To Plum Island and the Wildlife Refuge

I stopped in Parking Lot 2, backing the car in to face the setting sun. Got out and walked the boardwalk over the dunes to the beach. The wind was brisk and I without a winter cap. The tide was coming in, every third or fourth wave sweeping the dark sand with phosphorous blue arcs of mercurial water. The edge of the continent was being touched by the infinite. I held my ground despite an urge to wade into eternity. Instead I scanned the horizon from Halibut Point on Cape Anne to Mt. Agamenticus in Maine, and in-between, just out to sea. I turned and walked back to the car, stopping a moment on a high point of the boardwalk to look at the marsh and river and setting sun spread about before me. A veritable dessert.

My intent was to sit in the car and soak up the final rays as the sun set, but instead I rode further into the reserve, pulling into a lot that overlooked a pond and field. In the field two deer were grazing. In the pond, two swans were floating. The deer were dark gentle shapes in a shadowy grassland. The swans were magnificently white in the dying light of the afternoon. As the sun neared the horizon, they flapped their wings, and like ponderous jets slowly rose and flew southwest. I backed out of the lot and drove back, stopping at the salt pans (ducks everywhere) to watch the sun finally dip beneath low clouds at the horizon. The sky turned pinkish, and the water reflected the same. One last look revealed a jet trail in the sky, glowing white heat in a different time zone.

Winter days are short, but a single hour at the Parker River Wildlife Refuge is filled with these rare moments. It's almost easy to take them for granted after ten years of many visitations. It's good to look back at midnight and see its wonder from a dimmer light.