The curtain has risen at the easternmost point in the United States. There's not much of a plot and even less suspense, but the special effects are dazzling - all rubies and amber and crystal. The spring air is heavy with salt and spray, and the wind is blowing foamy feathers off the long, curling swells. I button my jacket and pull up my hood.

This is the far edge of Maine, 240 miles east-northeast from Portland. This is a place of wild blueberry patches, volunteer fire departments, grange halls, cottages with window boxes spilling blossoms, yards where lobstermen hang their freshly repainted buoys out to dry, and towns with band shells draped in American flag bunting. The weekly Lubec Light carries important news of tide times, Eagle scouts, bake sales, church suppers, new library books, births, illnesses and deaths.

"Mister, you're looking at what's left of Maine," I was informed by a man with a craggy face and a squint like a cowboy in an old cigarette ad. "You go 40 miles south of here, you're in Massachusetts. Cross my heart." (Only it came out: "Mistah, yaw lookin' at what's lefta Maine. Go fawty miles south of hee-ah, yaw in Mass-chew-sits. Crossma hot.")

Lubec (pronounced Loo-BEC) is in the middle of some of the most spectacular scenery in the country - miles of coastline, rugged headlands, towering sea cliffs, pine-studded islands, coves, inlets, lakes, woodland, bogs, whirlpools, and waterfalls. As the high pilings in the harbor attest, Lubec has the greatest rise and fall of tides in the continental United States - a 20-foot variance in just six hours.

And just five minutes away, across a bridge into Canada, there's a huge bonus for history buffs - Campobello, the beloved cottage retreat of Franklin D. Roosevelt, where the future president summered from 1883 until August 1921, when he came down with polio while vacationing there.

The red-and-white-striped West Quoddy Head Light looks like a barbershop pole. Each of its 15 stripes represents one of the states that existed when the original lighthouse was built in 1808 as a beacon for mariners. Today, the tower that replaced it in 1858 attracts hikers to several well-maintained trails that lace West Quoddy State Park. The most spectacular of them runs along the coast, and, if you're lucky, you may spot a moose and a whale on the same hike.

This morning, the beauty of the scene almost defies nomenclature, and the land seems worthy of national park status. I walk along cliffs that rise more than 100 feet above the surf raging against weathered rocks below to my left. On my right, the light slants through firs and other evergreens. The air is resinous with balsam. Except for the evergreens, I could be along the Cornish coast of southwestern England.

The sounds are all nonhuman and welcome. The wind makes the trees creak. Waves lap gently on granite. Gulls screech, buoys clang and whales bark.

Multicolored lobster buoys (each fisherman paints his in distinctive colors and designs to distinguish them from his competitors' buoys) ride the swells in the sea below. After a mile, the trail turns away from the coast and into the forest. Suddenly everything - ground, rocks, trees - is covered with moss. It seems to have snowed moss. Light filters through the canopy of trees, giving an infinite variety of greens. It is surreal, hallucinatory - like the illustrations of old fairy-tale books.

Later, a few miles away in Lubec harbor, I watch fishermen wearing hand-knitted sweaters and outfitted with lunch boxes row out to moored boats that sit patiently on their reflections. Their diesel engines gurgle to life, and before long they are in full-throttle roar with their wakes boiling behind. Since Lubec was settled in 1785, its backbone has been its fishing fleet.

The village's frame houses, 50 miles from the nearest traffic light, face the sea. Some are 150 years old. I have fish chowder for lunch at Cohill's Inn and Pub as a colony of gray harbor seals basks on the granite rocks of the breakwater. Jack, the bartender, tells me that he's a citizen of the United States and of Canada. I sit back and knit my fingers as if to say, "I'm listening."

"You can't do that anymore if you were born after '47," he says, downshifting a Guinness and sliding it in a single motion to a patron who has just entered without speaking. "But we all get along just fine. Some people cross the bridge five, six times a day."

Since 1962, the Roosevelt Campobello International Bridge has connected Lubec to the Canadian island of Campobello, and a kind of cross-bridge dependency evolved. There are no gas stations on Campobello, no pharmacies in Lubec. There are family ties, friendships and business relationships that run deeper than national allegiance. Volunteer firemen from both sides often respond to a single blaze.

Recently, this internationalism has been made more difficult by the tougher antiterrorism border regulations. "But we'll manage," says Jack, closing the topic to further discussion with a flourish of his bar rag.

It is not surprising that the world's first international park was established in 1964 at the southern end of Campobello Island, where the young Franklin Roosevelt learned to swim and sail, where he wooed Eleanor, spent summers with his children, and first decided to run for public office in 1910.

The centerpiece of the 2,800-acre Roosevelt Campobello Park is the family "cottage" - a three-story, vermillion-colored, 34-room gambrel mansion built in the Arts and Crafts style and overlooking Passamaquoddy Bay. The house contains an astonishing number of Roosevelt memorabilia - the wood stove that cooked family meals, Eleanor's knitting basket, a room with old-fashioned school desks where the children sat for their daily lessons each morning, and two giant megaphones used by the Roosevelts to hail passing ships and to summon the family to dinner. On the wall in the entrance room is a Christmas note that 7-year-old Franklin wrote for his mother in 1889.

Not only is Campobello a class operation, it's free. Allow at least a half-day to tour the cottage and its handsome gardens. Start at the visitor's center, which has a brief video outlining the history of the island and the Roosevelts' influence.

But there's more to see. There are bogs, beaches, shoreline trails and hiking paths owned by the park to protect the area from development. Campobello Island, which is only about 10 miles long and three miles wide, has uncrowded beaches and craggy vantage points with stunning views of the sea.

There's no easy way to get to this area. It's a good 21/2-hour drive beyond the last well-known destination, Acadia National Park. But those who make the effort will be amply rewarded by spectacular scenery and a slice of authentic Down East life.

Maine Attractions

Lubec

The West Quoddy Head Light is celebrating its bicentennial this summer. For details, go to www.westquoddy.com.

An excellent alternative to hotel and motel accommodations is the decommissioned and newly renovated Quoddy Head U.S. Coast Guard Station, which is less than a mile from the lighthouse. It opened in 1917, was abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1971, and was rescued in 2001 by Bill Clark, a Connecticut antiques dealer who restored the station, the boathouse and a cabin.

Clark rents out apartments and the five-bedroom station house. All the accommodations have 270-degree views of coastal Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. Quoddy Head Station is open year-round and accommodations can be booked at www.quoddyvacation.com or by calling 1-877-535-4714.

Monica's Chocolates, in the shadow of the international bridge, is run by a Peruvian woman who will let you sample an extensive line of bonbons including Pistachio Cremes (made with organic pistachio paste from Sicily), Pisco (made with Peruvian liqueur), and Sea Urchins (a Maine-inspired caramel).

For information about the Lubec area, go to www.visitmaine.com/organization and www.visitlubecmaine.com.

Roosevelt Campobello International Bridge

You will need a passport to cross the bridge. During summer, visitors can also reach Campobello by car ferry from Eastport, Maine, or by the Deer Island ferry (passports required). Details at www.eastcoastferries.nb.ca.

Campobello is in New Brunswick, Canada, which is in the Atlantic Time Zone, one hour ahead of the Eastern Time Zone.

Campobello

In Roosevelt Campobello International Park, the Roosevelt home is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. from mid-May through mid-October. The grounds and park are open daily year-round, 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset. A good, reasonably priced meal is available at the Family Fisheries restaurant.

For park information, go to www.fdr.net. For information about accommodations and dining, go to www.campobello.com.

- William Ecenbarger