Cannon Rock

You may have seen Winslow Homer’s painting of Cannon Rock; I know it is always a wet and cold seat, even in July, that if you fell on your way to that perch you'd be badly hurt, that you can hear the waves loudly rustling the weathered rocks in nearby Sea Glass Cove, look left to see scattered plunky pines, hanging on despite the challenging winds and February’s bitter cold, and that you can smell and almost taste the salty air.

Being there, especially with a journal, has always felt like home, like permanence, security, peace.

I visited that sanctuary, ever alive in my mind, for the first time in many years this past September, and there it was, exactly as remembered, not diminished, not enhanced. I wrote there for several hours, feeling both the 12-year-old I’d been and 67-year-old I am.