A Maine beach helps restore an aching soul

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I hadn't been back in more than two years to the place that feeds my soul. I went to other places and I thought, this is fine. I don't need one particular plot of earth where the sea meets the sky and I meet God. I found God in people and in landscapes: on walks with my dog, in my small garden. And I convinced myself that this was enough.

I thought I had become wiser. God is everywhere, I said. All I had to do was look and I would see.

I didn't know that my soul had shriveled. Not until I went back to the place where I had gone with my husband and children so many times, and where I had gone alone, too, to recharge. And my soul, out of shape and ignored, suddenly hurt like a body content with the couch and an occasional stroll, now up and running, legs pumping, adrenalin flowing, arms outstretched TOWARD something.

"The sun belongs to everyone, the best things in life are free," is what I hummed when I returned to this beach, which I think of as MY beach. For some it's a lake that feeds the soul. For others, it's a mountain. For me, the best of world's beauty can be found in this one stretch of ocean and rock and shore in southern Maine. , The first time I saw it, it was veiled in mist, the sky, the sea, the gulls, the rocks, all salty gray. A somber beauty then, a lucid beauty Sunday when I returned for the day.

Why this place? Why more than anywhere else on earth do I love this beach, these rocks and this expanse of sky?

I thought at first that it's because of the memories of my children enjoying it here. But I loved it that first day in the rain, when the children groaned and said, "What are we going to do? This is boring. Can we go to the mall?" And their father, God bless him, took them.

In time they learned to love it too, even though the inn where we stayed had no television back then. They loved the beach, the gulls, the cliff walk and the jetties, which we would climb at low tide.

I drove to the beach Sunday because my soul woke up begging. And I walked the beach alone, watched children dig holes and build sand castles. I collected rocks made smooth by the sea, and shells somehow left unbroken, and sea glass the size of rare gems. I stared at clouds, the kind that cartoon characters land on. And I felt a letting go, a giving in, a knowing and a kind of peace that doesn't come anywhere else.

Then I walked on the cliffs out to my favorite rock. It was there that I was sitting the day I saw the seal. I had never seen a seal in this place before and I have never seen one since. I had never seen a person, either. But that day I saw both. It was the summer my mother-in-law was coming home from rehab. She had had her leg amputated. How would she cope? The seal was a happy distraction, sunbathing on a rock a few yards away, when a man with binoculars appeared. "That seal has only one flipper," he announced, handing the binoculars to me. Then he left while I sat and waited for the tide to come in and the seal to drown.

Only the seal didn't drown. When the tide approached, the seal simply slipped into the water and swam away.

Other miracles that happen here aren't so obvious. Souls are invisible, after all, and it's not until they're nudged awake and made to stretch that you can even feel them. Everything is a miracle here, because like wilderness and mountains and forests and lakes, this place is nature and holds the imprint of God.