On Wednesday morning, I went for my usual solo hike, the one I try to do three times a week. Right where the trail starts sloping down toward a set of rock stairs and a little bridge over a creek that runs only about one week of the year now, I saw it, about 40 feet away.

I’m visiting my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania this summer for the first time with my boys but without a partner. We’re here at the same time as my sister and her family, also for the first time. And because there isn’t enough room for all of us at my mother’s condo, I volunteered to get an Airbnb.

Morning light danced off wide smiles, shining on the lips and teeth of a group sitting next to me at a dark blue metal table on a small porch at Seafolk Coffee in Rockport, Maine. The sky was pale blue with a slight haze on the horizon and a wispy now-and-then breeze, the broccoli trees lining the harbor. People read their books over coffee, even if they were with the company of others.