A Way from Here to There

I had made it. And I wanted to prove it. I wanted evidence, alone though I was that quiet morning, that I had found the way there.

There are fences around this lighthouse, and the former lightkeeper's house is a private residence. Signs urging me to respect private property turned me back on my tracks a number of times.

I had made it there, though, and I intended to try my best to get the kind of photograph I had seen again and again. The images of the lighthouse with which I am most familiar include part of the massive breakwater leading to it. How to get there? Was there a way from the various here's where I found myself to that one particular there?


That one particular there was worth recording. I wanted to take a photograph of it that did not raise the question: how did he get there? Examining the picture, I might be able to make out for myself the rough, pebbled path not far from the water's edge. I might recall the way I had to lift myself up onto the breakwater. I will forget in time the sound of the waves, maybe even the force of the wind that repeatedly threatened to take my cap and send it off over the water.

No photograph I could have taken would suggest the key question: How did I get there?

I will find my own ways to tell that story. This is one of the ways -- showing the watercolor by Gloucester artist Judyth Evans Meagher that hangs over my fireplace. It is something that has been part of each place I have lived over the past seven years.

Yes, I had made it. And I wanted to prove it. I wanted to prove to myself that I had found a way there.