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| Belfast, Maine, on April 28, 2018. (Liz Soares photo) |
My wife Liz and I visited Belfast, Maine, yesterday. It’s one of our favorite day trips, primarily because it’s less than an hour from our home, it’s on the coast, and it has a great bookstore and an authentic pizza joint.
There’s a harbor walk there that passes through a working waterfront and across a footbridge spanning the Passagassawakeag River. The weather wasn’t ideal for a walk. It was a bit chilly, with a light drizzle. But we were determined to stroll the waterfront anyway.
And so we did.
Along the way, we met a fluffy white dog who ran up, yapping, to everyone who approached him, then retreated to the side of his smiling but silent owner.
We met Audrey, a young hound mix who is a rescue from Tennessee. She had a lovely assortment of tan and gray markings, the likes of which I'd never seen before. Her owner said he will be retiring from his job on Monday, which will give him more time to spend with his pup. He urged us to bring our own dogs with us the next time we visit Belfast.
We met Norton, a 10-year-old chocolate lab who has surgery coming up, to remove a growth. He gave me a baleful sidelong glance when I used his name. (Norton is a fine name for a dog, but not as good as that of a black lab I met recently: Reuben. Full name: Reuben Sandwich.)
And we met Matthew, a tiny, very thin little boy with the biggest, most gorgeous blue eyes to be found anywhere. Matthew was walking along the footbridge with a quiet young woman, presumably his mother. He peppered us with all kinds of questions. Where were we going? Would we come back to the bridge later? Then he challenged me to a short but swift race. Which, of course, he won.
The dictionary defines serendipity as “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” Serendipity abounded in Belfast, Maine, yesterday. Had we arrived 30 minutes sooner, or 30 minutes later, none of this would have happened. All would have been different.
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