In Provincetown, we went out on the water in a beautiful 89-year-old schooner called the “Hindu,” and as the sun set over the horizon, we saw another schooner right in the middle of the sunset. It was a powerful moment for me, a powerful image, out there on the ocean we had entered a different world, a lost way of life – no screens, cable news arguments, texts, e-mails, smart watches and tablets. There was nothing to focus on or absorb but the beauty of the world, the so rarely visible to us in our frantic lives.

I do not romanticize the past or celebrate the idea of nostalgia – that everything was better than it is now. I am mindful of the fact that were I alive in the past I would almost surely be dead now, they didn’t open up hearts and repair them then. A simple life is not always a better life. Still, how precious to go back in time, even for a few hours and come face to face with the past and the awesome beauty of the natural world, my world.

We are disconnected from the natural world, thus broken. Our dogs connect us, a ride on the ocean, the presence of the carriage horses in New York. We turn to animals and to the natural world to heal or broken spirits, both are sacred to us, or ought to be. That is what I was feeling out on the ocean, when the other sail appeared as some sort of mystical message on the horizon.