This week my blog platform WordPress sent me a reminder of a post I’d made on June 2, 2018 Daily Bread at Tibbett’s Point. I took that solo journey in 2010. Now, I look back at that post and remember that rich experience with the people who were in my path:

“It was June and I was celebrating being a 10-year Breast Cancer Survivor, a decade since I’d heard the words, “You have cancer.”  I wanted to take my summer journey to a special place, the seventh solo trip that had turned into yearly pilgrimages.  Thumbing through a resource book for hostels in the U.S., I found the perfect place, described as a location with the most beautiful sunsets: Tibbett’s Point Lighthouse Hostel. Located in Cape Vincent, New York, where the St. Lawrence River flowed into Lake Ontario, the hostel was in the former lighthouse keeper’s house.”

Those sunsets were stunning and I enjoyed watching them with some of the other hostel guests as well as local folks who favored that location for witnessing the end of the day.

I knew little about that area and when I checked the driving directions from the Buffalo airport, I saw I’d cross over the Genesee river. That triggered the memory of a book I’d heard of by Henry Nouwen. He was a Catholic theologian and I liked his down-to-earth-way of writing about faith.  He’d stayed at the Abbey at Genesee, living and learning with the monks and wrote about his experience in the book, The Diary of Genesee.  I decided to take a side-trip off the NY Thruway and go to that abbey and buy a copy of the book and loaves of Monk’s Bread to take as a ‘pilgrim’s gift’ to the hostel.

When I arrived, I was greeted by Bea, the 83-year-old woman who was filling in for the current manager.

After she showed me around, she invited me to join her and two other women along with two college-age guests at the kitchen table. The conversation flowed easily, with folks telling about experiences in different hostels — all solo travelers.

“This is what I love about hostels,” Bea said.  “Everyone sitting around the table like this, sharing all their adventures.”

Later, the two college-age guests left and Bea, Ruth — who was also in her eighties, and Coleen, sixty-three, who was Bea’s friend from down the road, continued talking, including me in their familiar conversation. I unpacked my food, including the two loaves of bread.

“Here’s something I brought to share with everyone,” I said, and placed the loaves on the table.

Coleen pulled one over and read the ingredients.

“I love cinnamon bread. I don’t often buy it because it’s expensive and I live on a retiree’s income,” she said. “Think I’ll try some now.” She took a slice, bit into it, and smiled.

For the next five days, I made my home at the hostel.  At breakfast and dinner, I enjoyed getting to know Bea, Ruth, and Coleen.  I came to think of them as the ‘Golden Girls of Tibbett’s Point’ as their personalities reminded me of the other Golden Girls on the old sitcom.

That week was a rich experience, one of the best I had when I stayed in hostels. The day I left, I pulled away and looked back in my rearview mirror and felt sad to leave that place that had become my temporary home. I thought about the decade since I’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and wondered what I’d face in the next ten years. Now it’s been sixteen years and I didn’t face the thing I feared in those intervening years; I didn’t have a return of breast cancer. Instead, I’ve had different health and other challenges. I’ve been fortunate to experience more solo journeys and better than that, I’ve had the good fortune of being a grandmother to my two grandsons.

Ironic that the reminder of the Tibbett’s Point post came up this week when I’ll be traveling to that area to attend a wedding. When I cross the Genesee river, I’ll be reminded of how Henry Nouwen’s book was my companion and brought life to the sacrament of breaking bread around that simple hostel table. I’ll remember hearing the waves lapping up on the shoreline outside the window of my private bedroom in that former lighthouse keeper’s home. And I’ll remember Ruth’s Canadian accent saying with her eighty-something wisdom, “Connie, keep traveling as long as you can. That’s what I intend to do.”

I’m grateful for the memories of Tibbett’s Point and all the richness of the ups and downs of life over the past 16 years.

Connie