The land had been in the family for a century, but it still stood empty, save for the tall cedars and sticky pines rising from the spongy carpet of moss that blanketed the ground. “I used to look across the bay from my parents’ house and see these trees,” the homeowner remembers. “I wondered, ‘What’s over there?’ And my dad would say, ‘Someday, that might be where you live.’” At the time, the homeowner says, she couldn’t imagine “living in those scary woods.” There weren’t any houses on that coastal stretch; there wasn’t even a road that ran down from the main byways of Harpswell to this particular piece of land. “But my dad had a dream,” she says. “And now we’re here.”

Technically, the couple at the center of this story first saw their house in Wayne online. After that, they had a more poetic encounter: they paddled by in a kayak and saw not the house— which was hidden by trees like all the homes around Wilson Pond—but loons, ospreys, and an old cabin. Later, after they had bought the property, they heard stories. According to one, a hermit once lived in the cabin without electricity, and people flew food in to him, landing on the ice in winter. According to another, the cabin’s summer residents dressed in a tuxedo and gown to celebrate their anniversary every year. Those who went by on boats saw them out on their dock. For the moment, though, the house-shopping couple were simply drawn to what they could observe from the water.