In this posthumously published piece at Down East, Joseph Monninger recounts his final days at a rustic cabin on the water in Pembroke, Maine, in the wake of stage IV lung cancer. Without a future, he focuses not on his past, but on close attention to the chosen solitude of his fading present. He revels in daily visits from an eagle, watching Red Sox games, reading books, and eating breakfast comfort food at a diner. “I have chosen to live this way, to live near the sea without running water, to surround myself with simple beauty, he writes. “My days have been emptied of all fanfare and complication.”
This far east, the sun rolls quickly from the water, and the day begins again, filled with waiting, filled with the small occupations of someone using time not as a measure, but as a companion.
With the woodstove going, with the lamps burning, I am aware of the quality of light I have chosen for this primitive living. From the sea, I am sure, my home appears as a soft haze, the white smoke from the stove rising from the chimney, then, like a small bird, deciding by the first current of wind which way it must inevitably travel.
If the weather is good enough, I will park near the Seeley Flowage and take a swim. The water is filled with cattails late in the season, but bathers keep a sandy section clear. I strip out of my clothes, down to the bathing suit I wear underneath my shorts, and I wade out, the pleasure of water encouraging me to go deeper, to let my feet swing up so that my body might become weightless.
More picks on contemplation
Mount Fear Diary
“Speaking to the dead can, for a short while, seem to place us outside the laws of nature—outside the rules governing time and space.”
Into the Wind
“There is a fine line between losing yourself and finding your deepest truths.”
Desert Hours
“There are moments when I’m happier now than I remember being very often in the past, though these moments gleam out of a new solitude.”
