First Snow

So the first snow came to my island paradise last night. The wind howled from the North as rain turned to driving ice pellets, then a hard wet snow. Its all frozen now. The trees coated in sub-arctic white. My hands almost numb cleaning snow from the blazer, doors frozen shut tight under a leaden grey sky and strong North wind. The island to be for the next 6 months.

Soon I drive South to Mechanicsburg of all places. I have rented a home close to the chimney house and the Yellow Breeches of my youth. My son seems concerned that he cannot spend much time with me there. With his new and very busy life, the parents fade to less importance. This is as it should be. My Mary would rather bind me and keep me in her coat closet than to see me leave. I think Shel is also concerned. Perhaps mostly over money, but in my heart I hope its more than that.

My return to this paradise is uncertain. It is a long road-not the 1000 miles, but in the open hole that is where my heart is. I may decide to drive home here in January. To face an island winter. Or I may winter fish with my son along our streams-Clark's and the Breeches. I am not sure.

So a new adventure takes hold from a place where I know the Arsenaux's and Gallant's, the MacKenzie's-Oh, my Mary MacKenzie. Strong and tall and gentle and sweet. A body forged from winter walks and hard work. Quite a woman. Krinly eyes from having seven more years than me and from a life of many tears. Maybe I will return and marry her. I could and have done much worse.

So I sit her writing this blog...Oh, some read it. But all in all its for me and my beloved and far away children. Even my sister..she may never read these entries, but I know she will be happy to see her far travelled and often absent brother.

Most of all I am sad I can't see my mother. She visited me, I like to think, on the gossamer wings of that summer hummingbird that brushed my adorable wife's arm. The summer at Cape Traverse. Shel's paradise has become my place of reclusion. I write and dream and visit with now old friends. My Yankee accent gone, I am often asked if I grew up on the island. No Philadelphia university graduate twang remains. I hope it stays away. After all, I can speak idiomatic maritimes English now. Yes, it is a dialect unto itself. Will I always say "supper" not "dinner?. I am not sure.

I shall miss my little place near the harbour of both joy and pain. A big ship is in port today. White with bright lights against the angry red strait and the icy land. It is among the most beautiful places and feelings I have had in my journey. Yes, I have been all over this world. But this, and here, and there in central Pennsylvania are home home's.

I do miss my desert. The palms. The pool. My pretty young very spiritual voluptuous blond wife. The grill. The sound of spanglish and the pretty dark skinned girls that made me smile in the past dream of tacos and roasting chili's scented air on a mild winter night along Glendale Avenue. I think I will return there. But not yet. Not just now.

Heart strings tug against the lure of the palms. My river in Yuma. My pretty Apache girl bonnie and fishing with her in the Colorado River. Yuma is a dream spot too. Shel loved the downtown. Once I stood by one of her trees by Lute's casino there. I wept. She was with me in the little shops, at the organic date farm we loved on the California side. Sweet dates. My sweet girl. My love.

I won't find her there. My army job is gone. The ordnance expert. That was me. I walked away to come here that 3 years plus ago. I found much more. I know what love is now. I wonder how many really know?

Strong winds, Angry sea

So October arrived yesterday very gently. The warm afternoon and a glass calm harbour made for some nice relaxing fishing. It really wasn't my day. I only caught a few small smelt and 2 scrawny mackerel. But they cooked up nicely with island tomato-cucumber salad, farm fresh carrots and potatoes, and quahogs and oysters courtesy of Manny Gallant.

Manny is a soulmate fisherman and friend, perhaps business partner to be of mine. He pines away for his pretty wife. He opines that he is illiterate as he has been in a boat since age 12 to help with the family fishing business, and never went to school. I explain that I find it rather charming. This soulful man is healthy and prosperous. He glows with what I now identify as "Island Health". They have that here. Fishing. Can't read or write much. Oysters. Never been off island. Mackerel. Neat little farm. Artist wife. Never been in a plane. Inbreeding. Fresh quahogs. Big tomatoes. Healthy kids. 4 wheel drive. Divorce. Blizzards. Strong island moonshine. Hurricanes. I am in total complete envy. West Virginia on the Sea.

My soft tired educated body. I will miss this special place. Its rotund incomprehensible females. The shine. The bootleggers. Lobster at 4 bucks a pound. My wife.

