Here Comes the Sun
The Connect Four game still sat on the kitchen table, where I had lost several rounds the night before. “Here Comes the Sun” twanged from a small speaker on the windowsill. It was 4:45 AM. Tyler was grinning. I was singing with the Beatles. What a great start to a morning!
Featured photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Uv1BPb1XUjPockym7
October 10th, 2023- Acadia Day 4
What is Maine without lighthouses?
There is something quite fantastical about a lighthouse. It’s easy to imagine a massive ship being tossed by stormy waves, fraught with peril. The salty foam washes over the wood deck, making it slippery for the drenched sailors who are lashing down ropes. They just want to make it ashore. Then, piercing through the storm, a beam of light shines the way. The lighthouse, standing tall, sends a message of shore, of safety, of home. In a simpler time, these seafaring beacons were the difference of life and death.
Perhaps that is why lighthouses remain such an icon in seaside towns. Everyone can appreciate a lighthouse. Even Ohioans, who only have Lake Erie to claim as their resident body of water, can walk up to a lighthouse, peer up at it, and say “That’s a good lighthouse.”
Our Maine trip would be bereft without a Maine lighthouse, which is why we found ourselves driving towards the ocean at 4:45 in the morning. We would be flying home in a few hours. The suitcases were packed and ready to go. We had jobs to return to. But first, the sunrise.
The Atlantic waves were temperamental. The water’s surface rested beneath the rocks we stood on, but that didn’t stop the waves from threatening our shoes anyway. There was a handful of people perched on the rocks, staring sleepily at a lighthouse shrouded in shadow. We found ourselves dry perches and did the same. After a while, the sleepy glaze cleared away from my eyes. I started looking, really looking, at our sunrise subject. The Bass Harbor lighthouse was a small structure, shorter than the lighthouse we’d seen in Canada the night before. A small house grew out of the base like a shoe. Was this the lighthouse keeper’s house? Or was it just a place for storage? Perhaps they keep lighthouse light bulbs in there. My gaze drifted up to the blinking red light housed at the top of the stone tower. Why a red light? Unwanted chemistry classes came flooding back into my sleepy mind. Red lights are the least energetic of all the colors. Give it enough distance and the red light would disappear into the pines, too weak to stretch any further. Why wouldn’t they use a purple or blue light? I imagined the white lighthouse lit up like a pulsing purple disco ball. Now that would be entertaining! I shook my head at my musings. I knew nothing about lighthouses. My only point of reference for lighthouse knowledge was a Boxcar Children book I had read when I was eight. I doubted that book was very scientifically accurate.
The curious little keeper’s house was perched on the edge of a cliff. Small windows overlooked the ocean waves that licked at its foundations. The stones beneath the lighthouse were massive, sturdy in an earthy brown sort of way. Underneath the brown rocks were black ones, stained dark either by time or material. The layered effect was striking, dark ocean crashing into dark stones, lifting up a brown monolith and white lighthouse into the brightening sky. A mint-green fishing boat puttered by. New England scenery at its finest.
The horizon was the first to turn yellow. It crept in a long buttercup line along the heaving ocean. The clouds were next, rimmed with gold and diamonds. Gradually, sunshine warmed our backs, and then, with great magnificence, struck the lighthouse. I finally understood why photographers love this spot for sunrise. The brown stones beneath the lighthouse are illuminated first. They glow as if they’ve just been thrust from the earth’s core. The lighthouse is next. She shrugs off her shadowy shawl and steps into the light, gleaming. The red light in its glass cage still blinks, hardly discernible in brightening day. The pine trees are the last to awaken, each needle defined with a stroke of light. A seal swims by just to take in the scenery. We, like the seal, gaze silently at the sun’s handiwork. It’s a beautiful thing.
The airport was calling us, so we reluctantly left after the sunrise had peaked. Breakfast was a hearty affair at the Riverside Cafe, where we admired local art over our eggs and potatoes. Then it was goodbye to Kristof’s rental car (and the famed butt-heat).
On the plane, we reminisced. Maine was beautiful, we decided. Maine was an experience. We hiked in the dark and in a tropical storm. By coincidence, we shared dinner with Ohio friends. We climbed a cliff to see the birth of autumn. We went to Canada to have tea. And on an ordinary Tuesday in October, we watched the metamorphosis of morning at the foot of a lighthouse.
That, my friends, is the beauty of travel.
Comentarios