I was up in Bar Harbor, Maine on that Saturday. We went up last week. Rode our bikes around Acadia National Park, walked the very foggy shore, ate lobster and seafood and drank a few cocktails around the fire outside with strangers. I chatted with a lighthouse keeper, she told me the lighthouse had been struck by lightning and was out of commission. I did not throw any frisbees or eat any hot dogs or tangle with Kathleen's bike as I had enough issues with my own. 

Today, and for the fourth tomorrow, I am home. The sun is peeking out here. I might swim in the pool and I will cook on the BBQ, maybe a hot dog. I may have a visitor from New York, and the girl, now woman, that Julia had as a little sister when she was part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization will likely come by as well. Maybe my cousin too if she decides to with her daughter. 

I will enjoy the company of those that want to spend time with me. My two cats are happy I'm home as they have followed me around since I got back.

So, there is peace and tranquility here. A sense of calm and a good vibe. I don't always think about politics or who is voting for who or if Putin is hiding in some Siberian forest. 

I do wonder how the rest of America will celebrate the holiday. Hopefully, feeling some sort of unity as we are all part of this great experiment in democracy. I can say this, as I was sitting around the evening fire in Bar Harbor, nobody talked politics. Nobody expressed any feeling for a side. We just talked about life, the heavy fog that had descended for apparently weeks there and still had not lifted, and what we had done while we were there. Several people sitting with us were from Florida, a couple from Washington DC (she threw in the word "proper" to let us know a specific area I guess), a couple from Texas (transplants from Pennsylvania) and other scattered parts of the country and world. 

On Saturday I was having lunch down by the pier in Bar Harbor. While I was sipping my drink I watched a group of tourists being loaded into kayaks to take a tour around the islands in the harbor. They looked clumsy as they got in them and awkwardly paddled out to wait in a group for the guide to get in her kayak and paddle out to them. Something clicked with me about seeing them all, about 8 two person kayaks led by the guide, paddling off toward the open ocean and disappearing from sight rather quickly in the thick fog. Were they doomed? Would they make it back? Would I read about this lost expedition later? Would the guide be able to track the whereabouts of the 8 tourist filled kayaks in the dense wall of fog where visibility seemed only feet once you moved away from the shore? 

It seemed quite appropriate though, Fourth of July descending on America and a thick fog covered the land allowing us to see only feet, at times just inches, not knowing what is out there, in the fog, in the future...hoping for the best. Stephen King wrote that story The Mist, perhaps on a day like this.