In which I spend a week in Maine. Alone.

How a getaway to reconnect with my manuscript helped me find so much more. Plus, my list of essentials to bring on an Airbnb vacation (which I totally forgot).

I have been away by myself for the last five days staying at a small studio along the Kennebec River in Bath, Maine and over that course of time, I have had many revelations. One of the biggest was that most revelations can be reversed over the course of 24 hours.

My initial a-ha moment came on the first morning as I lay in the rental’s queen-sized bed and wrote in my journal that I did not think I was cut out for Airbnb living. Everything gave me the heebie-jeebies: Couches, beds, pillows, towels, floors. I brought my own pillows for sleeping and a throw blanket I’d picked up at Costco that I put down on the couch to serve as a barrier between me and the blue upholstery lest any foreign stray hairs might be silently lurking. I kept on socks and walked around in my Kirkland slides at all times, even when going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

But after my first full day writing at a table that looked out at the nearby cattails and tall leggy daisies, their bright yellow faces turned to the sun and the river glinting in the distance, I was already changing my mind. “This morning I am infatuated,” I wrote in my journal on Wednesday, detailing the scene I woke to outside the big windows facing the bed, how the sky was streaked with pink clouds. I quickly jumped out of bed and opened all the rest of the tall windows in the little cottage to get a more panoramic view.

The windows across from the bed face to the east and you can see the river behind the trees. Also, ignore what a messy traveler I am.

I know right?

By Thursday, I wrote that I was “feeling more at home,” and noted all my activities the day before. I took a boat ride along the Kennebec from the Maine Maritime Museum where I saw a bald eagle soar across the sky and then later perched in a tree along the water.

On Saturday morning, I sat in bed looking out the three big windows and admiring the view one last time before taking a quick hike at a nearby nature preserve and heading home. But then a friend, who never worries about anything, texted again about whether I wanted to stay at their place in Vermont because of a horrible storm that was blanketing the route I would be driving through toward home. Because this friend is generally unfazed by things like the weather, I decided to see if I could stay here one more night, and readers: I could.

I have about a million pics of these chairs from every angle.

So here is one of my biggest revelations that I do not think I will be retracting — life is better when you go with the flow. I came to Maine with very few expectations, other than wanting to devote about four hours each day to working on my manuscript. Other than that (and a date with a photographer friend I made to update my headshots), I had zero plans. I just let everything run its course.

My Airbnb host was lovely and had lots of recommendations for things to do and places to eat, and that’s where I found some nice hikes. My photographer friend, who lives in Boothbay Harbor, also had suggestions including a pop-up sauna at an oyster farm. I signed up online and drove the 30 minutes there on Thursday only to discover I had signed up for next Thursday. I was disappointed but didn’t dwell on it.

Instead, the gals at the oyster farm suggested I drive out to see the lighthouse in Pemaquid, and it was spectacular. As I pulled up to the little booth to pay, a very jovial fellow wearing a baseball cap leaned out and asked what brought me there alone and I told him I was taking a break from work and writing a book and he said, “Well, then, you just earned a free pass,” and he let me bypass the $4 entrance fee. It was kind of lovely.

A nice lady who’s been coming since she was a little girl took my pic and then I took hers.

I ended up back at the oyster farm the next day to sauna and eat lunch. The portable sauna is a horse trailer that’s been rigged with a wood stove and two long benches and there’s a long narrow window running horizontally across the top of one side that afforded a view of the nearby dock and Damariscotta River. After the hour sauna, I went down the dock to an emptied oyster bay and plunged into the cage where I floated for a while in the cold clean water — looking up at the blue sky and the rocks covered in long strands of moss the sit along the sides of the river. To my left, I could make out a bay full of oysters, the cage covered in moss. I used my fingers to grip the sides of the cage to hold me up as I floated and lifted one foot out to rest on the cage wire and watched a long strand of kelp get caught between my toes. I tipped my head back and said, “This is fucking magic.”

Guys, look at how red my face is in this really bad selfie after sitting in 180-degree heat for an hour. But here is the tricked-out sauna in the background that was really nice and fresh and clean inside. Cedar Grove Sauna

This gives you an idea of all the oyster pens. If you look all the way to the left you can see a red run which is in front of the empty one I floated in.

I am assuming at higher tide the water comes up more but I could still float and see the shoreline in the distance.

Some of my neighbors (who also happen to be delicious).

After changing into dry clothes, I got a half dozen oysters and panicked when my new oyster girlfriend asked if I’d ever shucked my own oysters and then gave me a quick lesson and handed me a shucking knife. I thought about how nice it was back in the day when my former husband would crack open a lobster for me so all I had to do was pull out the meat as I watched all the men at surrounding tables act as the designated shuckers for their fellow diners. And then I shucked my own fucking oysters.

