Halibut Point

Otherworldly places are good for the soul. This is a picture I took in early April at Halibut Point off the coast of Cape Ann, north of Boston. Looking at this photo, I think I might have been in Scotland or Iceland or Ireland…some lost, forsaken land. It’s hard to believe that this magical place is only a few hours from my tame little domicile on another Cape.

It was late in the afternoon when my friend David and I stumbled into this wildness, a bone-chilling silver day with gray winds that tore straight through the wool of our coats and turned my pale fingers chalk-white. We had warmed ourselves with crispy fried clams and a turn through a few dusty Essex antique stores beforehand, but when we pointed the car toward Gloucester, we had no idea we would be blown here.

The well-worn path beckoned innocently enough with splashes of thin sunshine and a few gentle curves, but like any journey into a dream, mysteries emerged breath after breath. The gnarled trees twisted and tangled into each other; briars were flung skyward; and the sunlight disappeared. A white hawk flared across the path, landed in one of the lofty snares, and looked down at us as if to say, “Are you ready?”

We followed the trail until we came to a great, deep dark granite quarry with menacing cliffs, and that’s where we met the beginning of the wind. Sweeping off the Atlantic, its gusts told the stories of shipwrecks in water cold as slate, water the color of shale. We pulled our hats down over our ears and tightened mufflers and pressed on into that wind, knowing it would end here at the edge of the continent, knowing we were destined for enchantment.

Bracing ourselves, we made ourselves brave, though every fiber of my hobbit being was protesting, wanting only a snug armchair and a smoky fire. The path was gone, replaced by slabs of granite and tossed boulders and wild heather. We were like the herring swimming upstream, and perhaps it was the same instinctual drive that pushed us headlong to the sea, the roar of it carried on the bracing wind like an otherworldly fugue.

And when we got there, we stood on one of the highest rocks and raised our numb hands to the clouds and filled our lungs with salt air and shouted, “Yes!” Celebrating grace on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, we were blessed with Yes…indeed.