Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

I have exactly one specialty in the kitchen, and it’s homemade lemonade. My son had put in a request, so I spent part of the week making a couple different varieties. It was also strawberry and rhubarb season, and both showed up in my produce box, so I made some treats, a fresh salad, and a few other meals. I haven’t been cooking much lately, so I spent a little time in the kitchen, welcoming summer.

Later in the week my husband and I left for Maine to attend a Coast Guard retirement ceremony for one of our friends, but since we don’t travel very often, we decided to turn it into a long weekend. We enjoyed two days hiking, wandering around the harbor, attending the ceremony, and generally relishing being somewhere other than home. Even though I had to spend our nicest morning in my hotel room, presenting virtually for the Board of Trustees meeting, as soon as I logged off Zoom, we hit the road for the hills. As a relatively seasoned hiker who has climbed Mount Washington several times, I can’t call what we hiked that day a mountain. But it was the perfect post-work getaway.

The path took us up Maiden Cliff, a rocky overlook above Megunticook Lake. Near the summit stands a cross commemorating a young woman who fell to her death in the late 1800s while chasing her hat after a gust of wind carried it over the edge.

After I read the marker near the cross, I had absolutely no interest in standing anywhere near the edge. My husband, on the other hand, found my discomfort amusing and spent time playing a version of “Where’s Waldo?” by positioning himself closer to the drop-off than I preferred. I snapped pictures to prove how far away I was standing just in case he fell. I didn’t want to be accused of murder. I’ve literally listened to that true crime podcast. I sent the picture to my kids asking, “Where’s Dad?” and our TwinLife text group came alive with their responses.

I’ve been talking about cairns quite a bit lately in my work. As we’ve been building a new college, I’ve used them as a metaphor for leadership and change. Cairns mark a path, especially when the trail itself isn’t obvious. They’re built collectively. Different people contribute different stones. Sometimes they shift. Sometimes they need to be rebuilt. They aren’t permanent monuments. They’re guideposts.

So there was something striking about finding the first cairn on our trail just a few hours after presenting the work I had been doing in the new college to the Board, where I ended my presentation with the idea that we might not know exactly where we are going, but we are cutting the path and marking the guideposts.

As we passed the first cairn, my husband called out, “Did you hear that?” I instinctively knew, perhaps from his tone, that he thought he had heard a rattle snake. I hadn’t heard it, but I had been drinking from a plastic water bottle that made a crackling noise and suggested that was what he heard. He was convinced it was coming from the low ground cover and told me to be careful. Gallantly, he took the lead.

The moment reminded me of the time my dad and I came upon rattlesnakes on one of our weekend backpacking trips. He saw them first. He noted the path went directly through a den. He took the lead. It was THE. MOST. HARROWING. 30 minutes of my life, walking through those snakes with my dad banging his hiking pole ahead of him, trying to warn the beasts to get away and keep them from darting at one of us as we passed by.

My anxiety wasn’t quite as intense as my husband and I continued down the path at the summit of Maiden Cliff. After all, I knew that snakes liked to curl up in the sun, and there was plenty of sun and rocks for them around, and I didn’t see any. I did not expect them to be in the ground cover. However, I also had no idea what kinds of venomous snakes might exist in Maine. (I’ve since looked it up, and this story is even funnier now that I know that no venomous snakes have lived in Maine since the 1800s.)

So my heart raced as I followed my husband to the next opening in the ridge. As he moved toward the next cairn, I saw a dragonfly tailing him. I chuckled to myself, knowing the sound he kept hearing had just revealed itself to me.

Despite the cairns on the summit, the path we were hiking was not particularly well marked once we headed back to tree line, and after we got lost, backtracked, and then got back on track, my mind, now free of snake-fear, wandered back to the cairns and the metaphor I had used when talking about building the new college and charting a new path for higher education.

As we continued along the trail, I couldn’t help but see signs – both literally and figurative – that extended the metaphor. A double blaze indicated it was time to turn, time to do something different. Just a short distance beyond that turn, a sign said, “Please stay on new trail. Due to erosion trail has been redirected.”

The old path had become unsustainable. Not because it was a bad path, but because conditions had changed. The route had been redirected. I paused at that sign, pondering the state of higher education. Much of my professional life right now involves wrestling with exactly that reality. There are trails we know well. Trails many of us love. Trails that have served people for a very long time.
But some of those trails are eroding. Some of them are no longer sustainable. We need to find a new path. Sometimes that means following cairns that others have built. Sometimes it means building new ones ourselves. Sometimes it means charting a course and then backtracking to move in a different direction. Sometimes it means encountering an obstacle and pushing through. Sometimes it means just going around in order to make progress.

Between the death defying cliff walk, non-existant snakes, and constant reminders of the challenges I face at work, the hike wasn’t quite the relaxing experience it was supposed to be.

But maybe that was okay. Maybe the walk was what I needed to process a lot of thoughts.

The retirement ceremony was held in the Maine Lighthouse Museum. As we entered, we were greeted by a very large Fresnel lens that looked like a piece of carved glass. It was both gorgeous and functional. Like the cairn, the purpose of the light is to guide. Neither eliminates uncertainty or the need to make decisions. But they help in the decision to take the next step.

And sometimes that’s all we really need.