On a bright, blustery afternoon last spring, six women rowers gathered next to a shingled equipment shed on Belfast Harbor and began putting on sweatbands and slim, inflatable life jackets. They ...

Crow Island is a scrap of an island, three acres tucked into the farthest reaches of Middle Bay, not a half mile off the Brunswick peninsula called Simpson’s Point. To the swimmers who gather at the ...

In the 1980s, Charlie Lopresti grew pumpkins in the garden with his dad. Their biggest was about 200 pounds. A couple of decades later, Lopresti and his wife settled in rural Buxton, with plenty of ...

Lucas St. Clair works very hard to make people forget Roxanne Quimby. As the new face of the plan to create a national park in northern Maine, he has opened once-closed land to hunting and ATVs and ...

Amy Ray sews in her home studio. Last winter, Amy Ray plucked a ’70s jean jacket from a pile of clothes in her Eastport studio and saw a canvas. Her vintage shop was closed for the season, giving Ray, ...

The bar at the Somerset Pour House was bustling on a Saturday afternoon this winter. The lone server juggled drink and food orders, bantered with regulars, and seemed to know everyone’s usual by heart ...

It was a few minutes before showtime on Number One Pond, in Sanford, last summer. The evening sun, thinly veiled by clouds, cast a silvery glow on the choppy water and 500 or so spectators nestled on ...

Growing up in Winter Harbor, Sarah Christensen feasted on whatever the sea provided. That included the large, carnivorous snails, known as whelks, that inadvertently got swept up in her father’s ...

In July 1924, Lewiston native Bob LeGendre sailed into the long-jump pit at the Paris Olympics and set a new world record. The event was the first in what was then the Olympic pentathlon, a five-sport ...

Every few years, Down East takes a close look at what makes a great place to live in Maine, and this year, we asked readers to weigh in. Our editors seeded a March Madness-style bracket tournament ...

A lot of topography on this trail network between Millinocket and Baxter State Park — aerobic climbs and exhilarating downhills, punctuated by sweeping views of Katahdin and Millinocket Lake. NEOC’s ...

Water bugs skitter over a sunlit pool the color of iced tea. It’s only a few inches deep and maybe 25 feet across, the kind of permanent puddle you expect to find in a North Woods cedar swamp. Look ...