Carrabassett Valley native Bailey DeBiase painting a utility box in Kingfield. photos/Kiki J. Garfield
A mildly psychedelic travel guide
Psychedelics, like travel, expand the mind. And, conveniently, as corporate extortion (a.k.a. inflation) has made it more expensive to vacation, the increasing availability of psychoactive substances like magic mushrooms has made it easier to get away — at least from one’s usual earthly worries and doom-scroll perspective on life.
Nowadays one can order professionally packaged products like candy bars and gummies containing psilocybin online, from reputable local providers, and get them delivered by mail. Those in the know can buy them over the counter at herbal-healing shops and such. I know a guy who manufactures and informally wholesales City Boy ’shroom chocolate bars, in dark and milk varieties. These products deliver the desired effect in easily adjustable amounts without the retching induced by chewing cow-shit fungus or gulping the wretched tea thereof.
The physical and mental benefits of microdosing — regularly ingesting small amounts of psychedelics without experiencing significant hallucinatory effects — are becoming widely recognized. C.J. Spotswood, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and behavioral-health clinician in Maine, published The Microdosing Guidebook, a very helpful and informative resource, in early 2022, amid a flood of exciting research on the subject. Microdosers report relief from depression and anxiety, heightened creativity and energy, and the blessed liberation one experiences when workaday concerns are nudged aside by a newfound appreciation of, as Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel memorably put it, “how strange it is to be anything at all.”
Day Trips is The Bollard’s new series for those seeking mildly psychedelic travel experiences in Maine. The focus is on places and activities psychic wanderers will find groovy or mellow, rather than, say, shit-your-pants terrifying. So, for example, chain hotels with elevators and screaming children simmering in bubbling tubs of hot water will not be featured here. Ditto the Big Fucking Indian in Freeport and … well, Freeport and the other big tourist towns that always get travel writers’ attention. There’s enchantment and enlightenment to be found in many Maine places not commonly considered tourism destinations.
Like Kingfield, the stoplight-less town downriver from Carrabassett Valley, home of Sugarloaf, “Maine’s Biggest Ski Resort,” which is a vacation hot spot, even in summer these days, thanks to mountain bikers, hikers and the like. Kingfield is a magical mountainous realm of towering trees, fantastic animals and a rushing river, the Carrabassett, loaded with wondrous stones and water creatures. At night, our galaxy glows overhead, speckled with winking satellites, while lightning bugs blink below and an owl hoots hopeful hellos.
Come dawn, you’re gently awakened by birdsong and the aroma of freshly brewed Carrabassett Coffee, roasted just down the road. A short stroll brings you to a friendly, wood-paneled diner with tables hand-hewn from local timbers by a craftsman in a village nearby. Pass the afternoon getting tipsy on cider pressed from apples grown in a neighboring valley, then wolf down a burrito packed with local ingredients while pondering the peaks across the street and pounding pints of Maine craft beer.
The nightlife in Kingfield ends with the daylight these days: everything’s closed by 8 or 9 p.m. There’s a severe labor shortage, directly attributable to a severe shortage of affordable housing, and Trumpist cowards fearing “immigrants” and “low-income” neighbors recently voted down a zoning change that could have led to the construction of 45 new apartments and homes. Nevermind that all the whites who rejected the rezoning are immigrants occupying Native American land and dirt poor themselves, largely due to the two shortages just mentioned.
For local kids, the most popular pastime is jumping off bridges. Adults around here keep the playful spirit of their childhoods alive by tearing through the forests and fields on ATVs and snowmobiles; also by fishing and hunting and getting bent. Live music, theater, dance, cinema and comedy are largely absent in this cultural dead zone. Dumps may outnumber habitable dwellings, though even rundown cabins get interesting around here, with funky decks and garages and entire wings tacked on to the original homestead, most certainly sans official permission.
Also on the bright side, there are no cops and parking is free. Kingfield is only about a two-hour drive from Portland, ideal day-tripping distance, so by the time your buzz wears off and the town shuts down, you can turn around and be back in time for last call. But we strongly suggest you stay the night, because…
Lodging
For mind pioneers, there is really only one option in Kingfield, and thankfully, it’s magnificent: Santosha at Hillholm Estate.
