The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 380

sounded, their long backs gleaming as they slid easily beneath the surface. And there it was, triggered like the knee that kicks at the stroke of a rubber hammer: a reflex twinge of professional concern, a reflex stab of maternal fear. I know full well that a harbor seal can stay beneath the water for 20 minutes if it wants to. Seals are seals'. Water is home to them.

Their world is reliable and responsive, just as my daughter's world responds reliably to her. I have yet to disabuse my three daughters or three sons of their self-confidence I've managed at least to restrain myself, or my husband has restrained me. Still, I do watch. And so, though I haven't admitted this to my husband, I could not leave the beach nor take my eyes off the water until those round heads broke the surface and joined me again in the safe and welcoming air. Please, dear God, bless the beasts and singing birds, and guard with tenderness all things that have no words, circumambulate the island and thus eventually arrive at the beachside cabin that, because Mom could be found there, was home.

So they struck offbravely through the scratchy scrub in the direction of surf sounds. When they reached the coast, they turned right and started walking. But then, clambering along the rough and stony shore, Ellie fell, cutting her knee badly. Woolie made a quick analysis of their situation. Things looked bleak.

So she did the only thing she could think of: She threw back her head and addressed herself to the empty sky. "Help!" she shrieked. "Help! We are lost in the forest, and my sister is bleeding!" Within minutes, a paramedic with a first-aid kit was at her side. His name was Frank, he told me later, after he had bandaged Ellie's knee and led both children back to my doorstep. He was vacationing with his family in a cottage on the other side of the island and had been peacefully sunning himself when the summer breeze carried Woolie's cri de coeur to his trained ears.

Woolie seemed to take it as a matter of course that her prayers had been answered so promptly and appropriately, even in the midst of what to her was wilderness. I was flabbergasted. THE NIGHT I BLESSED THE MOOSE, I WAS ON my way home from the drowning accident. "You know," I told my stepdaughter the next day, "you've really got to watch out for moose." She is 16 and eagerly anticipating driving on Maine's roads. "Oh, I will," she assured me blithely.

"No. Really," I insisted. My husband shook his head and hugged me. "You need a vacation," he said and took me to California. We left the children behind.

For five days, anyway, we would worry about no one but ourselves. There, on the other side of the continent, let strangers splash, swim and sail, hike the trails and shoot the rapids; whatever the outcome of their recreation, I would not be called. It was a wonderful trip. My husband and I traveled the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Venice Beach. We went to art museums in San Francisco, communed with redwoods and Steller's jays in Big Sur, and laughingly admired elephant seals loafing in great, luxurious, flatulent heaps on the sands at Pismo.

Near Santa Barbara, I spotted a couple of familiar shapes in the water; phoca vitirtim, or harbor seals. We have them along the coast of Maine, too. Their heads are round and sleek, and their eyes are brown, thoughtful, and almost human. "Hello, you lovely creatures!" I said to them. They regarded me curiously for a moment, then Kate Braestrup is the chaplain of the Maine Warden Service; this article is based on her experiences, though some names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people she serves.

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