A Time of Wonder

I wrote this post on the last day of our vacation last year, and hope this feeling visits me again this year.

We are winding down our vacation in Maine. Last night my daughter E and I read the book A Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey. It’s a beautiful book about saying good-bye to summer.

Here is how the book ends:

It is the end of another summer. It is time for you to leave the island too. Good-by to clams and mussels and barnacles, to crows and swallows, gulls and owls, to sea-urchins, seals and porpoises.

It is time to reset the clock from the rise and fall of the tide, to the come and go of the school bus. Pack your bag and put in a few treasures – some gull feathers, a few shells, a book of pressed leaves, a piece of quartz that came from a crack in the point.

And children, don’t forget your toothbrush.

Then “All aboard!” and around Deer Island, past Birch Island, and across Eggamogin Reach, for the last time this year.

Take a farewell look at the waves and sky. Take a farewell sniff of the salty sea. A little bit sad about the place you are leaving, a little glad about the place you are going. It is a time of quiet wonder – for wondering, for instance: Where do hummingbirds go in a hurricane?