It might seem like an ordinary spot.
Now, as then, one rock’s broad surface comfortably seats a man over six feet tall, allowing him to look up at the much slighter young woman facing him under a Long Nights Moon.
You faced the moon and I faced you. . . .
Technically I have been alone when revisiting the spot, in mind or body. Even now, few couples would make the rocky climb on a December night. Its most perilous stretches had no guard rails then. Hemmed by poison ivy and washed by surf, scattered signs warned of the trek’s perils, beginning with the precipitous drop from unsteady earth to roiling sea.
And we talked about the future we hoped to have and came to be.
From the narrow, rutted path’s highest point, where the young man sits and she stands, an overlook offers a panoramic view of the horizon, bracketed by ridged limestone shelves angled into the seabed, as glaciers had decreed.
The young man’s vision is razor-sharp, as it will remain all his life. Beyond his moonlit partner he sees a swath of inky, noisy ocean punctuated only by a rocky outcropping miles from shore. There, tiny Boon Island personifies the word “barren.” No less a luminary spirit than poet Celia Thaxter, of New Hampshire’s convivial close-knit Isles of Shoals and their blooming gardens, is said to have once described Boon Island as “the forlornest place that can be imagined.”
Despite its size and solitude, its uneven granite has drawn in and grounded ships over the centuries. And more than one sturdy stone lighthouse there has been storm-toppled into the sea, rearranging itself into mazes on the ocean floor.
The distant toothpick of the most recently rebuilt lighthouse is in fact New England’s tallest. Standing at strict attention atop the granite pile where nothing grows, it laconically cycles its pure white light, lest another insufficiently attentive traveler come too close.
Compared to its nearest neighbor, the gaudily scarlet-strobing, holiday-bedazzled and aggressively photographed Nubble Lighthouse, one would have to concentrate very carefully to commit this shy slender cousin to pixels or film. When one does, the tiny island itself often appears to be hovering above the water, as if it is present both as we know it to be and also its own ghost.
At this spot my husband and I shared at the cliff’s edge, the only sound likely to be heard during any season gently floated upwards. Thousands of water-smoothed stones companionably clattered as waves cycled below. They mingle and chatter as each wave washes over them and recedes, resettling their companions only slightly as they all await the next incoming wave. The sound becomes less mellifluous only in the most ferocious storms–the rare, intense storms we sometimes do not sense are coming, and which might fell even the most dependable beacons.
It is no coincidence that this single quotidian patch of earth and rock snuck itself into my subconscious memory, and in turn has played a role in both my fiction and non-fiction.
My husband died almost twelve years ago, but I will always find him–and our younger selves and our future children–in this spot, at least as present as the rocky shore and surrounding sea, and the seagulls who pause to quietly survey the rising sun along with me.
Love in the Spaces 
A beautiful post Stephanie with some fabulous pictures. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for giving me a place to share them!
🙂
Oh, this is beautiful. That you still have this to hold to yourself so dear and that it happened. Tearing up, though, that it can’t be shared now again. Beautifully put.
Thank you so much. It’s strangely beautiful to share spaces when only one of us technically is still here. Sometimes, while I’m fervently wishing he were here with me at an outdoor spot, I really believe he is, sometimes even along with our fathers and our beagles and occasionally even our younger selves–always in happy times.
I believe he is! Energy persists even when matter fades away.
Boon: a timely benefit : BLESSING. Hmmm…. Blessing Island.
I would like to go with that! My subconscious originally confused it with a sailing “boom.” Then I did a little digging and found a popular account of it being named for the “boon” of some sailors surviving a shipwreck miles out to sea….and then (as a career prosecutor who just can’t help myself) did more digging and found it was called Boon Island in some sailors’ accounts before that shipwreck…..not to mention being such an extraordinarily “mixed boon” (for the non-survivors) when some of the crew are said to have gone to Donner Party-lengths to survive that same shipwreck until rescuers ambled by…..I might need to work a fictional backstory into my next detective novel…..
Remind me never to commit a crime in your neck of the woods.
You will be shocked, shocked to hear you are not the first person to have made that observation about my approach to my work…..
By the way, fantastic images!
Thank you! Boy, do I need to pull out the good shots from my archives over the last several years….
Yup! Would appreciate seeing those!
Beautiful, Stephanie. I hit the 15 year mark as a widow this past Thursday. I find my Jim in music, a present moment art of many moods, which is very satisfying.
Fifteen years seems so vast in one way and so fleeting in looking back. For me it took at least a decade (and a very isolating pandemic) to find my Jim in serene settings (and in so much music!) and not be so consistently overwhelmed by his not being here with us in the traditional way. I feel almost at peace, most of the time, when I am technically by myself (to unattuned observers) but not alone.
I’ve been reading your words here for more than 12 years…will find your books now x annie
I’m so grateful for you continuing to read (always surprised when anyone wants to keep coming by the blog!), and would be honored if you read the book (if you do Ebooks, it’s there, too, and if you can’t find it let me know and I’ll get you a hardcover). It’s hard even for me to read parts of it, but I’m so glad I wrote it and it’s there for our kids and anyone who wants to read it.
Thanks Stephanie, I’m sure I can get a copy – have put it on my ‘wishlist’ to remind me when I order. I do some Ebooks but don’t love them…
I’m very much hit and miss on wordpress these days but was happy to see a post from you when I did log in x
Hi there,,,,also still reading,,,haven’t missed a post – and have them all in a folder,,,I think of Jim often,,,,hope all is well in your world these days….love to all
Mike! That means so much to me, that you think of him, too. Your friendship to him and coming up to visit meant so much to him and to all of us. When I finally traveled by myself up to Northwest Harbor–the last time I ventured farther than the home-to-work commute–I got the immense treat of visiting your son and daughter-in-law and now grandchildren, and thought about how lucky I am to not only have had the years I did with Jim, but to get to keep his friends in my life
And also your perfect photographs that accompany your words. Thank you for those, too.
Your words, again, paint a special place, your personal moments so beautifully. Thank you, Stephanie.
Health and peace be with you!
Thank you, and health and peace to you and the family (including that beautiful dog I miraculously ran into atop Cadillac mountain)!