A traveler scans the horizon, sees an island, and says to the wind, take me there. The wind loops a breeze through the traveler’s wish and then the wind does what the wind has been doing since the first falling stars soared from the heavens and through the solar systems, lighting up all the storms of life.

The wind sways; it bends; it flutters. It enlivens the traveler’s lungs with oxygen and sucks away sighs of the moody blues. Sometimes the wind lifts the traveler onto swooning heaps of happiness. Sometimes, terrible howlings shred the harmonies of all good dreams.

The traveler calls to the wind that she is feeling so done with the insane world. She has been made so crazy by the insame-ity of humanity. Take me there, she says again, her eyes fixed on the distant horizon where an island she needs is floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

The wind spirits the traveler ashore, delivering her, (with three companions), to a notable nowhere in the civilized world—Mount Desert Island, Maine—where the traveler notices her cell phone has no signal. She ignites a bonfire, in celebration, and dances all around it. The traveler flings her cell phone to a hungry seagull passing overhead. The bird snags it out of thin air and the traveler watches as the bird flies up, up, up and lets the cell phone go, go, go. It drops from the bird’s beak, like an unfortunate clam, and cracks apart on a salted, granite boulder nestled in mounds of slippery seaweed.

Both the bird and the traveler see that the cell phone has no meat.

The gull glides away, laughing.

*****

The traveler and her companions, (husband, daughter, daughter’s boyfriend), settle into their island cottage and begin preparing the arrival dinner, a feast of fish that will be paired with wines and vegetables and fresh breads.

The tide recedes, the table is set.

A sandpiper prances along exposed seabeds, probing the muck for sustenance. The animal moves to rhythms of the hunt played out in an orchestra of beautifully-evolved long legs attached to a feathered body where a lean neck with a beady-eyed head controls the stealth baton of a stabbing beak.

Everyone watches the sandpiper.

Thus passes the early evening’s happy hours.

It is late in the month of May. The travelers will depart for their first sleep on the island into a cold night.

The moon is a crescent; the stars are bright.

When morning comes, the sea will still be present, swaying over the edge of every horizon.

*****

Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park float in the Atlantic Ocean three hundred driving miles away from where I live.  I keep a pass to the park in my car. If I need a session with my island-spirit analysts, or if I just want to give my heart a romantic work out, I take the road trip down east to one of Maine’s most treasured islands where exposed granite cliffs and mountaintops rise out of Christmastree-scented forests. Heart stopping views put everything in its place—the sky, the sea, and the mountain. The molecule of oxygen, the droplet of water, the grain of sand. The winners, the losers. The lovers, the haters. The jiggle-butts, the hard bodies. The brilliant idiots, the dumb-dumb suckers. The sorry fools, the happy fools. The found, the lost. I am all of it and none of it and when my brain short circuits over some human-scaled source of anxiety, or my gypsy head won’t stop spinning around on my shoulders—I head for the hills.

By the time I’m splayed out on rock, I don’t have anything left to say to my quiet analyst. The granite has heard it all before, so have the heavens and the seas. Indeed, the permanent record of deep thoughts and lousy secrets that bang around inside my hiking boots, remain on the trails which, over all the years of human existence, have become worn and worthy places of pilgrimage—

leading to the most spectacular sites

for partaking in the holiest of all communion feasts—

the venerable and adorable, hand-prepared picnic.

*****

Here are some activities for a weekend excursion on Mount Desert Island, Maine in springtime:

On one day:

Bike the 11-mile Around the Mountain carriage road loop. Start at the Jordan Pond House and get there early or you won’t get a parking place. Stop along the ride to hike down and under the stone bridges and look back up at how little everyone is. Listen to the waterfalls, especially the one at the double-arched Deer Brook Bridge, which, if you are lucky enough to be there alone, will sound like a gentle rain.

Pack lunch for a picnic overlooking Somes Sound. Bring water! At the conclusion of the ride, settle in for wine, beer, crabmeat dip with crackers, lobster stew, and popovers at the Jordan Pond House. It doesn’t all go together, but be sure to only order the popovers with butter and jam–that goes together. The Jordan Pond House lemonade is good.

