Evening at the Base of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire

This travel site is about Maine.

I love Maine. It’s my home, my base, my muse and inspiration for all that I do.

But…the Omni Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire, our neighbor, is a favorite place for my husband and me, and we visit two or three times each year. Sometimes we drive up from Portland just for lunch. We walk in like we own the place, head downstairs to the patio of Stickney's Restaurant, order a glass of Prosecco and a craft beer at an outdoor café table, sit back, and relax. We are in no rush for lunch to be served. Got to take a few minutes to breathe it all in, bask in the valley of her majesty, notice snow on its peak sometimes into June.

I’m not writing about the resort. I’ve done that before.

Today, I’m writing about the evening.

Night.

Outdoors.

Under the stars.

We tiny creatures walking alone in the dark shadows of the entire Presidential mountain range.

After a delicious dinner, we ditched our dress-up clothes, changed back into jeans, flip flops, and summer sweaters. Holding hands, we bee-lined it out back, past two groups of folks sitting in white Adirondack chairs around massive outdoor fire pits, toasting s’mores, laughing, drinking wine, getting to know one another – shiny, happy people having fun.

Once we pass the night swimmers in the heated pool and hit the dirt road out back, the quiet settles over us. The blackness of night. Further and further we walk, far from the madding crowd and the bright lights of the hotel.

On the stone bridge over the golf course, we look down where running water bubbles over rocks, likely hundreds of years old. We look up – one star, two. Many. Billions.

Clouds clothed in the darkness of night float languidly across the sky, well below the mountain’s summit.

We are able to see them due to how black the evening's cloak. A tiny crescent of the moon shines down onto the golf course.

How tiny are we on this planet Earth and who knows what resides up there? Getting out into nature, in the night, gives you a sense of being such a tiny microcosm in a world that is full of magic and wonder.

The silence permeates all except for the running stream. It smells of earth and flowers and wet grass. Pine.

We stay longer than we realize, not speaking, not moving….just being.

Breathing in. Breathing out.

It’s in a place like this, at twilight, that gratitude comes more easily to your heart. When sometimes the world or your days seem frantic and chaotic and not making sense, somehow, quieting the noise and getting down to the basics, makes everything important crystal clear.