Journey To The Center  

As I have written more than once or twice in the past, photographs work like time machines for me. A moment’s glance and a whole scene, conversation, or even an entire day or week can be recreated. Today’s post involves some jumping around through time. If you will bear with me, I’ll explain where I’ve been and where I am now – body and mind – which as you might guess, don’t always inhabit the same sphere.

As you may recall, my last post contained an update on my travels. I have been in the southwest for a few weeks. My random wanderings are now ended and I am somewhat settled in Bisbee – about as settled as I ever am these days, which isn’t saying much.

Today is my birthday. It’s an event I no longer celebrate and acknowledge only as the anniversary of the definitive diagnosis of Don’s cancer. I was going to write something about that today, but then I went back and read the post that I wrote three years ago and thought, “Wow, this says it all and I can’t do any better.” By the way, the above image is of the birthday card which Don gave me during his stay at the hospital – as described in the above-linked post. I keep the original card safely stored in a filing cabinet at my home up north, but always carry a photocopy among my personal effects in the van during my travels.

There are a few things that I would like to write about today as I think they are worth saying. The first has to do with time. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I have something of a fascination with time. To me, it is a fluid medium that flows first one way and then another. In my mind’s eye, it’s like one vast ocean that laps upon one continent’s shore while simultaneously lapping upon another. Events and memories float within its swell, occasionally pushing up in one place and then some place else. As I have discovered over the years, there is no means to predict or control such appearances. They just happen. When they do, they can awaken powerful responses – some pleasant, while others might best be regarded as malevolent demons.

Back in September, I wrote about an annual hiking trip that Don and I made on our anniversary. While back home, I planned to do that hike. However, in spite of my best intentions, some poor weather and other obstacles prevented my hike. Although I am not much for omens, I decided that perhaps this wasn’t the year to repeat our hike alone. Instead, I returned to one of our other favourite places – one that always seemed magical in many ways. In the above photo, my van is parked in the meadow above a spot where we often launched our canoe. For those who remember my old Burning Silo nature blog, this is the site of the boiling rain which I wrote about and linked to a video clip back in this post. One thing that was not mentioned back in that post was that our visit was about the last of the good days before Don became too ill to leave the farm.

So, a day or two after our anniversary, Sage and I set out on a favourite old trail. It felt strange to be there alone without Don or Sabrina. As I watched Sage inspecting each object along the trail, I had to keep reminding myself that she had never been to this place and knew nothing of its history or importance to me. It’s a sensation that is with me almost constantly – this confusion over who was or wasn’t with me when I was here or there. Many times, I feel Don or Sabrina moving about on the periphery of my senses. In the past, I struggled to keep it all sorted out. Nowadays, I just let everyone come and go as I realize that it doesn’t much matter to anyone other than me.

Of course, I encountered many familiar sights during our circuit of the lake’s edge. I stopped to rest awhile at a spot where Don and I would sit and talk any time there was something troubling in our lives. It is a place where we could gaze across a peaceful bay to a little treed island with a large osprey’s nest atop a tall, slender snag. It still stands there, so I took this photo from about the usual place where we would have sat watching osprey come and go as they fed their young. On this day, the nest was abandoned for the season.

I also stopped to lay my hand upon the skin of one of the great Beech trees along the path. Unfortunately, much as the cool, smooth bark felt good beneath my palm, I looked about at the many fallen Beech now decaying on the forest floor – struck down by a disease specific to these trees. I recognized one beautiful giant that I last saw standing during my final hike on that trail a little over four years ago.

The sight of the dead Beech made me feel quite sad for all the losses – both personal and more universal – that have marked the past five years. Over time, I have come to understand what an impact such losses have had on my thoughts and outlook. I no longer regard anything as permanent or enduring. To me, life resembles something slippery and elusive – a thing that appears solid and tangible, but that glides quickly and easily through your fingers like a fish wriggling to return to the water. You may believe that it is yours for keeps, but that is only an illusion.

And so I ended my hike about the lake. I had brought a lunch and the fiddle along, so found a shady spot to sit beneath a gnarled apple tree that was probably part of an old orchard on the farm that is now returning to nature. I ate and played a few tunes in this place away from the ears of anyone other than Sage and the birds and insects that rustled and chirped about me. Five years on, I am still here – vastly changed, greatly worn, but at least marginally recognizable.

I’m back home for awhile now – getting the van ready for our long autumn trek across the continent. It may surprise some of you to know that I barely drive between the long voyages. On average, I use about two tanks of gas in summer and two in winter. I’m not really much for driving around between the places where I toss out my anchor and rest awhile. It’s the in-between migrations that cause me to get behind the wheel. Otherwise, I am quite happy not to leave my property for days, or even weeks. I have always preferred solitude and trying to live an uncomplicated life. It’s just that events in my life keep getting in the way.

So, the last potatoes were dug out of the garden, farewells said to my very good next door neighbours who recently celebrated their 65th anniversary. It’s difficult to say goodbye. I usually take the newspaper in each morning, give the odd haircut, bring vegetables in from the garden, play a little fiddle, and share the odd story. It’s nice to have such good friends so close by. But now my old project house – the oasis in what is the otherwise pretty difficult ocean of my life – has been locked up until my next return.

