A Note of Home

                A very good and dear friend told me recently that the West Coast Island she had emigrated to was beginning to feel like home. She was settling in, and becoming comfortable with her life in this new place. Our conversation has stayed with me, and stirred up a whirlwind of emotions within myself. Mostly, it has caused me to reflect on this notion of “home”.

                One cannot travel abroad without thoughts of home, a place of origin, a place where we can centre ourselves. It is a rather vague notion. It can describe a nation, a province, a city, or a building. It can transcend the physical and exist meta-physically as an ideal. It can refer to companionship. And it can be all of these things at one time. It is, in short, not an easily definable concept, and yet this notion of home resides within us all.

                Constantine Cavafy, the Alexandrian poet, stated in his poem “Ithaca”, that home was the place where all our voyages begin, and the place where we will return to after many years away. It is the one place that gives us everything we are, asking only that we return at the end of our travels. It “gives us the beautiful journey.”

                Robert Frost was far more pragmatic, when he hypothesized in his own epic work “Death of the Hired Man”, that home is a place where they have to take you in, as you have nowhere else to go. Silas, the aged hired man, came home, not to the place of his birth, but to the place where he knew they would take him, ragged and worn out as he was.

                Both of these notions of home have merit of their own, strike a chord deep within me, and yet both remain incomplete as a definition. The aborigines of Australia have a belief that our lives are songs, and we live out the lines of our song as we go through our days. When my own song had struck a discordant note in the North of Ontario, I was forced back south to the home of my youth. My family took me in, Silas-like. I had nowhere else to go, so they had to take me, or so I thought. When I voiced this thought to my Father, he was surprised. “No, we didn’t have to take you. We chose to.” There was comfort in that, a weary confidence that I was no Silas, that my life was not a worn tapestry yet. There was hope. Something closer to Cavafy’s Ithaca.

                Ultimately, I suppose that “home” is something both broadly defined, and yet deeply personal. An old folk-ism states that “home is where the heart is”, but that is not entirely true. To me, it is many things. It is an iron sky at gloaming, stretching away from the escarpment, to meet seamlessly with a cold steel lake out beyond the steel mills. The plumes of industry belching into the sky, the night fires blazing at the mouths of the stacks. Seeing the beauty of Hamilton in that scene. It is the smell of river mud after the spring floods have spilled the Grand over her banks. It is the roar of a black and gold crowd watching as Ozzy splits the uprights from 54 yards. It is beer with friends, and good conversation filled with laughter. It is knowing that here, be it Ithaca, a New England farm, Steel Town, or a lazy Haldimand twilight, here you have a place. That here your life resonates with song as you sing out your lines and days.

                I often long to be abroad, to live from my backpack, on the road, a traveller. But when I am away, it is this notion of home that keeps me moving into the wind, allowing my feet to search out fresh lines of song.

Five Days in September - A Grand Manan Adventure

                September 18

The rock falls away silently under my outstretched hand. We had scurried up the cliff face ahead of the rising tide, like so many lost goats. The boulder, a big hulking monster that was sure to be stable due to its sheer size, only it wasn’t. It dislodged, and careened down past me, inches from disaster. Death, the thought occurs to me as the boulder smashes into oblivion on an even larger anvil of stone far below.

                Me: holy fuck.

                Tyson’s head appears above, having already reached the summit. Jeremy is there, right beside him. The fear in their eyes is sure to be reflected back at them in my own. Hands extend. I find my legs are a bit weak in the fear that the ledge I am standing on will follow the boulder that had crashed into it.

                Brad: Everyone ok? What was that?

                He had been scaling a dozen metres over. Luckily not behind me. He didn’t see the fall. Tyson did. He said as much, told me he knew the rock would miss me, but it was close. He indicates my pants, the stain of dirt left behind by the falling stone.  It was a close call.

                Following the trail now, forgoing the adrenalin rush of scampering far below just ahead of the rising waves, we come to a sign. Danger: High Cliffs, it reads. Indeed.

 

                September 19

                Dad had suggested we rent bikes. There is a place on the island for that, 22 bucks a day. Money well spent if you have the ambition to pedal. Crossing over the bay to Whitehead makes for interesting viewing. The men working the boat are going about their routines methodically, the same motions they perform 12 times a day. Must be achingly monotonous. I say as much to the man coiling a hawser near me. He grins, showing a ruined cavern of a mouth.

                Man: Nah, you get used to it. This here is a great job. Hard to land a plum like this one.

                The sea does not exactly race by the small ferry. Its blunt prow surges through the waves as gracefully as a bull battering its way through a tea shop. It is new, all fresh paint and greased gears. The islanders from little Whitehead are proud of her. They should be; she is after all their connection to the outside world; the only way the 150 or so souls have of gaining access to the larger world: a 15 car ferry. That is isolation.

