My Interest in West Quoddy Head, Maine (Spoilers for Tipping the Scales)

It's a difficult thing to write about a place you've never seen yourself. The locals may like that an outsider wrote about them, or they may hate it. Maps, Google Street View and YouTube videos can help with details, but the rest is guesswork. I hope the people of Lubec are happy with my portrayal of the area.

While I am not a local myself, I have a connection to West Quoddy Head — or more specifically its lighthouse. One of my ancestors, Hopley Yeaton, was in charge of its construction two centuries ago. It was a point of pride for my paternal grandmother that she was a descendant of Yeaton. Her home in Lafayette, Louisiana, was decorated with depictions of the lighthouse. That tower with its distinct red and white stripes was everywhere -- in photos from her trip to see it, in fridge magnets, on decorative plates in the cabinet, on the mantlepiece, in the lacy decorative bathtub curtain, in the afghan draped over my grandfather's chair, and on pillows on the couch. Many of these touches were gifts from members of the family who liked to stick to a theme, myself included. My brother even found a Christmas decoration -- a red and white striped lighthouse with Santa's sleigh flying around the tower. Plug it in, and the sleigh and reindeer would go round and round as the head light flashed green and red beams.

When I thought about a place on the coast that Cayna would go to, it was easy to turn to West Quoddy Head as the setting. Its placement on the "Easternmost Point of the United States" seemed more than apt.