January 21, 2020

to the ruins and back

Snow has buried the trail. We are going on instinct, mostly, and a resolve
to locate a spot extolled by a guidebook that’s been out of print for more
than a century. It is so silent in these woods, and we are silent, too, meeting
the demand of a path our boots are making up as we go. And less than half a mile in, 
we’ve reached it—a foundation of stones roughened by moss, the sole remnants
of the lookout that stood here, gathering the span of the bay. I think I can almost hear
the whip of sails, the slice of flat pebbles thrown from the cove, the triumphant shriek
of a hundred years of children learning to swim. Or maybe it’s my own voice at my ear,
singing a new world into view. It’s strange how we are alone and, suddenly, we are not.