Last weekend, a group of friends and I headed up to Acadia National Park in Maine for a little camping adventure before work begins and reality takes its firm grip once more.  We really lucked out with our timing, since September is technically off-season for the park, but our weather has been having a hard time saying goodbye to summer.  We had the whole campsite to ourselves, which meant there was plenty of opportunities for “zen wheelbarrowing”, telling inappropriate loud jokes by the fire, and early morning jogs through the woods for one of our campers, who was super chilly without a sleeping bag that first night.

Although we climbed (scaled) some of the tallest mountains I’ve ever hiked (ran) up, bringing me one step closer to mastering that fear of heights, standing at the top of Bumblebee Mountain was not the most notable moment of the trip for me.  On our first night in Acadia, we, rather randomly, decided to walk over to the seawall and do some stargazing, all 7 of us.  As we shifted our backs around on the bumpy rocks, looking for a place to nestle our heads, Kevin noticed a bright light on the horizon.  We sat up and the light rose with us, as if craning it’s big eyes over the ocean to get a look at us.  No one spoke.   The light grew wider, inching up out of the ocean a bit further, and altogether, silently, we all realized what we were seeing, though I’m not sure any of us believed our eyes.   Could we really be witnessing a moonrise in Acadia?  The just slightly waning moon revealed more of its face to us, with eyes now peeking out behind the sparkling black cloak of the sea.  The more the moon appeared, the faster it rose, as if gaining its confidence from our wide-eyed awe.  When it finally cut its ties with it’s reflected twin in the water and hung freely among the stars, we all started breathing again.

That accidental moonrise viewing, over the ocean in the completely clear-save-the-stars sky over Acadia, with 6 of my best friends, is an experience I will cherish forever.  Just 4 minutes of pure natural beauty, a serendipitous gift from the universe, just for us.