twinkle & the missing hiker

an encounter

Do me a favor, fill in the blank. I’m the type of person where ________ always happens to me. This doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. It could be you always find a great parking place, or you’ve been visited by the spirit world, or you find money on the sidewalk. The point being, that you’ve learned something about yourself as a result of this repeated occurrence and chances are it’s because of how you move through the world.

For the past 25 years, at least, I have walked around the town of Bar Harbor with my dog. First, there was Bachelor, then Tucker, Niblet, Pinto, and now Twinkle.

Twinkle is bonkers for water, and I mean completely bonkers. I take her out most mornings and throw rocks for her to chase into the sea. She is my fourth Jack Russell Terrier and so ridiculous, that people stop to watch her unbridled enthusiasm. Her focus is like that of a herding dog, but much less useful. She never fails to entertain.

Monday morning, I was out with Twinkle. It was our most beautiful Spring morning to date because Bar Harbor is currently in the process of returning to the Sun’s good graces. That morning, facing north, I felt the pure luxury of the sun warming my bones. So did Twinkle. She chased rocks for nearly twenty minutes at a dead run despite being a cranky old girl and I bent over and picked up rocks like the act of touching my toes was no big deal. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even grunting with the effort. That’s what a nice day it was.

I was vibing out, looking at the sea, listening to Cold Heart, the Elton John & Dua Lipa dance remix on repeat (judge me if you must), and I was straight-up joyful. In truth, this doesn’t happen all the time. It’s a rare moment when I am lifted in both body and spirit.

Anyway, Twinkle was shivering with cold from being in the ocean (the goal) and we walked back up the ramp where we were intersected by a radiant older woman. You know the type I am talking about—mischievous, a glint in her eye like she’s about to tell me a joke. She says in an Oxford English accent, “I have a rat terrier back in the hotel room.”

And just like that, I see that we are friends. She and I both know that Jack Russell terriers and Rat terriers are devils on paws unless they’re allowed to be who they are and goddamn if that isn’t a hard-fought lesson to learn.

So we’re talking, her name is Maggie, and she’s telling me about this long trip she’s on and how much she loves Bar Harbor, and how she can tell that I love to be outside. In fact, her daughter loved to be outside, too.

You read it right, the past tense. Three minutes into our conversation she is telling me something deeply personal. I pull the muted headphones out of my ears. “So, she’s gone, your daughter,” I ask.

Maggie nods.

“Tell me her name,” I say, because I’ve lost enough people and been to enough funerals to know how important a name is—a loved one’s name can be the most musical of sounds said aloud. I have also been in this situation enough to know that there’s something about me that encourages strangers to talk about their grief.

“Melissa McDevitt, she went missing December 9th, 2022.” Maggie does not shy away from these words. She even says her daughter’s name again and spells her last name, so I will know. “Melissa McDevitt. M.C.D.E.V.I.T.T.”

Well, December 9th is my birthday and suddenly, I know I will never forget how Maggie’s daughter, Melissa McDevitt. M.C.D.E.V.I.T.T. went missing on my birthday. I should also mention, I’d be remiss if I didn’t, how enchanted I am by this particular expression “went missing.” (It’s akin to a popular phrase here in Maine, “turned up missing.”) The implied action has a haunting echo but none of this seems to dull our energy.

I spent the next twenty minutes talking with Maggie about how Melissa loved to be in the woods and how she disappeared while going for a hike in the Sooke backcountry on Vancouver Island, BC the day before she was supposed to board a plane to come home for Christmas. Her remains were found nearly a year later (5 months ago) and it was determined that she died of exposure after a temperature drop which she was likely unprepared for.

Melissa McDevitt. M.C.D.E.V.I.T.T., who lived to be 39, also had autism and Trisomy X, a rare genetic syndrome.

A few months after I had my third child, my bestie also had her third, a Trisomy baby named Mia, who lived a tragically short life outside of the womb. To grieve a dear friend’s baby while holding your own healthy babe is a wicked cruelty and a divine comfort all at once. Why should she suffer this loss and not me? Ahh, such questions are pointless to ask, aren’t they? …and yet we ask them.

The more I learned about Melissa, the more I remembered Mia. I ping ponged between them throughout the day and as I fell asleep that night, I saw Maggie’s radiance and my bestie’s too. How the moment I met them both, we were friends. I saw how they seek joy in nature as a way to honor their daughters’ lives, and as a way to keep them close.

I mostly believe in coincidence, but there are moments when coincidence feels like fate and I cannot brush it off or look the other way. I was meant to meet Maggie and hear Melissa M.C.D.E.V.I.T.T.’s story. To hold Mia in the short weeks of her life. To walk around town with my dog, again. To have the sun shine on me that day, all so I could remember the first night I met my radiant bestie all those years ago, how we stayed up all night long smoking cigarettes and watched the sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain.

Photo by Eugene Krasnaok on Unsplash

Ciao, n