I began this post in the cockpit on an absolutely beautiful early fall afternoon (yes, technically it’s still summer, but fall is already underway). Windara was the only boat in the anchorage, and the only sounds were a light breeze and an occasional loon’s cry. Now and then, a small sailboat glided past.
I’m feeling melancholy – we’re on the return trip to Belfast and soon the season will end. We’ve only scratched the surface of places I want to see, and it feels like there’s never enough time. At the same time, I’m incredibly happy. This part of the season is particularly beautiful – warm days, crisp, cool nights. Windara feels like a salmon swimming upstream among all the cruising boats making their way south. As we travel north, the cruising boats thin out, leaving us to experience all this beauty in a peace that midsummer just can’t touch.
One of the best parts of cruising the Maine coast is getting to explore all these little islands, each a gem in its own right. A walk in the woods is medicine for the soul – especially Maine woods. The spongy moss and lichen underfoot. The smell of spruce and pine, of warm, crushed leaves. Fallen trees giving rise to new life. Ferns swaying in the breeze, bathed in golden light. Old stone walls, the only sign of human habitation. Beard lichen draped over branches like streamers. Our hikes are more like “walk ten feet, stop for photos and to say for the millionth time how beautiful it is,” but that seems a perfectly good way to explore to me!
As sunset approached the other evening, we watched a fog roll in from the ocean and up the Sheepscott River before finally settling like a thick blanket over the islands and the anchorage.
The past two mornings, we took our coffee over to the island and sat at the bench overlooking the harbor, and as I sat there smelling the pine and enjoying the quiet, I realized that what makes cruising so special is that while we don’t own land anywhere, we have a wonderful collection of places that feel like ours. We have “our” spot in Hope Town, “our” island in the Merchants, and now “our” bench here on Indiantown Island, just to name a few.
Last night we dinghied over to Spectacle Island to make s’mores and explore the pretty little island. We just finished up as the sun was starting to set, and by the time we got back to Windara, the sky erupted into one of the most spectacular sunsets we’ve seen all season. It was the kind of sunset that just keeps getting better the longer you watch – a true gift from the universe that was the perfect end to our time here.
