To the lighthouse

"Getting to Miscou is a relief. The drive isn't easy. You have to really want to get there.."

The Miscou Island lighthouse. It's such a huge structure yet it's held down by guy wires, almost like it would float away if it weren't.

"Today I just want to get in the car and go," Archie says. It is the first day of our summer holiday at our cottage in Cocagne, NB, and already Miscou Island is beckoning. We always drive until we get to the very end, to the lighthouse. It is a pilgrimage to the northeastern-most point of New Brunswick, to aremote place of beauty. Even on a cloudy day everything is luminous: rocks, flecks of sand, old lobster traps, scrubby trees, sea birds and, of course, the surf. When we're there, a shift takes place.

Getting to Miscou is a relief. The drive isn't easy. You have to really want to get there but then, at the end, I see the tall, massive, octagonal shaped, red and white lighthouse held down with guy wires and even though the lighthouse is so huge, the restraining wires give the illusion that it could float away like a balloon.

The lighthouse

I have to crane my neck way back to see the top against the blue, blue sky. This sky color can only be seen once you reach the ocean. You don't get that color anywhere else, only here. Everything opens up inside. I can see and breathe and the amazingly good smelling air has a healing quality. The rhythm of the waves calms me, the whole journey is a metaphor for my life the past couple of years.

It has been a struggle to work three jobs and travel back and forth between two locations, only seeing my much loved husband on weekends. Finances haven't been easy, either. They rarely are during a time of transition. The grind wears me down but we are trying to start something new, but I do know where I want to go and the life that I want to have.

The bridge to Miscou Island; you have to want to go there.

Anyone fifty-plus knows making big life changes isn't easy but unless I take steps to reinvent and renew myself, life becomes rote and unconscious and is a kind of death. After a low emotional ebb, after soul searching and praying, something opens up in me, just like the sky at the end of Miscou Island. I have that feeling of freedom, I am dwelling in a place of magical beauty and can see the big picture of my life. That's what pilgrimages are meant to do.

Plage

Miscou, too, seems to be taking on a new life this year. There are spiffy new "Plage" signs everywhere informing tourists where the best beaches are. The lighthouse itself is undergoing refurbishment. It's opened up this time, awake after a long sleep. There is a carpentry crew here. The front door is open and inside I can see a grand wooden staircase with ornately turned balisters. That staircase, of course, leads to the very top height of the lighthouse. I am so so curious. It is like in a dream where you discover a room of your house that you didn't know you had. I want to go up there. I know at the top there is something wonderful.