The walk from Vaid to Kūolka was not long, the dis­tance only a few kilo­me­ters. It was already a windy day, but as we approached Kūolka, I noticed the seas becom­ing increas­ing­ly chop­py. My friends would tell me that this was due to the loca­tion of Kūolka in rela­tion to the Baltic and the Gulf of Rīga. The north­ern­most coast town sits at the point where both bod­ies of water meet. This spot marked, even on a calm day, by a line of waves extend­ing out from the shore. The seas ever rest­less, like in some Livo­ni­an Cape of Good Hope.

The three-day hike through the coast towns was near­ing its end. Our group paused one last time before hik­ing on to Kūolka.

As the weeks of the Livo­ni­an camp drew to a close, my own per­son­al jour­ney to the coast was also near­ing its end. Not long after this hike I would move on to Esto­nia and then to Fin­land. But for now, I sim­ply sat, enjoy­ing the rugged nat­u­ral beau­ty of this place along with the warm fel­low­ship of my com­pan­ions on the hike.

A light­house had long stood at Cape Kūolka. With the con­struc­tion of a new one on an arti­fi­cial island north of the cape, the old light­house was left to be reclaimed by the ele­ments. The same ele­ments it had always with­stood, aid­ing in the safe jour­ney of mariners nav­i­gat­ing the strait sep­a­rat­ing the coast from the Esto­ni­an islands to the north.

I’d often been cap­ti­vat­ed read­ing about the peo­ple of East­er Island, whose name for their own land had been “The Navel of the Earth.” In telling friends and strangers about Livõmō, the land of the Livo­ni­ans, most had nev­er heard of the place or the peo­ple. Even to me, it hard­ly seemed that it could occu­py a cen­tral loca­tion of any sort. Still, approach­ing Kūolka we came upon this strange mon­u­ment, which claimed to mark the exact geo­graph­i­cal cen­ter of Europe. At first I found this hard to believe. But imag­in­ing the great expanse of ocean and land stretch­ing from Done­gal to the Urals, from Mal­ta to Spits­ber­gen, it became eas­ier to envi­sion. Per­haps the coast had a hid­den iden­ti­ty even I couldn’t have imag­ined.

Of the coast towns, Kūolka had been the only one not to be elim­i­nat­ed dur­ing the Sovi­et occu­pa­tion. It had a marked­ly dif­fer­ent feel from its sis­ter com­mu­ni­ties, which were main­ly vil­lages nes­tled in the forests along the sea. Kūolka had shops and streets, along with sev­er­al church­es. The homes were well tak­en care of, their archi­tec­ture resem­bling that of many of the nicer dwellings I had already seen pass­ing through the small­er coast towns. Here a love­ly home paint­ed in bril­liant red is framed by a col­lec­tion of plants and a small grove of birch trees in the fore­ground.

Explor­ing the coast, I was always struck by the com­plete absence of signs writ­ten in Livo­ni­an. Cross­ing into Līvõd Rān­da, there are no signs mark­ing ones pas­sage into the land of the Livo­ni­ans. Town names, if given at all, appear only in Lat­vian. It seemed the only excep­tion was this sign placed near the head­quar­ters of the Kūolka Livo­ni­an Asso­ci­a­tion. I was excit­ed to see a place name given in the lan­guage of the coast, but I soon won­dered what this sign was actu­al­ly point­ing to. This yard and the build­ing both stood well with­in the town lim­its of Kūolka. A sign point­ing to the town seemed bad­ly placed. May­be it was point­ing to some­where else. Per­haps the past, when Livo­ni­an could still be heard, or a future, when the lan­guage of the coast would be heard again. With no oth­er signs around, it was dif­fi­cult to tell which one it was.