With Thanks

There is nothing like standing on the tip of the easternmost part of the western hemisphere to make a traveler feel small, superfluous, and miraculous.

The Place: Point Prim, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The Date: February 13, 2010.

But it could just as easily have been 1810, as I rounded the lighthouse on this slender finger of land that juts out into the icy Atlantic waters.

At that moment I was not thinking about the three different planes that had ferried me from Kentucky to this island. I was not thinking about the rented, post-recall, Toyota Tercel that had carried me across the bridge from Charlottetown, down the snow-covered countryside to this frosty shore. I was not even thinking of my own family, scattered across the southeastern United States, several thousand miles away.

I was thinking about the faceless family that had come before me. Of the ships that had carried them to this very island, with names like Robertson and Leach, Bernard and Beck. I was thinking of those first lonely winters and of the women who had managed to survive them. I was thinking of how cold I was in my wool coat with the fox fur collar and my good gloves and my thickly woven socks, and of their own, thin feet in their own thin stockings.

I was thinking about the breakfast of omelet, toast and tea that fueled my half-day's journey and of the hard jerky and black coffee that likely fueled their transoceanic travels. I was thinking of the women who had borne children on a day such as this, who had struggled to keep those children alive, and who had buried many under this icy soil.

I was thinking about the miracle that they not only survived, but prospered. And that I was here, on Point Prim, looking across their frozen sea.