Life Diverted - December 4, 2025

I hadn’t set out to walk any further than downtown. Just to the cluster of shops at the bottom of the hill near the top of which my cozy house sits with porches high in the trees that look out over rooftops to three church steeples and regularly enthusiastic sunsets. 

I meant to walk straight down, across two perpendicular streets and on into town. But the traffic light at the second intersection was displaying the deep amber hand and it seemed easier to turn left than push the button and wait. My palm hovered over the disc but my feet kept moving and then the decision was made and the sidewalk swung through a clockwise rotation beneath me and downtown fell away to the west. 

My pace picked up. This was no longer a short stroll to town to rifle through the used compact disc bins, it was turning into a walk of significance. 

I checked my watch. Forty-five minutes to sunset.

I zipped my jacket an inch higher and wished for another layer. It was cold and getting colder and the wind coming off the ocean was now in my face bringing tears to my eyes as I kicked through piles of crunchy leaves. 

I checked my watch. Moon at one hundred percent full. Not gibbous or crescent, not waning or waxing. Directly opposite the setting sun and competing for glory. 

I picked up the pace, confident that the increase in apparent wind chill would soon be offset by body heat generated. 

I checked my watch. Dead-low tide in the cove. Not incoming or outgoing. Slack water tugged hard by the audacious moon.

Arriving at Mackerel cove I realized the watch was both correct and superfluous. The length of remaining daylight, the phase of the moon, and the position of the tide were all dramatically on display for anyone with the good sense to stop and pay attention for even just a minute. Late, honeyed rays illuminated the northeastern shore of the cove, exposed bars of sand stretched long fingers toward Baker’s Island, and the plump December Cold Moon had just buoyed itself from the curve of the earth.

Oh, for a pair of those tall rubber boots worn by fisherman on the decks of working boats. The kind that go almost to your knee, lightly insulated against the chilly slosh of the North Atlantic. Mostly called Wellies even if they’re made by someone else, a proprietary eponym, the way that all tissues are called Kleenex, and a bandage is a Band-Aid, Q-Tip, Walkman, Polaroid, Windex. If I had a pair of those boots, I could walk in a nearly straight line all the way to Lynch Park. Less than a quarter mile across the bars that would soon be gone, a mile and a half of left and rights on sidewalks that are always there. 

I felt the tug of the phone camera. 

The beach was nearly deserted. A few dog walkers. A pair of silhouettes huddled in the lee of the seawall. A whiff of marijuana on the breeze. A lady in a full-length puffy parka with fur lined hood who’d succumbed to the lure of the phone camera, staring at the scene in miniature and alien-bright as interpreted by software and hardware. 

I wished for a real camera with a sensible sensor of not just many megapixels, but of many very fine pixels. Big, fat, juicy picture elements marvelously adept at gathering light and faithfully, non-judgmentally converting it to electrical impulses the processors can manage and pass along to be recorded and stored and recovered later to then be manipulated and brought back to something analog and tactile. Not just zeros and ones that have no say in how they’re displayed, but as something considered and intentional and tangible to be held and gifted and received and appreciated. And, not just a shiny, verbatim representation of the original, because that’s not desirable or even possible, but, instead, the photographer’s gloriously flawed interpretation. 

I didn’t have a sensible sensor, this wasn’t meant to be that kind of walk. But, now I was hungry for a photograph and for the process that goes into making one, so the overly-managed picture device became the tool of last resort. Ignoring my obvious lack of nearly-knee-high rubber boots, I splashed out into the shallow pools between the bars for a better perspective. Ignoring the forty-something degree water, I dropped to a knee for the sought-after angle. The moon’s reflection wobbled on the disturbed surface, the sun had slipped below the hills to the southwest and a low, grey cloud shook dry snowflakes from its tail. Ignoring the inadequacy of the instrument, I made a serious effort to craft a worthy photograph. A saying about blaming one’s tools came to mind. Well, sometimes the tools are actually to blame and other times knowing and exploring and exploiting the shortcomings leads to art of a rare sort. 

I stood in the wind-ruffled pool until the beach was deserted and most of the color had leached from the sky and the moon was twenty degrees of arc above the horizon and the tide was spilling back into the cove and the shortest day of the year was exactly seventeen days away. 

My feet were numb as I made the left onto Washington Street, finally heading for downtown. Two blocks later the dim chill of the beach was replaced by cheerful holiday lights and warm, glowing storefronts. I stomped the remaining sand from soaked shoes and pushed through into the used-music shop. Tucking my hat and gloves into a pocket, I blew into cupped hands and flexed my fingers in anticipation of flipping through hundreds of jewel cases in search of musical treasures. Barely three minutes into the effort, a disc I’d sought since beginning to collect appeared. Misfiled in the wrong genre and out of order alphabetically and turned upside down, and I’d skipped right over it initially, but then my brain, following a short lag, brake-checked my fingers and I backtracked a half-dozen spaces and extracted an out-of-print Nick Drake disc. 

It was an exciting moment. 

I spent another twenty minutes browsing as feeling returned to my toes. I snagged an Eminem, a Led Zeppelin and an Eva Cassidy and the owner of the shop commented on the eclectic combination. I made a joke about being musically schizophrenic, possibly psychotic and in need of help, but immediately regretted it as a young Nick Drake met my gaze from the liner notes.

I fast-walked home. The wind was up even more and the shop had been toasty so stepping back out into the weather was a bit of a shock. I was also eager to spin up the Drake disc, to hear the masterful guitar work and the melancholy voice of a young man who at twenty-six, couldn’t find enough joy in a sunset or moonrise or even in his own hypnotic music to continue living.