Reading · The Bountiful Path

Summer sun breaking through fog over the water at the Littlejohn Island dock — Summer sun through the fog, from the Littlejohn Island dock.

On Littlejohn Island, the light now lasts well into the evening. The embankment has filled in with a multiplicity of wildflowers, and in the dooryard the medicinally powerful elecampane has opened, tall and yellow. The kingfisher is back, perched on the phone lines above the causeway, eyeing the channel where the tide pulls between Littlejohn and Cousins. It studies the small creatures in the shallows and waits for the moment to dive.

We have watched this bird, or its parents before it, for years. It learns one stretch of water so well that it can read a ripple and know what lies beneath. We have learned this island the same way, the land and the water both, over the years we have lived here. When the kingfisher returns from overwintering in southern climes, we know the season has changed.

Today, we have reached the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. From here the daylight shortens again toward winter. In Chinese medicine, this is the height of the Fire phase, the season of the heart and of warmth. We see it in the yard and on the water.

Tall yellow elecampane in bloom beside a doorway — Elecampane by the door, the first strong yellow of the summer.

The kingfisher is not the only one who keeps an eye on the channel between Littlejohn and Cousins. Running across the causeway yesterday, we passed a neighbor standing still with binoculars raised. Birders who track such things had reported a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, rare this far up the coast, nearby.

The kingfisher hunts the shallows because it must eat. Our neighbor stood there because a rare bird is worth the wait.

We each have different ways of interacting with the world, and I think often about what passes from one generation to the next in this regard. Last week I wrote about the lineage of medicine, and what my father handed down to me and to others: the willingness to ask a question and stay for the answer. That willingness was really a way of paying attention, and it reached past medicine into the rest of his life.

The doctor who sits with a patient and the neighbor who stands on the causeway are doing the same thing the bird does over the channel. Paying attention, and waiting to see what evolves.

This week we put the boat in, and our granddaughter took her first ride as a toddler. Last summer she was an infant on her father’s lap, snuggled securely in a life jacket, as we traveled up the coast to the Dolphin Marina in Harpswell. This year, her life jacket rides up around her ears as she tentatively traverses the length of the boat, with an adult hand always nearby.

The day my husband collected our seafaring vessel from the river boatyard, the wind had not yet fully let up from the storm the night before. We went out anyway, on that bright morning, into the waters around Chebeague. Our granddaughter helped her grandfather drive the boat, watched closely by her parents and the four dogs, two large and two small, who had joined our merry crew for the inaugural ride of the season.

Our granddaughter may not remember the day, but she has developed an early appreciation for the sun and the salt of the sea. Perhaps, with time, this will develop into the kind of love she already has for her board books, her stuffed pollito, and her dogs, Greta and Chaco. A love with no reason behind it.

I’ve long had my own love for the sun and the salt of the sea.

I’ve lived in Maine for many years now, though not always by the water. My boating adventures have come somewhat recently. When my father left the Navy after medical residency training, our family moved from Jacksonville, Florida to Yarmouth, not far from where both of my parents were raised in southern Maine. I first visited Littlejohn Island as a Girl Scout at day camp, hiking over from Camp SOCI (Scouts on Cousins Island), located just before the bridge to the mainland.

I knew then that Littlejohn would be important to my life, and that those at sea would likely complement my wanderings on land.

That has proven true. I was born by the shores of Vermont’s Lake Champlain. I spent my earliest years not far from the Florida coast. I soon came back to New England, and Littlejohn has become the place of my heart.

We belong to some places before we can say why. We inherit and pass along a way of experiencing the world.

Today is Father’s Day, and this year it falls on the Solstice.

My father was the heart of our family. What he handed down was his quiet joy, and the way he stayed fully present with whoever was in front of him.

My father was also a teacher. The word doctor comes from the Latin docere, to teach. Dad taught his patients, his students, and his children through his words and actions. When something was hard to understand, my father often drew a quick diagram to help people visualize the concept.

The teaching lineage is strong in our family, from both sides.

My mother was, and remains, a skilled teacher in her own right. This week someone reached out to her for writing advice, and she did not stop at encouragement. She gave them specific things to try and specific places to go next.

We are introducing several Bountiful Path companions this week with this idea in mind. We know that people learn and engage with the world in different ways. We’ve created several new tools, including an app and a class, to continue the work we began with the Spring Seasonal Toolkit and the Book Circle Sharing Guide.

Today, in honor of the Solstice, we’re introducing the Summer Seasonal Toolkit. This toolkit has been redesigned with the help of a dear friend, and we hope those who downloaded the Spring toolkit will like the new direction. Subscribers will learn how to access the other resources in their email.

We offer these as starting places, and love to hear how people are using them and what we can do differently.

The kingfisher is still on the wire as we write this, working the same channel the way it will all summer. The elecampane stands yellow by the door, flower and medicine at once.

Down in the mooring field, the boat is ready to carry us back across the water on the longest day of the year.

What did someone teach you to notice, long before they taught you anything useful, that you still carry every time you return to a certain place?

Summer Solstice, Fathering and the Kingfisher on the Causeway

Comments