Kayaking at Kettle Cove, Cape Elizabeth

I have spent a lifetime exploring Kettle Cove, Two Lights State Park, Prout’s Neck and all the nooks and crannies on the ocean around Cape Elizabeth. I’m a lucky girl to have had the most beautiful vistas, fragrant beach roses, and wave-drenched climbing rocks just a short drive from my home.

I dreamed I’d live in the red shingled mansion just outside Two Lights’ gates. If The Secret were true, surely I would have, as a result of how convicted I was that my vision would one day come true.

From the time my husband and I learned to drive as teenagers, these were our haunts.

Both of us love the coast; there is something about water that deeply replenishes our souls. His favorite smell is the sea – the mudflats at low tide, the seaweed, the salt air.

Early this morning, we dragged our kayaks into the ocean off Kettle Cove, on Ocean House Road, off Route 77 in Cape Elizabeth.

We tucked our small cooler of cold chicken, crackers, watermelon and waters into his kayak and pushed off into the waves.

Although it’s a cove and relatively calm, the current swirled beneath me. It didn’t push me in with the tide; it just pushed me around like a whirlpool.

We headed for Richmond Island, owned by Ram Island Farm, but changed course when we neared the rock formations adjacent to the breakwater, unsure what the current would do there.

On the ocean, distance is always farther than it looks.

We turned and headed along the shoreline of Crescent Beach State Park toward a private white-sand strip at the breakwater that we named Sand Dollar Beach.

Despite all my days on the shore, I’ve never found a sand dollar intact. On this deserted beach where we stopped for lunch, Frank stopped picking them up when his two hands were full. We had never seen so many in one spot.

The bright blue sky was spackled with huge clouds; the sun peeked through making the undulating waves glisten.

Almost no one was nearby.

One day I’ll reach Richmond Island and pull my kayak onto its beach.

How I’d love to see the sheep that graze there or the monarch butterflies that descend late summer on the meadows of milkweed.

The tiny, gray-shingled Cape Cod house sits alone on the island, adorable and quaint from my distance.

Yet another item for my bucket list – see that little cottage and the island up close & personal.