July 18, 2001

A Maine beach helps restore an aching soul

July 18, 2001/ 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 my walks with the 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.

Taking time to live real life

October 06, 1992/ Beverly Beckham

PROUT'S NECK, Maine - The DNA men are inside. It's 5:30 p.m. and they have been at it all day: trading information, speculating, extrapolating, talking nuclei and double helixes, trying to decipher the genetic code of life.

It is noble work they do. Their research will improve, even save people's lives.

But in the meantime, there's today, Oct. 3, a glorious, sunny, warm Indian summer day, set down in the middle of fall.

And they are oblivious to it.

On Maine's coast, a bit of peace

July 07, 1992/ Beverly Beckham

PROUT'S NECK, Maine - I will not carry it home with me this time. It cannot be carried or stored or deposited for some later date. Not any more. I wish it could. These days all I take is the memory.

And so I write down the color of the sky - pink, this morning, with swaths of blue - and the roaring, glubbing, flapping sounds of the sea. I memorize the shape of gulls, study them in flight, listen to their squeals and squawks, notice how they return to the ground soundlessly, like paper planes.

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