One of the very first questions people ask us when they learn that we live here at the lighthouse is “how do you deal with all the tourists?” And our answer is that other than parking issues and the occasional after hours visitor, it is not that big a deal given the short duration of the season. With that said, it has gotten me thinking about tourism in general, and travel in particular, especially since I just finished reading Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious by former New York Times Frugal Traveler columnist Seth Kugel.
We do get thousands of visitors to the lighthouse annually, many of whom hear about its appearance in the famous movie Forrest Gump, but we enjoy meeting and chatting with many interesting people from all over the nation and even the world. Just this morning, Linda and I met a wonderful couple from Marblehead, Massachusetts over breakfast at our local general store. They were sailing to Monhegan Island and even shared that meeting us made their day, which also made our day.
One of the reasons Linda and I downsized originally was to live and move more freely and lightly, including in order to travel and explore other destinations, both near and far. However, we have discovered that with realizing our dream of living at a lighthouse, there are very few other places that we want to go out of our way to visit. In fact, we have spent every night the past couple of years at home since moving here. As Seth Godin says, “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
Another attraction of living in mid-coast Maine is our proximity to other desirable destinations that we can visit during daytrips up and down the coast. And when we have traveled farther afield we typically follow the advice of author Seth Kugel: “Choose a place where you already know someone, or know someone who knows someone and can hook you up. When readers asked how I chose destinations for [my] columns, I freely admitted that it was often because a friend, or a friend of a friend…lived there.”
To bring my point home, so to speak, I close with a quote from John Urry, author of The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies: “The good tourist would stay at home and would find pleasure and interest in their local area. They would buy goods and services locally…and find pleasure in local walks.” And so we take daily strolls down our narrow inlet, even if it means dodging the seasonal traffic from tourists trying to escape their lives back home.