thresholds

The O'Neils go on vacation!

When we plan time away, we head for the islands; the Maine islands in Penobscot Bay. We have stayed on Vinalhaven and North Haven over the years but our favorite island has always been Isle au Haut. We have spent a week there for sixteen years.

This early in the season, we decided not to venture to that outer island but stay closer to land on North Haven where we have friends who let us use their house. With a view to the west over Pulpit Harbor and beyond to the Camden Hills, we looked forward to some great sunsets and much needed time to relax.

Getting to an island can be a challenge. Each island has its own rituals. Isle au Haut has a walk on only mailboat called the "Miss Lizzy" that leaves from Stonington twice a day. All gear and food must be put on the boat. The only way for a car to get there is on a barge, consequently, the cars on the island that drive on the one loop road have been repaired again and again. To see such old cars driving around is like going back in time. License plates show the year the car was brought out.

North Haven has a car ferry. We put the car in line fifteen minutes before departure behind a row of battered pick up trucks. Few tourists or summer people are on the island the first week of June. This is the year round hard core crowd; lobstermen, boat builders and retired prep school teachers. Most passengers stay in their vehicles as the ferry makes its hour trip from Rockland to the island. Not us! We all got out and smelled the sea air and felt the wind on our faces. Calley wasn't so sure she liked it. We finally put her in the car where she curled up in the driver's seat (careful to always be in control) with a sigh and slept.

Family vacation for me growing up consisted of traveling to a lake in Canada. None of this ferry stuff. No islands. But there was a threshold to cross that made us feel vacation had really begun. It was an international border. After steaming across New Hampshire and Vermont, we'd pull into Beebe, Quebec, a small border town and report to customs. The Canadian immigration officer wearing a blue uniform would stroll up to the car and ask a few questions. Where are you folks from? Where are you headed? How long will you be there? Do you have anything to declare? (at this point my mother would clutch her small sack of seedlings brought for her summer garden closer to her chest) "No." my father would answer authoritatively and the officer would wave us through. Once we'd crossed the border, everything looked different, in a Canadian kind of way. We started craning our necks to see the first glimpse of the lake.

Even a bridge can be a kind of threshold. As David's grandfather crossed the bridge over the Piscataqua River, the border between New Hampshire and Maine, on the long trip from Boston to Small Point, he would take in a long, deep breath.

"Ah, we're in Maine!" he would exclaim. "I can finally breathe!"