I think we’ve turned a corner now, and things seem easier and brighter. I spent my first 18 summers in Kennebunkport, eating sand, mowing lawns and carrying other people’s golf clubs, and then was away doing the things that adults do before coming back to settle down. And through all those many years I have felt there was a special light in the sky over the Kennebunks and Arundel.

You can hear the seagulls discussing it as they patrol the beach for abandoned potato chips, and you can see it in the Milky Way and the myriad stars in the sky at night over the golf course.

There is much to be looked for and little to be seen except for the folks that came along to the beach with you, while sitting on the curved sweep of fine beach sand from the Colony to Lord’s Point. If you stand near the breakwater end of the beach, under the stern glare of the Colony Hotel, you are looking to the south across Parson’s Beach, Wells and Ogunquit, but of course you can’t actually see them from there. But that’s where they are.

You can make out Mt. Agamenticus, and did you know that if you find the road to the top of Mt. Agamenticus, there is an observation platform there with binoculars and you can see all the way right back to the Colony Hotel?

From the middle of Gooch’s Beach and staring out to sea, you are looking to the east at the Tower of London and Kew Gardens, the Cotswolds, and Flanders Field, the Louvre and the City of Light from the steps of the Sacre Coeur, with the big, dark hulk of Russia looming up beyond them in the distance.

You can’t see them from Gooch’s Beach, but that’s where they are.

From the other end of the beach and looking out to sea, you’re looking north past Walker’s Point, Cape Porpoise, Fortune’s Rocks, Biddeford Pool, and Portland to Nova Scotia and the great city of Halifax. You can’t see them from Gooch’s, even on a clear day, but they’re there just the same.

I’ve often wondered why people go to the beach. They say it’s where you can relax, put your feet in warm sand or cold water, take a nap, fall asleep in the sunshine and wake up refreshed like no other place. But my best recollection of the beach is while lying on the warm sand near the top of the beach, just under the retaining wall that supports the sidewalk and roadway.

Hearing a car pull into a parking place just over my head, I was startled by the car doors springing open and what must have been four young boys that seemed more like eight of them, jumping over me to the beach and making boy noises.

A voice boomed out above me with a mother’s clear statement of love and a mother’s warning, “Now don’t get sand all over your clothes and don’t get wet! Do you hear me? ”

Things seem easier and brighter now.

Orrin Frink is a Kennebunkport resident. He can be reached at ofrink@gmail.com.

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