Maine Island: Variations on a Scene

The island in Casco Bay where my husband's family cottage sits has many moods. I have been coming here for 14 years as summer slides into fall. The slanting light becomes more beautiful each day as the equinox approaches.

Each familiar scene never looks the same twice. Always something is different - the light, the wind, the clouds, the vantage point, the tides that rise and ebb 10 feet every 13 hours. Here are a few favorite photos from the last three years of the East End point. This is the view we see when walking a couple of hundred feet to the stairs that lead to the beach. 

After a rainstorm, the late afternoon sun strikes the white birches that line the shore.

Wind from the northwest brings low dramatic clouds and rockweed is exposed as the tide goes out. 

This view of the East End was taken from halfway down the beach.

A different kind of calm from the photo above. The scene is ethereal at dawn. 

Inviting in the late afternoon.

Violent, yet exhilarating, during tropical storm Irene.

Cold and lonely when the sun goes behind a cloud.

Tonight we'll sit on the point that looks toward the East End and watch the stars. It was here that God began to find me.