Camden is the destination of the yachting set and all who aspire to it. Belfast is the destination of the counter-culture: artisans, shopkeepers, fisher-folk, the organic earth-crowd.
Camden is in the path of Route One and a famous harbor for sailing. You know where it is, and you visit to gawk or be gawked. Belfast is on a by-pass to Route One. You can give it a wide berth as you drive on to Mount Desert Island, another destination for the rich and hoping-to-be rich.
A the heart of Camden the "The Lord Camden" hotel and the "Smiling Cow." One is an expensive lodging, the other a market of souvenirs open to the street. The heart of Belfast is a main street with modest boutiques, book-sellers, and coffee shops. The seaside restaurant "The Weather Vane," used to be a common watering hole for both locals and tourists. It still has the delightful prospect, but under new management is called "Nautilus."
When I visited Camden with my wife and her family, I felt like an intruder. Actually her father had a sailboat and a cottage at Bayside, not far from the opulence of Camden, but you had only to enter a clothing store or check out the real estate ads to find out what class of people lived there. I was not of that class.
When I visited Belfast I felt at home in a fishing town not unlike the towns Downeast toward Canada, where my maternal grandfather had settled. Of course Belfast was environmentally-aware and multi-cultural in a way Bucks Harbor would never be, but that made me comfortable there.
Still I coveted Camden and Kathy and I would point out places we would like to buy, if we had a sudden windfall. Our hearts drifted with the high tide even though our heads reminded us we were low tide folk. Later in life we sized up property in Belfast.
Dreaming of vaulting up the economic ladder is the essence of America. We are taught to dream of Camden, when our bank accounts are compatible with Belfast. We are taught to prize a mortgage that swells beyond hope of payback. It suggests we are ambitious and willing to work to improve our economic status. Somehow debt has become a status symbol, because it proves we are reaching beyond our means.
But another democratic value is the dignity of the individual, regardless of social status. We have an unmistakeable, even perverse, pride in being poor. We take pride in not accepting charity or “handouts,” in spurning the luxury of the wealthy, in working hard for meager returns. I used to speak so openly of things I could not afford that my college room mate said I had a “poor mouth.” I thought that was inconsiderate coming from an upper middle class student, who mailed his laundry home for washing, but a later perspective suggested that I reveled in my poverty. It was the emblem of honest labor, the rationale for deferred dreams.
I have drunken from the fountain of wealth dreams and from the dry well of need, but not without a story to explain it. I have been a tale of two egos, two cities, two worlds to represent me. On Friday I checked in to the Samoset Resort, a timeshare renter, a pretender in an oceanside Goldstar-rated facility, surrounded by a “championship” golf course. I have smuggled Belfast into the 600-building, a few miles south of Camden.
Late in life, vacationing on the familiar Maine coast, none of this should matter, and no one has told me it has. Perhaps being a new widower has made me too introspective and anxious in public. Perhaps the old place associations work on my identity. To me Maine is both the Downeast of struggling Washington County and the Downeast of affluent Knox County, where Camden reclines. Happy to be here in the middle of spring, when every morning turns your plans inside out. Happy to reset some old prejudices and take the Maine coast as the public playground it is.