SCENIC SEACOAST WALKS
Ogunquit, Maine

You won’t find a prettier stretch of Maine coastline with an easier walking trail. Sure it gets crowded sometimes, but not in the fall, winter and spring. Great views of the white Ogunquit beach, and for tourists, shopping on both ends.

Hardy hikers often imply that Ogunquit’s Marginal Way is a walk for old ladies. True, the path that winds along the rocky shore is neatly paved and the treacherous cliffs are, in places, safely fenced. There are 30 memorial benches on which to rest and a fake lighthouse at the halfway point. And the path does lead, conveniently, from the downtown shopping area to the once-quaint fishing village in Perkins Cove, now an outdoor mall of jewelry, clothing and candle boutiques. And yes, a lot of white-haired ladies in boldly-printed sweatshirts do make the hike, so many, in fact, that in summer the scenic walk is wall-to-wall tourists with their arms full of purchases.

But they go away in the fall and the ocean doesn’t. In fall the air along the Atlantic is super crisp, the parking is plentiful and free, and dogs are allowed on the trail from now until spring. If you keep your eyes focused out to sea and not on the manicured lawns of the hotels, there is no more dramatic sights in New England.

The trail is just a mile and a quarter long, but there’s at least an added quarter mile from the beach parking lot, if you start there. Walk the whole loop back down Shore Road – the trolley only runs in summer – and you’ve hiked nearly three miles.

I admit to a special fondness for Ogunquit. I quit school as a college sophomore and ran off to New York to join a rock band. The band failed quickly and I survived that summer in Ogunquit, working five part-time jobs and spending no time on the beach. I slept in the abandoned back room of the Betty Doone motel and, in the cool of the evening, sometimes wandered the Marginal Way by moonlight. As tacky as Ogunquit can be, the often-painted waves crashing on those rocks are no less dramatic than when prehistoric Indians camped here. Any scene powerful enough to ease by college angst is big medicine.

The Marginal Way was designed specifically as a tourist magnet, not a nature preserve, but so what? It’s gorgeous and exciting, even dangerous in the right weather. In 1991 a freak storm tore the path to pieces, just to remind us how Maine’s rocky coast was formed. --- JDR

Photos by J. Dennis Robinson

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FURTHER DOWN THE MARGINAL WAY