Take an early evening stroll through Asticou Terrace gardens and climb up to the Thuya Lodge and gardens—taking the route overlooking Northeast Harbor.  Thuya Lodge is my dream house.

On another day:

Hike The Beehive. This perilous climb will clear your head and turn your stomach inside out. Go early or you will be seared to the side of the cliff by the sun and slimed by the sweat of a million other over-cooked hikers. You will need a wingspan from fingertip to toe tip of about seven feet and those toes and fingers should be strong enough to yank your body type and BMI up and over narrow ledges without safety nets or bungee cords attached to your earlobes. The views are worth your life. If you are like me, you will climb The Beehive once, completely satisfied with how tremendously you scared yourself. You will call what you’ve done one of your life’s greatest success stories. If you are like my daughter, you will hike The Beehive over and over again in spite of your fears, whenever you bring people to Acadia, because authentic person to person contact with cliffs and death-drop airspaces, creates the mental and physical thrills of bonding with other human beings and nature in real time. Such experiences are endangered—the habitats where they are nurtured are being destroyed by the invasive technologies of social media.

Climb down to The Bowl after The Beehive and go for a swim. Keep moving in the water and stay away from the shore—there are leeches. Last summer, I spied an eagle perched on a log.

What to do if you don’t want to hike The Beehive:

Climb to the top of Dorr Mountain via the newly-restored historic trail, Homan’s Path. The trail features hundreds of stone steps with a few alleyways that pass under stone blocks. Lean in. Some of the ascents are very vertical. The Earth loves you so much, it is constantly pulling you down as you are constantly hauling yourself up to new summits. Pray for the wind—to cool your sweat and to move the black flies out to sea. If you ever wonder what people did before they were tethered to email and instagrain pixels of nonsense, consider the jolly challenges of shoving big rocks into nice compositions on steep trails. Follow and admire the historic cairns and never assume that just because Acadia was created by Gilded Age rich people, you won’t get lost.

When you arrive at the top of Dorr Mountain, the second highest in Acadia, you’ll get the feeling you are being watched. Look one mountain over to Cadillac—the highest mountain on the East Coast. On the ridge, a line of people will be staring down at you like a gathering of angry Indians in a John Ford western.

Lay down on the rocky surface of the summit. Trap all of your brain activity in the tension of gravity, tides, winds, bogus black flies and the blazing energy of the sun. Now let it go.

Walk from the top of Dorr Mountain all the way to Bar Harbor, via the Jessup Trail, passing through the quiet colors of spring and into the busy collections of human beings doing exactly everything you want to do. The designs of the paths in Acadia were inspired by European walking paths and gardens. There are junctions with signposts, but I’ve yet to find kissing gates like the ones in England’s way-too-wicked-charming countrysides. Not everything is perfectly marked, but at least there aren’t any bears to worry about.

After the crush of festive humanity and a powerful boost of ice cream in Bar Harbor, go to Cooksey Drive in Seal Harbor, where a sort of secret little path, leads to the edges of jagged cliffs that drop directly into the Atlantic.

On the last day:

Hike Acadia Mountain, near Echo Lake. Scramble over cobbled steps; shimmy up and down rock crevices. At the summit, you will walk through some of God’s most perfectly designed wild gardens and bathe in what are perhaps the most gorgeous views of Somes Sound. Spring leaves unfurl in flowery shapes on the trees. Blueberry bushes bloom. Take out a map and find out where you are, where you’ve been, and all the places you still want to go.

*****

It was time to go home.

We headed for Mother’s Kitchen for the best meatloaf sandwich in New England. (Made only in Maine with grass-fed, free-range beef lobsters.) But it was closed. So we tried Trenton Bridge and sat outside eating crab sandwiches and lobster sandwiches.

All was good.

*****

Lobster bake with grilled baby bokchoy.

An old-fashioned self-timer of the old timers.

We left our walking sticks on the trail for you.