Mid October. 2024. I had just hung up the phone with a guest who would arrive in a couple of days for her private tour. She said she had, “Been through a lot of life changes in the past few years.” There was strength, as well as fresh-scabbed wounds in the timbre of her voice. I know what it is to choose an adventure, feeling proud of the choice not to wait on another to join you before you take the leap to dream. I know too what it feels like to wish with all your heart you could share it with someone. This woman had planned her long-postponed bucket list trip to New England and Acadia, proud of herself for just going for it, happy to feel brave and anticipating views of a sweeping horizon from Cadillac Mountain. Then her friend, who had also been through much loss and disappointment over the past year, reconnected with her. So, these two dear old friends would arrive together to close a deeply lonely summer.
I don’t often get to know anyone’s story before they arrive in my tour van. Often, it’s only the empathy I inherited from Mamma and my Dad’s eye for detail, that lets me pick up a little on the subtext as I share this place I love with others. Sometimes they do tell me. “This might be my last big trip. We’ve wanted to come up here for 30 years. Got the whole family together, finally…” A happy story. An honor to be entrusted with their day. Until we’re under my favorite bridge and I timidly choose to play a bit of quiet music on a flute where the stonework arch makes things echo beautifully as his grandchildren explore the stream. That kind gentlemen, leans in closer on his cane, making me think again of my grandfather who went home last winter.. “Thank you for that. Is your music online anywhere? My doctor told me I’ll probably be facing a lot of pain when I get home and start treatments again. He said I should find some peaceful music to help me through the worst of it.”
My gift feels so small. I barely know how to play, though I do know a few slow songs, or improvise well enough. I fancy I know how to match the mood of the water and wind at least a little when I’m looking to share the peace of a favorite peaceful place.
“You give them something to eat.” -Seems there’s barely enough here for us, but I’ll share. Maybe He will bless and break it, then we’ll find there was plenty.
I am just some guy. Happy to have a job in a lovely place. Happy to find a bridge with reverb and to remember my grandpa to the joyful sound of someone else’s children on a summer day.
Back to autumn. I wanted to make their time special. Two brave friends, enjoying a girl’s trip after the hardest year of their lives. I think I baked some cookies. We had a nice time. Acadia was showing off all day.
The beavers were out strolling their lake, like a couple walking through the park, swimming slow circles within a few feet of each other while the light faded. It was growing a little cold for southerners in sweatshirts, but it’s hard for me to be that close to my favorite bridge, at that time of evening, without walking down the stairs to listen to the water. My guests were up for one last small adventure.
I played a few gentle notes from an old Irish love song. I remember a time when my music had died. I remember how sometimes, deep things I know felt so solid they caried me, and times the noise inside made even those foundations tremulous. I played a few notes to a different song… “Wait! is that the chorus from..?” Turns out her friend had that line tattooed on her arm. She’d yelled at her daughter for getting ink years before, but after all of last year… She wanted something that was just her’s. A lyric, like an anchor, permanently written in herself. And here I played it, under a bridge, as the light faded, where she wore a locket with a husband’s ashes and that sweatshirt: prayer for a broken son she loves. She told us stories, then asked for a little more music, even if we were getting chilly by then leaning on the stone. More songs, stories from the other woman. A lyric from my childhood. We’re all musicians it turned out. All known times when melody carried us through, or when we felt -even song had died. Then, how it woke again.
I give tours. I go to these places to take the quiet reflective moments alone, for myself, no hat on the pavement for tips, nobody else around: usually after work. But now, a tiny courage to share a thing I love, in hope it might lift someone who I knew was seeking rest in this place, as well as facts and local color as they toured a park. Next thing I knew, these two sweet ladies and I were harmonizing under Mr. Rockefeller’s bridge. We turned on music as we drove back into town. Saw the perfect moon rise over Bar Harbor as we sang of faithfulness. Said goodnight as strangers we’d never forget. All mutually encouraged by the other.
I don’t dare try to make these moments happen. But they bless me and fill me with gratitude when I find them. When I say, it is my honor to be entrusted with a piece of your time in Acadia, there are a hundred stories of glad finding or giving that make me say it. No, I have not gotten sick of sharing the same sights every day. No, your rowdy kids or talkative grandfather, or your sister who always wanders away from the group to take pictures of flowers, won’t annoy me. The best part of having my own tour company is how I am allowed to slow down to notice the details. The best parts of driving your family around, are when they remind me of mine, whom I still haven’t convinced to follow me to Maine in the summers.
