My sister and I spent the week of September 12 – 19 at Thompson Cottages in New Harbor, Maine. When we turned off Route 1 and drove down the hill into Damariscotta and then headed down the peninsula to New Harbor, I felt like I was coming home. This is a bit odd since this was a vacation destination for my family rather than a permanent home but it’s a place with many layers of connection and history for me as it was for my parents. My mother’s family spent summers near Boothbay, at the end of a neighboring peninsula, and she and her siblings came regularly to Pemaquid. I have pictures of her with her brother and later with my dad and friends picnicking and playing on the rocks.

Every time I make this trip, memories ride along—my first visit with my parents after a long drive east from Ohio when I was 9 or 10, subsequent visits with parents in my late teens and throughout my 20s when they owned a cottage for a few years and then came for extended summer/fall stays in various rentals and I’d come for regular weekend visits from my Massachusetts home. In more recent years, I’ve come up every few years, sometimes alone; sometimes with friends or, as in this vacation, with my sister.

My sister and I rented one of the Thompson’s Back Cove cottages, which was wonderfully private and quiet, especially at this low season time. One of the best features of the cottage, which was overall a comfortable home away from home, was the screened porch that overlooked the cove.

I got up early every morning, made the coffee, then wandered out to the porch, where I read, watched the birds, wrote a bit in a journal. Later in the day, B and I sat there together, after whatever adventures the day had taken us on. We’d watch the light glow on the trees across the cove and then slowly diminish. Unidentified birds swooped and chittered, crows called loudly, a blue heron waded by daily. (We wished we’d brought binoculars and a bird book!)

Five miles further along, down at the end of the peninsula, is Pemaquid Point, a big pile of rocks spilling into the sea, a lighthouse, a small cafe.

Pemaquid has long had power for me. I remember sitting for long stretches huddled against a sheltering pile of rocks, shutting out the sounds of other visitors and letting myself sink into the crash of waves and the smell of salt and seaweed. I came there one evening when I was in my 20s and caught up in some sort of tumult—there was a full moon and a high tide—magic, an easing of spirit. I came again the spring that my dad died and 10 years later, the summer my mom died, needing the touchstone of a place that has echoes back in family history, remembering childhood picnics on the rocks and imagining my parents there in their younger, newly married days

And I still gravitate there. If I’m in Maine, I make sure to stop at Pemaquid even if it’s not my primary destination.On this trip I made daily pilgrimages to the point, trying to reconnect with that power. And it was beautiful and the waves crashed and the air smelled of brine but the power was diminished. I suspect it’s partly because I’m more cautious than I used to be about clambering around on the rocks and so I felt more distant, a viewer from afar.

But I think it also says something about being in a calmer, more reflective time of life. What held power for me on this trip was the cove. The stillness, the light, the heron wading, the light. That’s the stillness I look for when I meditate, when I sit to write, when I sit with morning coffee looking out at the garden, not thinking, just being.