May 20: Off island

The hour-long ferry ride home from Monhegan, especially on a day of dazzling sunlight and calm seas, offers an almost dream-like transition from the isolated island--for me, a repository of years of wonderful memories and experiences with dear friends and thousands of birds--and the reality of my ordinary life. I'm tired, sunburned, lulled by the rhythm of the boat through the waves. I often nap. The laughing gulls raucous calls as we approach Port Clyde harbor seem somehow an appropriate awakening. And then I'm in my car, Red Sox game on the radio, heading up the St. George peninsula, already thinking ahead to a mundane errand I need to run on the way back home.

All that deep water
between here and there. It seems
days past, not mere hours.

View of Fish Beach, Monhegan, as the ferry leaves harbor