I was sure that the last time I caught smelt I smelled something familiar-from a long ago dream-time. Yesterday I caught the scent when I landed the angry smelt-it was the smell of thyme and cucumber, that I had smelled long ago. The arctic grayling I caught in Alaska yarens ago smelled that way. Hence the scientific name of grayling, Thymallus. The arctic grayling is a sport fish somewhat like a trout. It has a huge very beautiful dorsal fin, almost like a sail. They are silvery gray and have tiny black and blue spots, as I recall. The fish used to range into the Northern US, but was extinguished long ago along with most good things during deforestation, pollution, greed, and mortal sin.

I have heard there are grayling stocked in the Arizona rim mountain lakes. To me, since I have spent a lot of the prior 15 years at those lakes fishing (for trout), I am unsure about any Arizona grayling. Maybe Montana or the U.P. of Michigan, but I can't confirm it. But in Alaska, grayling, like eagles are or were then (my last Alaska trip was in 1993), everywhere.

On the Internet I looked up smelt as the odour and even taste of these fish was grayling. Indeed they are closely related fish. The grayling has two distinct memories I will share here. When I took Rhonda to Alaska to go camping before we got married we fished grayling. I think I caught a bunch in a ditch by a culvert along the Denali Highway. It was probably 1985.

I took out our trusty little stove and cooked grayling along the road. Rhonda and I had fish together there, it was great. It is a very fond memory of my first wife before the dark times.

On the first trip to Alaska with Shel, wife 2, I fished grayling again in nearly the same spot. Actually, Shel only went to Alaska with me once. She was truly a child bride-barely 20 at the time of our trip.

I caught a truly impressive grayling, the largest I had seen. I wanted to take a photo of it. I asked Shel to hold the writhing fish up so I could take the shot. She, terrified of live fish to this day, refused. So you will have to take my word that that fish was 25 inches if it was a foot-thats a big grayling. (Alaskans consider grayling trash fish, pronouncing the name with a long A sound, ahhhhh, instead of the vowel-arctic graahhling.)

Here today as October begins the leaves are turning and falling very quickly. Very hard rain and hurricane force winds today made my evening walk difficult. The harbour was a froth of mud-red swells and shiny whitecaps, wind-whipped so salt can be tasted strong in the air in my living room.

I saw Cindy, but I didn't tell her I am moving out yet. The decision came painfully, slowly, but today I started to clean a bit and pack. I really have little to take south-just what I arrived here with 3 1/2 years ago.

Today 2 years ago I had been living on PEI 9 months. Shel asked me on this date back then, in 2006, to move out. It was then that the 6 month imbroglio with EIC and the Gustafson's began in Ottsville. It was really a wonderful experience and I had real quality time with my kids-even on the holidays. I know now that is why all that happened-it had little to do with business.

I will state for the record that both my Child-Centered Assessment and my E-Petz patents are great ideas. But I will have to do it myself or with family, without greed.

My pal Germain is back off to North Lake in search of Donnie Rose and Russian fish plant girls in Souris. I for one am about complete in my unpaid consulting services to Mr. Fougere. In fact, my friend Manny Gallant stopped by today. He has concerns about the business idea.

I told him I was glad to help, but that I am probably leaving, and that like the Gustafson's the chance of our colleagues (Fougere) business being a success were slim. Not because the idea is bad, but because of him.

Tomorrow I look forward to a calmer day and perhaps some fishing, and a call to the kids.

I guess I didn't record here that Shel stopped by Monday. She had said that she wanted to organize things. She still has no place and is living with Kathleen. There is much that both of us will have to leave behind-not the least of which are our hearts.

She was pretty angry at first. The issue of money and what bills are due being paramount. We settled that and she calmed a bit, looking stunning with bright blue-green eyes blaring and an adorable short-curly blond hairstyle-my Shel, my child-wife, who can't bear children. Tragedy within a tragedy.

She ate some of my cucumber salad and muffins. I had made cold coffee for her with creamer and sugar as she likes earlier in the day. I had to substitute honey for sugar, and I don't think she liked it so much. I thought it pretty good.

We actually parted on good terms. The one thing that sticks with me during her tirade was that she "wants her husband back". As if I am so different. so far, so much a distant memory. Oh save but one last chance to be a couple-she feels the loss too, but now moves into a new world.

Her world will not be the blissful days of lounging by our pool under the palms, with the smell of ancho chilies drifting on the wind. It will be 6 days a week of work without me.

It seems as Shel as an immigrant here has ended up a bit like my beautiful Russian fish plant girlfriends in Souris. 6 days a week of work and little money, in shared housing, praying for some escape after buying into the dream to live and work in Canada. To some of the girls, if not all I met, Kaliningrad is sounding better and better-to go home. That's a scary determination.

Maybe someday Shel will miss the palms, the chilies, and a real home too. She is part Russian, after all.