Winding Valley if you are Scottish. I personally think Camden stands for idyllic. The quaint harbor, the library on the hill, the grassy knoll that overlooks the bay below. The marriage of industrial and pleasure cruisers, done with aplomb that is not easy to pull off in any coastal town. There is no fishy smell, no rotting skeletons of sea life. Everything is pristine, so much so that you begin to feel that way also.
I was supposed to go sailing but God had other plans. So I sit atop this tiny hamlet and lie on the coastal promontory overseeing the bay awash with sunlight and a gentle breeze. It is mesmerizing to watch the boats sway back and forth, gently, within the safety of the harbor. Twisting and turning slightly every time the wind picks up. It is hard to imagine this place is ever anything but peaceful. But anyone knows that wherever water meets land, there is always the possibility for trouble. Just not today, today it is a crystalline littoral coast, free from the threat of anything bad or hard or dangerous.
I watch the water glisten on the glass of the harbor buildings, the sailboats tethered to the dock, only their lines moving. One might fall in love with a town like this. A place that feels anachronistic. Like its quaintness cannot ever become obsolete because it is just pervasive and natural and remembered.
I watch a crew climb to the top of a mast, ostensibly to unhinge lines and pull down sails, the summer season officially over even though God’s ridiculous display of good weather mocks their efforts. Summer’s last gasp? No one will ever know. The season ends on a well worn time table whose perilous ruin caused the adherence in the first place. It matters not that the weather screams late July, only people who have lived here all their lives would succumb to such a arbitrary and, on day’s like today, stupid season ender. But if you lived here the whole of your life, you would know better because you would have lived through worse.
What am I doing here? Healing? Vicarious thrills of living some other existence that does not exist in the same way on the other coast. The provincial vibe here feels as sheltering as it does burdensome. I feel like I want to be embraced by it while also giving it the middle finger.
The man remains slung round the top of the mast, drinking something and now pushing off, interlacing his legs round the mast while winding his way around. How many feet in the air is he? 30? 50? How tall is a sailboat mast? Does it matter how large the boat? It would have to...right? The bigger the vessel the bigger the sail would need to be in order to move it from here to there. What could he possibly be doing up there for all this time? Is he just goofing off? Is the view that good? What craft could he possibly be doing up there? I must find out.
I find myself wondering how I landed in the world of words, of arguments and positions, all verbal and written. Why did I not land a career that causes me to scale masts in the sea’s harbors? Which one of us really got screwed? I guess anyone who believes the paycheck is what it is all about...doing what you love, not just what is available is the difference between a vocation and a job. Anyone can do a job, vocation seems to be more of a calling, something you might rather not do, but are summoned up for instead. I can’t for the life of me figure out whether I landed in my career out of virtue, or as a punishment for sins committed earlier in my life. I am grateful for the opportunities it affords me, grateful for the place and station in my life, lawyering has resulted, but do I feel a passion for it every day, not at all. I would really rather be atop a swaying mast in a charming harbor. At least that is what I think today because the weather is lovely and I have no other plans.
Today I sit in the winding valley’s port. Enjoying the green grass on the shady hillside. Tapping out whatever it is this place does to me. It is something that is hard to describe...hope perhaps, for a different future? Peace within an internal storm, fueled by my own demons that feel like they have no purchase or agency in a place like this. It feels like nothing bad can happen to you in this town. But I know bad things happen to people everywhere, Camden no exception. That is just how life is, here or anywhere. But sometimes, you find yourself safe and protected and merged with life in a coastal bourg on the finest of Fall days, living this life, that requires no mast climbing to date.
As I lie in the grass and gaze heavenward, I feel an exuding gratitude for the life I have and that I have spent the hours wisely in a town such as Camden, where life perks along, peacefully, perfectly on day’s like today.
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