My utmost respect to folks who shuck oysters professionally because it took me a good 5 minutes per oyster and a couple of near misses with the knife just grazing my hand.

The oyster menu at Glidden Point Oyster Farm.

Here's one final revelation: traveling alone can feed the soul.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “Wait. Aren’t you the same girl who was carrying on last month about going to a wedding by herself?”

Yes, yes that was me.

I am not sure if it’s a shift in thinking. Or maybe it’s because I’m fully alone and don’t care what strangers think of me showing up for boat rides or sitting at a bar alone. I’ve done whatever I’ve wanted. Driven all over creation, which not everybody likes to do. I ate when and what I wanted, including a spur-of-the-moment peanut butter soft serve ice cream cone I pulled over for as I was driving by on my way to see Popham Beach all the way from Boothbay.

Dolphin Mini Golf in Boothbay is home to the Ice Cream Hut (TONS of soft-serve flavors) and the Kenneth E. Stoddard Shell Museum which resides within a covered bridge.

I made friends with a woman while sitting at a bar eating dinner one night this week and we really talked for a long time about everything. We were both single and kind of reveling in that. It turned out, it was her 51^st birthday and while she had spent the day with friends celebrating and had a partner asking what she wanted to do for dinner, she was happy just sitting at the bar and chatting. She was doing exactly what she wanted to do. She was kind of a boss.

And I think maybe that’s what has made this solo trip so good. I was in Maine, alone,

I had stopped in Portland, Maine on the way up to eat a lobster roll that I’d eaten the summer before at a local operation that I’d thought about since, and then to pick up supplies for the week at Whole Foods. As I walked about, I threw whatever caught my eye into my basket — a premade salad, BBQ chicken pizza, and black and white cookies. As I threw in a plastic box of milk chocolate salted caramels, I laughed because it felt like a very Cameron-Diaz-in-The-Holiday moment. You know that scene where she’s walking around the little market buying everything for her solo getaway? That was very much my vibe walking around the Portland Whole Foods.

Me at Portland Whole Foods, minus the wine, plus the chocolate.

In summary, while there’s been no Jude Law knocking drunkenly at my door (which, at this stage of my life, no thanks), this trip has been everything I could have wanted — if I had gone into it with any expectations. Right now, I’m sitting here on a hard, bright yellow chair pulled under a small round IKEA-ish table and looking out at those daisies in the distance. I see the rugosa roses right under the window with pale orange seed pods where flowers must have been earlier this summer.

I wish I had staged this for you. But you get the picture.

I feel so removed from my regular life like I’ve been here looking at the reeds and cattails for weeks and not days. And I think that’s how a true vacation is supposed to be. Now I’m going to put that Costco blanket back on the couch so I can lie around and read for a while and try not to look for stray hairs.

I never said it was perfect.

sunday shares: read + watch + cook + buy

Let’s get right to it — my Mini Cooper might have been stuffed to the gills with food and clothing but there are some other items I should have squeezed in (some of which I ended up buying at a nearby Target in Maine):

• yoga mat: after all that sitting and writing and driving and walking up and down on rocky trails, I desperately needed to stretch. And there was no way on God’s green earth I was putting my hands down on a rental floor OR lying down on it. I have standards.

• candle (and matches): you can’t beat the view from almost every side of this little cottage, but it has a musty smell. It was the first thing that hit me when I walked in Monday night in the pouring rain. I went to the local market in Bath the next day and bought a Stonewall Kitchen maple/pumpkin number that I thought would be pungent enough to mask the mildewy odor, and it does.

• bathing suit: I actually went to Target to buy one for the sauna. When I found out I was there the wrong day, I even pulled up my shirt to show the oyster girls the ugly suit I bought.

• scissors: this is the one thing I never got and have resorted to using the rental’s super dull knives to rip things open.

• sponge: fuck if I’m using some old sponge that has cleaned who knows what for who knows how long.

Maine is pro-sobriety. Unlike the New Jersey area, every place I’ve gone out to eat in Maine has a couple of non-alcoholic drink options. Fun mocktails. Someone even offered me a fake Chardonnay (yuck). There’s even a craft brewery for NA beer with a couple of different flavors that taste great. I commented on this to a bartender as I sat at a bar eating a lobster roll and she was like, “Well, so many people are sober nowadays.” Huh. I love that choosing not to drink is becoming more normalized.

What have I been listening to? If you read Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead this summer I highly recommend listening to David Copperfield. Yes, it’s 36 hours. Yes, it’s a very (very) long story. But I feel like it helps knowing the basic outline of the plot and honestly, who knew Dickens was so funny? The narrator, Richard Armitage, is fantastic.

My music selection? Strangely, I have really gotten into the new Olivia Rodrigo album that my daughter had downloaded a while back on my phone. It slaps, as one of my very astute coworkers might say.