They say time flies when you are having fun, and I think that applies to our move here to Virginia. It is hard to believe that it has been a year and a half since we left behind our dream of living at a lighthouse on the coast of Maine for life closer to my Southern roots and relatives. Yet it is funny to think about how often I whip out my phone to share with someone a photo of the Marshall Point lighthouse where we lived for three years.

All of which got me thinking about remembering special places on our personal journeys. According to John N. Cole, author of In Maine: Essays on Life’s Seasons, “Each of us has a landscape in our memories which is our ‘home landscape’—a place held forever in the circuits of our mind’s eye to which we return throughout our lives, in dreams, in reminiscence, and in the fleeting images of the past we use to evaluate the present.”

And as author Willa Cather suggested, “Out of every wandering in which people and places come and go in long successions, there is always one place remembered above the rest because the external or internal conditions were such that they most nearly produced happiness.” I must admit that place for us is most likely the coast of Maine, and specifically the village of Port Clyde, pictured above.

So it was with sorrow we learned this summer that within a short period of time the lighthouse had been struck by lightning—frying both the light and foghorn—and a separate fire had gutted the general store, boat landing, and village restaurant, where it apparently started. To put this tragedy in perspective, one needs to realize there is not much more to the village proper other than a café, kayak operation, ice cream parlor, and post office, where we used to get our mail.   

Friends informed us that the lighthouse quickly recovered and the owners of the village properties intend on rebuilding also. Yet lost in the flames of the inferno were reportedly several uninsured paintings by the renowned Wyeth family, which only adds insult to injury. To all involved Linda and I wish a speedy recovery and in the meantime I recall special memories of our years spent in a village by the sea.