I’ve always been quite fond of getting lost. The adventure in taking an unknown, lonely back road had a great deal of appeal to me, as if I were I pioneer on some sort of grand expedition to a new world, even if I was just taking an unfamiliar route home. It was something that I had done since I was a toddler, aimlessly wandering away from my mother at grocery stores to stare up at the strange shelves that towered above my head. Little did I know back then that this innate desire to wander would slowly fade away, leaving me miserable and hopelessly wondering where it had gone. Even more of a mystery to me was the fact that when my sense of adventure did find me again, I would be standing on the rocky edge of a vast and wonderful world; the very precipice of the unknown. As it turns out, nature’s fantastic beauty seems to have the ability to breathe life back into people, no matter how damaged they are.

The events that had led up to my loss of wanderlust are largely still a mystery to me. They’ve gone forgotten in lew of more positive and productive memories. Recollections of fighting and yelling come to mind, but the tempest tides of time have washed them away to the point where they no longer phase me much. However, these events hold some importance simply for the fact that if it weren’t for the man that served as the catalyst for my mental destruction, I’d have never travelled to the place that changed my life forever.

He was my mother’s boyfriend, an unpleasant, gruff, and pathetic excuse for a man. In addition to a hideously large beer gut, he carried around an enormous amount of cynicism towards the world and everything in it. Mentally, he was host to a vast array of his own mental problems, and had developed a fondness for cannabis to try and solve them.

Regardless of his shortcomings, and there were a lot of them, he opened the door to an entirely new world for me and my family. His parents owned a relatively small chunk of property near the sleepy, oceanside town of Winter Harbor, Maine. It was settled directly on a small peninsula, making it the ideal spot for tourists, lighthouses, and lobster fishing. The surrounding woodlands of the Acadia National Park were always lush with greenery, decorated with pine trees even when the icy clutches of late fall weather left most other landscapes desolate. The town’s main harbor was constantly alive and bustling with fishing boats and friendly faces. Overlooking the entire area was the tremendous summit of Cadillac mountain, keeping a watchful eye over the townspeople. Everything was absolutely perfect, a small slice of what some would call heaven right here on Earth.

Nestled within this paradise, hidden off of a dusty dirt road that trailed deep into the woods, were two small campsites separated by a thin stretch of woods. Each campsite contained a bungalow, the larger of the two being the one in which my family stayed.

When I had first arrived in Maine, I was not impressed with the kind residents of Winter Harbor. I had little interest in either fishing or lighthouses, and I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of residing in a tiny hovel that smelled like fish. Truth be told, I had wanted nothing more than to stay home.

However, something in me shifted as I tentatively set foot off of that “hovel’s” back steps for the first time, just as the sun was beginning to set. I was immediately greeted with a large slab of rough rocks that could hardly be considered a beach. It was low tide, and thick, green seaweed was strewn about everywhere. Tidepools sat in hidden crevices, filled to the brim with crabs and starfish that I failed to notice. I continued on until I had reached an outcropping in the rocks, and I looked out over the edge. Standing before me was an enormous expanse of dark blue water, intimidating in its scope, for it dwarfed anything that I had ever seen. Waves crashed against the rocks violently, almost in time with the sudden hammering of my own heart as I tried to make sense of something so massive. I seemed miniscule in comparison.  Beyond this world of blue, there was nothing but the horizon, over which only half of the sun was visible in the bright fuschia sky. I shivered as the cold ocean mist chilled me to the bone, slapping me in the face as if to give me the wake up call that I so desperately needed.
As the sun dipped below my field of vision, I allowed myself to be swallowed up by the sound of the crashing waves. For the first time in a long time, I felt completely at peace. The next morning, I woke up at the crack of dawn, eager to go out and explore the tide pools.