Just as I’d imagined prior to coming, time is not the same as on the mainland.
The elaborate rock folds, much like marbled end papers in old books, record the earth’s history in nuanced shades of gray and white. The layering, veins, and tumble you cross when walking the shoreline tell, for those who can read it, of epochs and times before time.
While I’ve been here, the full moon cycled from strawberry to sturgeon, and the days are becoming noticeably shorter with the sun making a much later appearance and sunset falling now at dinnertime. The Pleiades meteor showers are falling these days firmly marking August.
Purple asters and fuzzy crimson sumac cones color the bushes and fields replacing the yarrow, rose, and clover of early summer. Golden rod stands tall with blossoms waiting to bust out at any moment. The thickets of prickly bushes along the trails droop with blackberries- black, tart and seedy.
Gossamer insect tent encampments holding mysteries fill the scrappy treetops. Chenille white and black caterpillars now descend randomly from invisible threads seemingly everywhere. Black and yellow swallowtail butterflies flit in the breeze passing the occasional monarch. The osprey young now whistle and shriek in the cove with as much gusto as their parents, and the swallows apparently have slipped out without my really noticing until they were gone.
Time has been marked too by human endeavors.
Scores of sailboats rounded Seguin’s buoy and headed home with rivals in the 94th Mohegan & Seguin Sprint. Their sails snapped in the wind, and we had a great view as they rounded the marker one after the other.
Just as earlier in the summer, we had a visit from another lightkeeper descendant. Jamie Hart’s great-great grandfather Edwin Wyman served on Seguin from 1886-1890. She reanimated his spirit just as the families of Herbert Spinney and Fred Kahrl had before her. In a place so relatively unchanged, it’s easy to imagine the quotidian chores of these men and their families as they lived and worked caring for the safety of others and the island.
The notion of time also factored in the charming visit of Robin and Declan and family. They told us about getting engaged on the island and later marrying here. Declan’s beautiful baritone sang “It’s a Jolly Holiday” below the circular stairs as the couple’s children Rowan and, yes, Seguin -descended. The place is imbued with romance.
Appreciating the malleability of time and recalibrating its scale whether geologic, seasonal, historic, or just one family’s progression from romance to parenthood has been Seguin’s gift this week.
