Editor’s note: The September 2024 weekend a fire destroyed Schooner Landing Restaurant and Marina in Damariscotta, Johnathan Riley was the reporter on call for breaking news. While fires and car crashes are all tragic in their own way, the loss of Schooner Landing was particularly poignant to Johnathan, who worked at the restaurant as a bartender.
Now, as Schooner Landing reopened close to a year after the blaze, Johnathan is back behind the bar as he prepares to attend grad school in the fall. While he still freelances for the LCN, we couldn’t ask him to provide news coverage of his place of employment reopening. Instead, it felt fitting to have him write the “Welcome back, Schooner” editorial to bookend his coverage of the Sept. 1, 2024 fire.
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After slaying the minotaur on the Mediterranean island of Crete, the mythical Athenian king Theseus escaped on a ship.
To commemorate the king’s bravery and to honor Apollo, the sun god, Athenians annually sailed the same vessel to a nearby island. Over time, pieces of the boat needed replacing, as all seaworthy vessels require, until no part of the original remained. Is the ship the same ship Theseus sailed?
This question, known in philosophy as the Ship of Theseus, is a thought experiment that’s been poked and prodded by students, teachers, and thinkers alike, hoping to unearth which components of identity are most important.
We’re not entirely sure what the answer is, but we’ve been thinking about it a lot this past week with Schooner Landing Restaurant and Marina in Damariscotta reopening after an electrical fire in September destroyed the business and damaged the dock that stood there for decades.
Owners Scott Folsom and Caleb Jones, the staff, and a crew of contractors from the community have been working feverishly to rebuild the business and salvage the summer season.
Last Wednesday, patrons stopped by to visit the new layout in a soft opening that was anything but soft. Droves of familiar faces, music, drinks, food, and a perfectly warm July day made for the best return party the business could’ve asked for.
As much joy has surrounded the reopening, there’s a lingering heartache for the building that once was and all the memories that happened within its walls, but that heartache seems to be a source of some hope, too. It speaks to all the new memories to be made in the new place:
Where there was once stood an enclosed building with a bar, screened-in porch, kitchen, and dining room, is now a food truck and ample open-air seating with an unobstructed view of the Damariscotta River.
It’s not the same, but that’s the beautiful thing about life, nothing ever really is — not even the traffic passing by the business’s entrance on Main Street or the river that changes out a 12-foot tide every 12 hours, flowing around the mixture of new and old pilings holding up the deck.
But there’s something at the core of all those things that stand a chance of staying the same, some may call it the soul, and the soul of Schooner Landing is very much alive and is a torch carried in small pieces by everyone who loves that place and, in that way, the fire hardly did any damage at all.
In our version of the Ship of Theseus, we’re heading up the Damariscotta River to Schooner, and whatever the vessel, whatever the tide, it always feels like a journey home.
Congratulations to the Schooner Landing crew and to everyone who was involved in its resurrection. We’ll see you down on the dock!
