Perhaps the two camera-ready beluga whales at Mystic Aquarium sent me a telepathic message in the vein of Paul Revere: a pair of creatures, bright as lanterns, appearing before my eyes called for a sea journey. This wasn’t what a non-swimmer liked to hear but the Marylander who spent school days cleaning the Chesapeake was slightly intrigued. In contrast to the crucial battle fought on my hometown bay in 1781, Mystic Seaport possessed no conflict or strife or fireworks in 2014. It stood as a united and peaceful maritime village where only the masts were rambunctious under an unbound sky of wooly clouds. Yet I found that the margins of the sea held many treasures. The presence of our inalienable rights floated in the salty Connecticut air past a horse-drawn carriage and candle-stacked chandlery.
After encountering the stoic Lego-made Mark Twain in Hartford and the behemoth bovine structure in Beardsley Zoo, I yearned for a less formidable structure that wouldn’t dwarf my five foot two frame. I photographed a couple sailor nutcracker dolls in the gift shop for that reason. But once the seaport willingly opened up its carefully preserved ships to my vision, I was steered towards the towering boats’ grandeur. The 1841 wooden whaling vessel Charles W. Morgan, in its docked glory, ran eighty years to transport passengers all over the world. I imagined Americans meeting men of other countries much the same way dignitaries and senators meet today where I work near Capitol Hill. As budding sailors embarked on summer day camp expeditions, with neon life vests, I thought how smoothly they could move now when the Morgan had to find its way past Arctic ice and other barriers. Through perseverance, liberty and assembling together became easier for successive generations, making the land and sea more available for a metropolitan sightseer.
My personal favorite discovery was a restored printing press, aged but operable, a throwback to an era where print on paper dominated entertainment and the eyes of our country’s founders. This coal-black instrument with inky edges, separate cases for uppercase and lowercase letters, and weighty lever thrilled me as much as blocked Twain who I took multiple pictures with. Centuries earlier in other New England cities, to place each block meant a stepping stone to more literary freedom. To see the press churn out each page was an event, a call to action. As a historical fiction writer in modern times, I paid close attention to the editorials and bylines of a bygone era. But the efforts of contemporary reporters sat there side by side. The finished copies lay on a varnished surface, drying, a riveting reminder of a Constitutional amendment.
Words were in short supply as I entered Fishtown Chapel, a demure white house of worship with only a dozen benches. I was curious to find out that it never had its own pastor. Sermons jumped out at me all of a sudden. Phantom but devoted voices sprang out of outside speakers. No stained glass windows adorned the building but the precious and moving bits of speech kept me in the heated sanctuary. This church claimed no pastor but the come and go tenants had the freedom to speak and pray no matter the religious beliefs of entering tourists or the judgments of passersby. The chapel doors were still open when the voices died.
After they closed, I went searching for the stars in Treworgy Planetarium. It was a smaller planetarium that could be viewed as a Copernicus-type clubhouse. Beyond intelligent narration, there was something liberating about seeing the full spectrum of the cosmos, even in cramped chairs. Constellations became firmer, more intense when I remembered, that for a time, only they were the guides for sea-bound navigators. Magellan, though a man of religious fervor, banked on his faith in the stars throughout his discoveries, watching the gods outlined in them for direction. The church and planetarium of Mystic Seaport were in close proximity, maybe to illustrate that freedom remains a tenet for anyone who has faith in a mission, including myself.
My mission beside the sea ended at five in the evening. The bank with its golden-rod scale locked its long-standing compartments. Black and white pictures of turn-of-the-century sailors faded into the dark. The white steed taking others on carriage rides gave me a last peek and pitiful smile. But this Mid-Atlantic traveler took away a whole new appreciation for the shining sea near Connecticut. Our hard-earned freedoms from long ago don’t lay dormant on the shore; they shape and thrive on them in Mystic. I bet even Lego Mark Twain would come apart at the thought of these rights being taken away. One woman by way of Maryland found twice the reward by going by the sea.
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