Days after my relationship with the first woman I ever lived with ended, I went camping with my college friend and his wife at Acadia State Park in Bar Harbor,  Mount Desert Island, Maine. It was the only time in my life I've been there, and I remember it as a healing place. I've camped many times since then, but never there.

In 1916, Sieur de Monts National Monument was created with 6,000 acres of land donated by individual landowners. In 1919, it became Lafayette National Park, the first national park east of the Mississippi River. In 1929, the name was changed to Acadia National Park. Today, Acadia preserves about 40,000 acres of Atlantic coast shoreline, mixed hardwood and spruce/fir forest, mountains, and lakes, as well as several offshore islands. (Info taken from the National Park Service)
 
Under the canopy of trees, insects incessantly circled and bit, or else hovered, usually  to their deaths, too close to  lantern lights or campfires.  Dave was a great cook, and he fed me well that week. I must have been a terrible companion as I often broke down in tears, lamenting the loss of someone who now, 25  years on, I remember with some fondness, but no regret.

Always an insomniac, my sleeplessness was particularly bad that week, my nightmares flooded with images of her deception. One night, after hours of fighting sleep demons in my tent, I decided to walk to the shoreline to await the sunrise.

I sat on a large rock, my feet dangling in the cold stony water, gazing at the constellations. (To this day, I do most of my stargazing when I camp; New York is no place for stars.) Here, on the east coast of the easternmost state in the country, I watched the sunrise, while crabs scuttled among the rocks or through the sand, terns flew and sanpipers danced. I'll get through this, I told myself.  This, too, shall pass.