DOWN EAST BY TRADITION

At the southwestern end of Mount Desert Island, Maine, past the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, sits Thurston’s Lobster Pound. Here patrons sit shoulder to shoulder at picnic tables and look out on a working harbor, its moorings occupied by lobster boats that supplied the marine crustaceans on which they’re feasting. A series of neat, wood-framed homes, stacks of lobster traps and work buildings are scattered on the opposite shore. Just beyond that, all one can see is the deep green of Acadia National Park. The setting is picture-postcard Maine.

The Bass Harbor Light is said to be the most photographed lighthouse in Maine, and maybe all of New England. The light and its keeper’s pitched-roof house