The hilltop property, a gorgeously restored Georgian Revival mansion with a modern annex of inn rooms, is a yoga and writing retreat par excellence, offering stretching and meditation sessions for all levels, four farm-to-table meals (including a lighter, early breakfast followed by a protein-centric one), a comfortable and convivial Great Room with a fireplace and rare sunken bar, a cedar-barrel hot tub and sauna, and numerous other activities and amenities.
Stuff Santosha doesn’t have: TVs, alarm clocks, bedside Gideon Bibles full of gory stories, and stressed-out staff or guests. It’s a blissful experience, a place where every element encourages relaxation and appreciation of the finer, simple things in life: natural food, pine-scented air, companionship, craftsmanship, enlightenment. JennyBess “JB” Chaim, who owns the place with her partner, poet and ski instructor Matt O’Donnell, is studying for a Master of Divinity at Harvard exploring “the intersection of Buddhist meditative states and psychedelic experiences,” according to her bio. So when (not if) Maine more openly embraces the therapeutic use of psychedelics, Santosha is poised to be the preeminent retreat for that, too.
(Full disclosure: the gracious innkeeper, Hannah Grady, is a friend of ours and arranged with JB and Matt to comp our stay while we researched and photographed the town for this feature. The specialty retreats and full-package deals at Santosha are priced as you’d expect, but you can also stay there as an inn guest at very reasonable rates.)
There are a couple bed-and-breakfasts in Kingfield, including the lovely Mountain Village Farm (whose proprietors were soft-opening their delightfully easygoing Silly Goose Bar n Grill last month) and the historic Three Stanley Avenue Guest House, though the latter recently closed its restaurant, so it’s more of a B than a B&B these days.
The big hotel downtown, the storied Herbert Grand, was purchased by Sugarloaf a couple years ago and is used during ski season to house its workers — which is great for them, but a shame for us, as the hotel’s now closed to the public. With its long porches, spacious lobby and handsome barroom, the Herbert was once the hub of social life for miles around, especially during Prohibition, which its proprietors gleefully ignored in this remote corner of the empire.
That’s the way business is done around here — employers of any size are now also responsible for developing and providing their workers’ housing, and the moms and pops work elbow-to-elbow with their employees to survive. It’s fitting that this series is debuting the same month as our annual Buy Local Summer Guide, because in a community as small as Kingfield, the benefits of supporting locally owned, independent businesses are as clear as the mountain views. You go there, they’ll be there the next time you’re in town. You don’t, they ain’t, replaced by another crummy dollar store or Dunkin’.
Food & Drink
Kingfield is home to what Bollard political columnist and booze guru Al Diamon, who lives up in the Valley, calls “one of the best bars in the universe”: Rolling Fatties. Another enterprising husband-and-wife team, Polly and Rob MacMichael, helm this fun and comfortable restaurant, which in the summer opens its backyard as the Snikibar (like a Tiki bar, only slightly slyer and less tacky). The burrito truck from which they launched this business in 2013 is parked back there by the garden and picnic tables, some sheltered by gently fluttering awnings. The view steals the air from your lungs.
Al sagely dissuaded the couple from exclusively stocking Maine liquors, but otherwise almost everything on the food and drink menus is made within our state’s imaginary borders, and is delicious: burritos, bowls, nachos, and sides like Maine-grown black beans and groats (oat grains minus their husks). The atmosphere is relaxed and happy, because how the hell could it not be?
A short walk up the main drag, Route 27, and you’re at Orchard Girls Cidery, where amiable and knowledgeable owner/cidermaker Daniel Gassett will inevitably be pouring your drafts in person. Daniel recently relocated the tasting room to a Federalist house built in 1823, called The Brick Castle, that had been home to the popular Orange Cat Café for two decades prior.
As with Santosha, it’s fantastic to open a door and find yourself inside a beautiful room furnished in the high style of the 19th century. The craft ciders are creative and superb, made from the fruits of North Star Orchards in Madison, just below where the Carrabassett meets the Kennebec, and other local growers.
