T and I spent most of yesterday at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm Farm, an estuarine research center sited on a 19th-century farm along the salt marshes of the southern Maine seacoast. It's about a 40-minute drive from Portland, and is a favorite spot of mine, with trails rambling through fields and forest, marsh and beach. Yesterday we spotted a kingfisher with a fish in its beak and a harbor seal bobbing adorably among the breakers along the beach shore, round-eyed and sleek-headed, no doubt hunting clams or flounder.

The tide was going out, and the beach was striped with snakes of erosion. The lurid brilliance of sky, sea, and trees made me feel a little addled, in a good way.

This was where we saw the seal, though I didn't get a photo. But she was quite close to shore.

The marsh grasses are eight or nine feet high, and walking among them is like being in a secret garden.

The human condition expressed in birch-tree vandalism: "I'm so happy sad."

 A trail through the fields toward the marshes. The variety of landscape is notable in such a small area.

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I'm back to work today, teaching this afternoon, bustling through class prep and housework this morning. But my two-day birthday vacation has been lovely, and I am full of pep and good feelings.