July 29th, 2006
gude clouds here
No insects today. Instead, it’ll be a story written before retiring tonight. If the weather cooperates, we’re off to do some canoeing in the morning as the temperatures are pretty steamy here — really a bit too warm for hiking. We have a few favourite creeks over-arched by trees, where we can paddle along shaded waterways. If we go, I’ll take some photos to share.
Uhm… yes…. so back to the story.
About 5 years ago, I received an email from some friends in Amsterdam that we met over the net. They had been over to visit us a couple of summers before. They wrote to ask if we would be willing to have a friend of theirs come and stay with us for three weeks in July. It seems that she had been invited to stay with a couple in Toronto, but a few weeks before her visit, one of the people got a job offer in another city and they were moving on pronto. The woman was left high and dry with a plane ticket and nowhere to go for her holidays. I thought, “What the heck? Why not?” and checked it out with Don. He said, “Sure. If you like,” so plans went ahead from there. I picked the woman up at the airport… she’s a little older than us… very nice person. We had a fun time getting to know her. She wasn’t too accustomed to country living and found our place so quiet and very dark at night. But she got into the swing of things and enjoyed reading on the back porch, going for swims at a favourite beach in a little cove on one of the local lakes, and generally kicking back and taking it easy. Before she left to return to Amsterdam, we discussed the idea of her coming back the following summer to visit again.
A year passed and our friend returned. My brother’s house in Nova Scotia was standing empty that summer, so we decided that the three of us would take off and head east for a couple of weeks, and make his place our home base for a few days. While there, we did a little daytripping around. One afternoon we ate lunch at a restaurant in Mahone Bay that my brother had recommended. On the wall was painted the phrase, “Leave room for the unexpected.” Our friend took one look at the words, laughed and said that’s what it was like being around me — that she had learned to expect the unexpected while around me. She said she couldn’t explain, so we just left it at that.
A few days later, while traveling down to Parrsboro, we stopped at the general store in Bass River. Don and our friend went inside to get cold drinks and look around at the Bass River chairs that were on display. I waved them on ahead and stayed outside as I’d noticed a young woman sitting on the ground with an ice pack on her leg, her bicycle and camping gear nearby. I went over to ask what was up. Her knee looked pretty terrible as she’d had a bad fall from her bike coming down a steep hill the day before. She and another adult were trip leaders for a bunch of boy scouts from New York State. She’d tried to keep going, but after a day, she couldn’t go on, so they were riding ahead to stay at a campground down at Parrsboro. She’d been trying to make some arrangements to get a taxi to take her ahead down, but hadn’t had much luck as the distances were a little great. I said, “We’re going down that way. We can take you to the campground if you like.” She happily agreed. By the time Don and our friend came out of the store, I had rearranged our luggage and managed to jam the young woman’s bike and camping gear inside our small van, leaving just enough room for all four of us to squeeze in. We had an enjoyable trip down, talking with the young woman about her university studies and her summer job as a trip leader. Enroute to Parrsboro, we stopped to check on the other leader and the gang of young boys on bikes. We dropped the young woman off at the campground, said our goodbyes, and headed on our way. My friend turned to me and said, “You see what I mean? It just happened again. When you are around, expect the unexpected.” I guess she’s right. Stuff just seems to happen. What can I say? Leave room for the unexpected. It’s pretty much my motto in life.
So, about the clouds. They’re the reason that I thought of our friend today. One evening, as she and I were returning from swimming at the cove, just as we turned onto the final stretch of road before the farm, she suddenly asked if I would stop the van. She wanted to take a photo of the sky. There were billowing clouds rising up from the horizon, like a towering mountain range on some fantasy world. As she climbed back into the van after shooting a few photos, my friend shook her head, and in her thick Dutch accent said, “Yew have gude clouds here.” These days, whenever I see “gude clouds”, I think of our friend from Amsterdam.
[* For several months in 2004, I photographed a lot of skyscapes. I chose the odd favourite and put it in a gallery on Pbase. I'm thinking that it would be worth doing again.]