In early 2003 I was bummed out, broke, and desperate. I’d spent the previous two years living in Seattle play working on political campaigns and doing my best to seduce our interns (while completely disavowing the fact that I was seducing said interns). I was drinking too much, smoking too much, and suffering daily. I knew that my way of life was untenable. Then I got laid off and it actually became untenable.

For three months I hid out. I pulled the shades in my basement apartment, slept until noon, and spent most of my day practicing pool at the Eastlake Zoo, an infamous pool hall where the only animals wear John Deere caps and chug PBRs out of a can. On rainy nights I would set out and walk around the city. I’d spend hours on my feet, trying to get somewhere, anywhere. For a little while I dated the intern and when that failed I started hooking up with her friends from The University of Washington. It was more from apathy than anything—I was young enough to relate, old enough to seem cool, and the campus property line was only a block from my own hobbit like abode.

As it was bound to do, my morbid, juvenile, self-pitying excuse for a party eventually came to a halt. One night in a bar one of my credit cards was declined. Then another. My friend, an accountant, covered the bill. The next morning she sat me down and fed me Bloody Marys while she examined out my cash flow situation.
    “The bad news is that you’re broke,” she said.
    “So what’s the good news?”
     She paused. “Good news?” she asked.
A week later she was dropping me at the airport. I flew home to Maine a broken man. I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going. I ordered a mimosa on the plane and thought about how trivial my life felt, how empty. Our time on this planet was so short, the importance of our human relationships so important. I had colleagues and drinking buddies, but when was the last time I’d had a real friend? When was the last time I’d been a real friend?

I sipped my drink and lost myself in melancholy. Somewhere over Colorado it came to me. Simply, in an instant. Of course! Bar Harbor!

Bar Harbor has long been the town that I consider to be the Northeastern most point of American culture. The town is actually the largest of several small towns situated on one of the largest islands on the Eastern seaboard, Mount Desert Island. In the early twentieth century it was seared into the American imagination as one of those towns, like Newport or Palm Beach, which was seasonally dedicated to the spending of old American wealth.

A major fire in 1947 changed everything. Most of the mansions burned to the ground and many families decided not to rebuild. In the 1970s College of the Atlantic (motto: “the penultimate in hippy lifestyle training”) opened and brought a left wing element that blended remarkably with the town’s old school Yankee vibe. Bar Harbor became known as a home for wayward artists and traveling gypsies. The Grateful Dead hung out there, as did Dan Fogelberg and Bonnie Raitt. Warren Zevon may have stabbed a man in the gazebo downtown. Then again, he may not have. You get my point.

When I was nineteen I’d dated a girl who went to the college. I remember long leafy weekends, hikes by an angry ocean, hanging fog, drizzling rain. Later, before Seattle, I’d made it a point to camp there every summer. There were mountains that flowed into the ocean and more than fifty miles of carriage roads. There were galleries, bars, and good restaurants. There were lakes for swimming, rocks for diving, and trails for hiking. My plan was to move there for one summer while I figured out what to do next. I wound up living there for four years. I made some very eccentric friends. I lived in a commune, a condemned house, and a dormitory that felt like a wooden submarine. I fell into and out of love on occasions too numerous to count. I got into the best physical shape of my life. I read the New York Times in the town square and ate fabulous meals cooked up by five star chefs. I grew a beard. I was flagged down by Tim Robbins for speeding. Another time I bummed a cigarette from John Malcovich. Once I stuck my head out of my bedroom window and had an impromptu exchange with Martha Stewart, who just happened to be standing in front of my house with an air horn.

All in all, not a bad life.

Several years ago I moved away from the island that I love. I had good, justifiable reasons for the move. I finished college, went back to campaign work, failed at hiking the Appalachian Trail. Yet there’s always been part of me that wondered what it would be like to go back there when I was more settled. I wondered what it would be like to be there as a real adult.

Most everyone reaches a point in their life where the time comes to put away childish things. With me that came two years ago when I met my girlfriend S and her daughter The Fiend. We had a rough start in the beginning, but we’ve managed to build a solid relationship on the backs of all of our failed ones. As a couple we work because we’re ridiculous. We like to make fun of S’s handicapped dog, feed The Fiend completely made up factoids (“No seriously, the dog really did pee on your dinner”), and follow the growth of Bill Adama’s facial hair.

Several months ago, around the time that I moved in with S, we decided that together we would move to the island. It would be our grand adventure, our great escape from the mundane. We set out a two year plan. She’s going to start a non-profit, I’m going to open a café. The Fiend will enroll in a great school. In the winter we’ll snowshoe and go to contra dances. In a couple of years we’ll start looking for houses to buy.

    Life is good, but it will be better.
    Even in the winter.
    In our new small town
    Of three hundred and nine people full time islanders.
    Three hundred and nine hermetic, insular, Stephen King loving, machete wielding islanders.
    Uhh… gulp?

Timothy Rich is a freelance writer and former man about town. He is now a hermetic, insular, Stephen King loving, machete wielding islander who makes fun of handicapped dogs. He really brings nothing to the table.