A Life Transforming Experience in Northeast Harbor, Maine

Article by Leslie H. Photo by Eric H.

My most recent foray into the magic world of pure idyll

took me the last week in June to Northeast Harbor, Maine. For the first time in the 25-odd years I'd been visiting this charming hamlet, the weather was endlessly socked in with fog hovering at about 200 feet. But weather in this place is not a factor to be connected with either euphoria or disappointment.Fog simply added another aspect of magic to my consciousness. Northeast Harbor was, this time around, even more special, in that a greater sense of insularity became available to me, heightening the feeling of just where I was.

For example, at about 6:30 in the morning, I emerged from the Colonel's Bakery and Restaurant on the Main Street with the only cup of coffee I allow myself each day, and sat on the bench in an atmosphere of both complete silence and a kind of ectoplasm around me due to the fog. There was no one else on Main St. whom I could see, and the wonder of pure solitude set in .My eyes were attracted by a movement below and in front of me. It was a black ant, carrying some matter for direct shipment to its colony. As it crossed my line of vision, from right to left, it became clear to me that this creature was on a positively Brobdingnagian quest to successfully complete his task.

What is so compelling to me is that because of the rather singular confluence of events formed by the utter tranquillity permeating my senses, I became no larger than that ant;or, perhaps, the ant increased to my size. I feel confident that this kind of experience will not again be available in this life.