Ellsworth, Maine

We take Princess to the vet again today. She has been showing weakness in her legs for the past week or so, sometimes yelps in sudden pain, and at times seems to have trouble breathing, panting long, loud and hard. We took her to the vet in Oneonta, NY, and he diagnosed a pinched nerve in her neck, giving us a prescription for NSAID which she’s been taking for a week. But this morning is the worst yet – Steve takes her for a walk, and she seems fine, but when she comes back she has trouble walking and standing, and suddenly starts yelping as if someone is poking her with hot irons. Then she falls over and starts trembling and twitching. That’s enough – we can’t stand seeing her in pain like this. The vet at the Emergency Animal Hospital in Bangor seems very concerned but doesn’t have a diagnosis, although she thinks there’s something neurological going on, which I’ve suspected all along. She suggests keeping Princess overnight for observation, which seems like a good idea, so leave her at the hospital.

By the time we get back to the motorhome, it’s 3 p.m. We eat a quick lunch and drive to Schoodic Point, another section of Acadia National Park, most of which is on an island. Schoodic Point is on a peninsula of mainland Maine. It’s about an hour’s drive; we arrive in the park at 4:30 or so and drive to the tip of the peninsula. There, we park the jeep and walk over a field of granite, sliced and carved by eons of glacier, wind and water, to the edge where ocean meets rock. The angular planes of pink- and black-flecked granite are bisected by broad 2 to 3-foot slices of magma, gunmetal grey and sharp-edged. The ocean slams against the massive wall of granite rock and as it is rebuffed, a vertical sheet of water lace-edged with millions of droplets is tossed into the air. I am mesmerized by the energy of the roiling water below, the constancy and power of the giant swells that ride over the underwater rock slabs, then collide with the vertical cliffs. I watch the ocean repeatedly crash against the rock, knowing that it has done so for thousands and thousands of years, and I marvel that the erosive effect of wind, water, salt and time have not rounded the angles and edges of the massive granite blocks.

As we leave Schoodic Point and drive east in the waning daylight, it occurs to me there are sights I see constantly in the East that I’ve seldom or never seen in my 50 years in Arizona. For example:
- broad expanses – acres and acres - of treeless, unlandscaped lawn being mowed
- Clothes hanging on the line to dry
- The color of spring, a shimmering green luminescent with brilliant color
- White clapboard homes, simple and boxy in design and perfectly suited to the landscape
- Houses with shutters, turrets, porticos, cupolas, dormers, weathervanes and porches – none of which look out of place or contrived (unlike these same features that occasionally show up on Arizona homes, where they appear absurd and pointless)
- Unfenced yards
- Rexall Drug Stores – with the same familiar blue and orange script sign