Of course, my departure was not without a little turmoil. As I rushed around taking care of last minute tasks while trying not to forget any small detail, I suddenly noticed that Sage was not dogging me the way she usually does. Normally, when it looks as though I am close to leaving to go somewhere, she sticks to my heels like a burr. She had been doing so all morning and then, poof, I realized that I was alone. That sensation of alone-ness has become quite conspicuous since Sabrina’s death in May. Wherever I go, there is an emptiness, a sort of hollow feeling like staring upon the inside of an empty drum which echoes with faint scrabblings of the past.

I tore around the house calling Sage’s name, then out onto the front lawn and into the back garden. I looked down upon the brook which, after a summer of drought, was now practically seething after a couple of torrential rains. However, Sage never goes down the hill to the brook on her own, so I dismissed that dreadful possibility. Instead, I thought of the incident a couple of weeks ago when the male pheasant from the pair that nests in a nearby field, appeared close to the house, tempting Sage to follow as he wandered off through the tall grass, occasionally emitting one of his weird little honks.

And so I ran up and down the field, calling frantically, clapping my hands in my usual summoning gesture. I kept that up for a good 20 minutes, managing to race all over my own property and back to the decommissioned railway line trail. Finally, exhausted, I returned to the house, feeling rather like collapsing – not from fatigue, but because I felt emotionally smashed at losing one of the last anchors that holds my life in check, preventing it from cartwheeling into the darkness of some distant galaxy.

If there is one thing that can be said about my life, it is that it is not without drama. When it is not someone close to me giving a last breath, or a great chunk of frozen mud flying off a truck to smash in the front of my van, or a boat flying off a trailer in my lane on a freeway, well… it is always something, isn’t it? However, sometimes something good happens. As I stood in the garden trying to think of what to do, I heard two sharp barks – familiar happy barks. I turned, slowly doing a 180 while running my eyes over the lawn, woods and house. Again, two more sharp barks, and then Sage’s gleeful dog grin at the window in a barely used room of the house. I had been in and out of it for about 15 seconds shortly before she went missing. As my mother describes, Sage is like a wisp of smoke that can slip through the smallest crack of an open door. She must have followed into the room when I tossed some papers onto a table before shutting the door for the season. Of course, I was relieved, but also left to ponder at what ease that familiar feeling of devastation manages to surge forward to hammer me. One would think that four years of struggling along, rebuilding my life and attempting to repair my psyche, would have stood me in better stead to deal with potential trauma, but now I have confirmed that that is not that case. It’s quite unsettling to know that, in spite of all that I have done to quash the anxiety resulting from the abandonment inflicted by Don’s death, I seem to be no stronger than I was at day one. In fact, maybe I’m all that much weaker after four years of relentless wear and tear and also being that much older. There’s probably some lesson in all of this – perhaps a warning to those who don’t realize how the events of our lives can just pile on, one over atop of the next, until we are driven to our knees. Remember that the next time you notice that someone who has suffered a great deal of loss doesn’t seem to be coping as well as expected.

Well, in any case, we finally pushed off out of the yard, stopping to take the obligatory “goodbye house” photo which I shall not post here today. With a forecast of “gale force winds” along the Bay of Fundy coast for later that day and evening, I chose a different route which would put me at Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick by late afternoon. I reasoned that it would be more sheltered there. I’m glad that I chose a fairly modest distance for the day as I felt unusually tired from driving – in part because there was quite a terrible accident on the eastbound side of the highway as I neared the New Brunswick border, and then a dead bear cub on the road near the park. By the time I backed the van into my chosen campsite, I was feeling a little fried. I had intended to stay just the one night, but decided that, given the stress of the day and the quietness of the park, coupled with warnings of heavy rains to come, I would stay a second night. I am so glad for that decision, for instead of driving, I spent the day walking in the woods, playing fiddle, and sketching and writing in my journal – the above pages which are writ and drawn upon a second-hand edition of Lattimore’s The Odyssey of Homer (click on all photos for larger views). I realized just how much I was in need of some serious down time to pull myself together before driving the next 1000 kilometers (620 miles) on the following day.

We enjoyed our day, walking about in the woods, studying and photographing plants and fungi. As it turns out, Sage has enthusiastically assumed the mantle of Botany Dog – a role which Sabrina held firmly for so many years. Between rain squalls, I cooked up a batch of bean soup which served as both lunch and dinner (see below). Spreading out a garbage bag on the soggy picnic table bench, I enjoyed lunch while surveying an extraordinarily large Tamarack (Larch tree to some of you) that stood nearby. Around dusk, some young teenagers from a campsite in another part of the park, began playing a game of chase among the trees near my site. I was playing fiddle at the time. I’m not quite sure of the intention of one teenaged boy, but he crawled toward the van in the growing gloom. I suppose he hoped to peer inside at me, but Sage had other ideas and hit the window with a horrific smack while roaring with such ferocity that it seemed she would happily crash through the glass to tear him limb from limb. I admit to some mirthful amusement as I watched the lad slip and fall, then bolt away in terror. This kind of thing happens more often than one might think – youngsters and even the odd adult approaching my van for unknown purpose when I am camped in developed campgrounds. It is one of the reasons that I greatly prefer camping in the boonies where most people give a wide berth to solitary vans, no doubt anticipating that the occupant might be some eccentric crazy poised to unleash the Hounds of Hell, or a musket full of buckshot if approached.

I shall endeavour to write more soon.