The pencil meets the paper to sketch the lines that make up a face that can be anyone or anything...

In the morning, I see the sunrise with beautiful hues of pink, while watching the waves drift upon the shore, while the birds chirp and sing.  The clear glistening water, along with black sand, creates a busy beach of bodies bathing in the sunlight. With my best friends Sully, Ero, Ike, and Kaleb, hanging when we can. We go swimming at Tettegouche, jumping off the rocks and into the water without a care in the world.

My small community, built for the plant; start of the town back in the day, a home for workers, and a place now for the elderly that first started it. Beaver Bay: a small tourist town with a torn-down past of mayhem that’s now just a nice, quiet, peaceful piece of scenery. Finland: it's got a road; a yellow line on the road, and a white line on the sides. Silver Bay, Hays Circle. My grandparents' two-story brown house, our neighbors to the right with the souped up muscle car, and our neighbors to the right who drink and just have fun. This is my vision of community that extends and descends depending on what's going on. My house, it’s kind of like a tan building with a couple trees in the front yard. A lonely pizza sitting in an empty Jimmy’s Restaurant.

The roads I walk are dark, dead, and I am completely alone in my mind with nothing to hold onto or grasp as I lose myself in the darkness. My boring, small desolate, sad, quiet, community never has anything going on. It’s a pebble in the lake but make no mistake, it’s clear and cold and will wash you away.

But family is a hover of trout working together as one group to protect each other.

We’re like a family on a road trip: by January we’re all very sick of being together, but we do care about each other. My small town is full of friendly faces, each and every one smile as they pass by; even if we’ve never met, they won’t hesitate to say hi. People helping people just to be good people, people smiling and giving hugs, people standing around a cookout sharing stories, people sitting in lawn chairs enjoying each other’s company, people just being people.

My community is small, quiet, and peaceful, but it’s like no other, everywhere you go everybody knows each other. I see children, elementary students, working together with friendly members of the community to plant flowers around our school, the center of town. The people I see are extremely active with a competitive edge that will never go away and will do anything for the betterment of the town. My home is a small town with a bunch of great people who know everyone with very little crime and is a very popular tourist town. Silver Bay is the town I grew up in. If there was no Silver Bay, who knows where I would be right now.

When I walk up to the football field of William Kelley on a cold October night, I see kids swinging on the playground, I walk by the lady who used to babysit me who I call “Grandma,” and I see the crowd and I know everyone there. People of all different ages coming together to watch sporting events in the gym. I see old folks, with unconditional support and passion for the mariner team, cheering us on in whatever sport it may be. A full hockey arena on parents’ night, eating tacos in a bag. The sweet smell of leather mixed with grass makes all the memories of that brown football come back to me. As I see those people working together through the foul smells of trash in the grassy meadows to achieve an inner prize in the end while sweat runs down their face and the sun threatens to destroy them if they don't take the sip of refreshment.

A big blue anchor and the word mariners brings the town together. If covid wasn’t around we’d have spring sports which bring everyone a little bit closer together but since covid is around neighbors, the people, band together in times of emergency

The people by the shopping center make purchases at the local stores like the pistons fire in an engine. People within my world, fishing and having a blast with one another. Everyone’s laughing and re visiting memories they once lived together. The sparks of those friendships growing with each memory re-lived. It brings me comfort hearing that, seeing that, and feeling that.

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