                The going is hard. There are not an abundance of roads on Whitehead. About 5 miles worth. But there are untold ATV trails, and it is down these we race away on under our own steam. Bogs slow us, as do fallen trees, and wayward stumps. We push on, ever deeper. It is an Island after all, and a small one to boot. Can’t be that much coast till we find the road on the other side.

                Brad: I am glad we did it this way. Look at this.

                He indicates the sweep of coast with a wave of his arm. The salt smell is heavy. A lone gull wheels in the distance. The Long Point Lighthouse sits solitary on its prominence, we the only people within sight above it. Pell mell we ride across the wet sand. The legs scream, but in a good way. It is good to feel them work, feel alive. Tyson tries to convince Brad to take a dip. Fundy water is notoriously cold. Brad thinks on it, and then declines. Afraid of chaffing on the ride back is the official version. We know that is hogs wallop, and he knows we know. His grin becomes sheepish.

                We find the road. We knew we would. But find, as we pull into the small village pier, that the ferry has made its final run. Missed her by 10 minutes. There is a 7:30 run, isn’t there, we press. The girl at the counter, good looking, open, pure Down Easter, nods, but informs us we need to call ahead for that. We are cell phoneless. She nods again, then picks up the phone.

Kristy: Mel? This is Kristy. I have 4 guys here on bikes. They missed the 4:30. Ok, Thanks.

The crossing back is even more interesting. It is us, and one car, on the whole boat. Enough to make me feel almost special.

September 20

Tyson: Who is this?

He has picked up my CD case, Jack Johnson live. He seems to like it. I am surprised. Not what I would have thought. He always seemed more of a classic rock guy. Even more shocking, Jeremy chimes in, saying he doesn’t mind it. He hates Jack. What is going on? It must be the East Coast vibe, that laid back, Laissez Faire attitude that has overtaken us. Going back to the grind of Ontario will be harder as a result. The Maritimes grow on the soul, gentle moss on the rock of a life, smoothing the harder edges.

Flipping through the album cover, Tyson comes to the picture of Paula Fuga, the Hawaiian singer. Her voice comes in over the speakers in the corner: angelic. Tyson laughs, looking again at the picture in his hands. He is having trouble with the voice juxtaposed by the image.

Tyson: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly cuts you right to the bone.

Brad laughs so hard, beer threatens to come out his nose. He doubles over, knocking a few of the beer cans down, ruining the aluminum palace we have been constructing on the table since the early afternoon. A day spent in drink amongst friends is a day well spent, Jeremy murmurs. It is hard for anyone to disagree. We go back to listening to Jack, the only sound the ukulele in Paula’s hands, and the fizzing crack of a fresh beer.

September 21

Jeremy makes a face of disgust. His pinched cheeks become even more pronounced. The Fish chowder he has been looking forward to does not meet his expectations.

Jeremy: Too many potatoes, not nearly enough fish. For 11 bucks a bowl, I want some fish.

I hope the waitress/owner of the Fundy House doesn’t hear him, even if he isn’t lying. My food has yet to appear on the table, and it wouldn’t do for the kitchen staff to punish me for his outburst. Saliva and boogers make a shitty side to any meal. It is hard to imagine the sweet old lady stooping to that, but having worked in my fair share of kitchens, I know the drill. Never, ever piss off the people who handle your food. That is common sense.

Luckily the haddock is delicious, and seemingly fluid free.

September 22.

Dark Harbour is remote. The most remote place on the Island of Grand Manan. A small fishing outpost known for its dried seaweed, Dulse, and more recently, farmed salmon. To get to it, you drive along the only road that cuts through the interior of the isle. Deep bush surrounds the vehicle. One can imagine the wealth of deer. Getting a freezer full of winter meat would not be a challenge here. The creek that wells up in some woodland spring then wends its way to the coast has cut a gorge over the millennia it has been flowing. The road hugs the precipice without guardrails. Disturbingly, the gorge is a repository of debris; old refrigerators, stoves, mattresses. The dump will take all of it for free, yet here it sits, staining the otherwise pristine. It is the first time the Island and its people have let me down. I don’t like that.

The sun is setting. Red is beginning to stain the horizon. The chasm runs due west, into the burn. The view is without equal. About us, the rocks are stained red, the graffiti proclaiming teenage love and lust glows even brighter. Peaceful, serene. Except for the Bay down below we could be in the north of Ontario. Somehow I like that. It is a connection to home, a sense of the familiar. Not many days left to us now on the Island, as the sun sets I realize it is almost time to come home. I am not sure how I feel about that.