Kingfield’s Ruski’s is Longfellow’s Restaurant, a warm wood-paneled tavern in the heart of town serving very affordable lunches and dinners and drinks, with a deck overlooking the river and youth plummeting to its depths from a nearby bridge. On the other side of that bridge, Anni’s Market has all the provisions you need for a successful Kingfield adventure, including tastier-than-you-expect subs and pizza, and gasoline to get home.
For breakfast, the Kingfield Woodsman is the only game in town. (They also serve lunch, and open for supper on Tuesdays.) This is Kingfield’s Becky’s: friendly, functional, authentic. How do they keep prices so low? Volume, naturally, and the ads printed on the coffee mugs, like the one for a tire-service shop that boasts, winking: “Big, Fat, Tall, Small – We Do ’em All!”
“We do not have WIFI,” reads a wooden plaque at the wooden Woodsman. “Talk to each other. Pretend it’s 1995.”
That’s remarkably easy to do here and all over Kingfield — to suddenly slip decades or centuries into the past, back to when people chatted face-to-face, smiled or tipped a brim in passing, and found simple pleasure in the chance to gather and chew the fat, figurative or otherwise, with folk not of kin. After all, it wasn’t easy to traverse these mountains back when Hillholm Estate and The Brick Castle were built, though the Kingfield-born Stanley twins, Francis Edgar and Freelan Oscar, did much to change that.
Things to Do
The Stanley Museum is a must-see destination, a fascinating collection of objects and artwork by the Stanley family made famous for inventing and manufacturing a steam-driven automobile at the dawn of the 20th century: the Stanley Steamer. (The vacuums are spelled Steemer and were invented by a guy inspired by the brothers’ cars.)
In addition to several expertly restored and road-worthy Steamers (which did, of course, burn fossil fuels to heat the water and power the headlamps), there’s early photographic equipment (the twins made discoveries and money in that field, too), and photography and paintings by their sister, Chansonetta, and her daughter, Dorothy. (After a little girl left the tour, our endearingly gregarious guide, Gail, confided to us that she sometimes has to edit her spiel if kids are present, such as by omitting some unfortunate facts about Dorothy’s later life. I could sense she was eager to spill this tea, and though reluctant to disappoint her, I felt a rare satisfaction leaving without inquiring about it, with Dorothy’s good name intact; I high-fived her ghost on the way out.)
The High Peaks Artisan Guild Gallery offers creative Maine art and crafts (including home furnishings and kitchenware, jewelry, clothing and cards) along with some rando antiques. It also has the trippiest barn-quilt design in town. Kingfield’s on the High Peaks Loop of the Maine Barn Quilt Trail, along which homes and businesses display signs painted with geometric quilt designs that dance in fractal frolic under certain psychic weather conditions.
You don’t have to wander too far into the thick forests of Kingfield to escape the rumble of 27’s traffic and step even further back in time, headfirst into primeval nature. Maine Huts & Trails is base-camped in Kingfield and maintains over 80 miles of rustic multi-use pathways, plus some huts for families and groups, in these mountains. Whether your bag is hiking, biking, riding, fishing, camping, hunting or birding, there are plenty of other guides to doing that in Kingfield. We’ll save the space we have left for a couple quick…
Side Trips
The Wire Suspension Bridge spanning the Carrabassett downriver in New Portland is worth a gander. Believed to be the only bridge of its design left in the U.S., it was strung during our first Civil War and embodies the elegance and pride-of-craft of early American rural civic architecture while reminding moderns to slow down and share with others (it’s a one-lane affair). Not a great idea to jump off this one, kids.
And it’d be, if not an actual crime, at least a citable offense to leave without a drink or two at one or both of Carrabassett Valley’s legendary watering holes. Tufulio’s Restaurant & Bar awakened from its spring slumber in late June and is always worth a visit. The Bag and Kettle, at the base of Sugarloaf’s grassy green slopes, reopened in mid-June and is still serving good food and drinks with jaw-dropping vistas on the side.
Rob, over at Fatties, said summers are as busy or busier than winters these days, as the area’s reputation for four-season fun grows. So loosen the leash on your mind and head for Maine’s Western Mountains. Amazing revelations await.