reassurance back to civilization in an instant, we crane our necks to take in this monument to a human being. As if on cue, Griswold points high, well above the castle. Young eagles soar. --Polly Bannister
Connecticut Audubon Society EcoTravel, Essex, CT. 860-767-0660; ecotravel.ctaudubon.org
Reader Comments
Comment from Debra LaConte on January 4, 2011
I ran right to the Driftwood for breakfast after reading this article last January. I was soooo disappointed. The food was ordinary,Wonderbread straight out of the package.... no view of the water, and the bathroom was up in an attic with food supplies, and cobwebs, that you had to pass by. I really can\'t figure out how this made the top breakfast place for a winter\'s day. It was freezing in there, esp. the bathroom ! The next time you need a good place for breakfast with \"homemade bread\" and fresh fruit in all seasons....go to Somerville, MA to The Neighborhood Restaurant. I can name 50 others too that are far better than the Driftwood.
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