October

This time of year is very special to me here on the island. Sometimes we would fore go a summer trip to the maritimes and wait for fall. In those years, we would usually stay at Indian Brook on Bras D'or on Cape Breton Island. Then, often reluctantly, we would spend some time here on this island.

The wonderful colours of the Cabot Trail, the warm people...the crisp air and maybe some fresh mackerel and blueberries made for a wonderful time before the the trip back to the desert. Then, I would bake or fry fish, make blueberry pie and enjoy our rented house along the shores of Bras D'or. Here we usually stayed at Cavendish near the park in a little old-fashioned motel cabins called the White Eagle, in the National park here.

Summerside then was a side trip then. Now it is my home. I am fully integrated here now with new friends and interests, but at time I am still introduced as "my Yankee friend".

Fishing has been less productive than in August, but i have gone to the wharf less these past few weeks. The weather has been unusually mild, but the chill approaches now as the tropical lows go past and the arctic highs arrive. The leaves are colouring and the birds seem anxious to depart for warmer climes as the sun goes lower and lower, and spirits wain for the approach of winter.

There has been little word from my remaining family except for the occasional "facebooking". It seems letters and phone calls are out of date, and that is where people socialize and chat now. I danced with Mary last night and we were to go to supper tonight..Chinese is the tradition...but there has been no word so I assume the date is off. Today marks our two year anniversary as a defunct couple. It is too bad too, as I was looking forward to it.

I almost just left yesterday. No place in mind, I just thought I would head East and stay in a hotel, maybe all the way to Cape Breton and eat blueberries and mackerel. But I decided against it and I am not sure why. Having the ability to go anywhere one wants is not always a reason to do it. Go to the airport and fly to the snowy Rockies, or just drive. A decision unmade again as it has been for me this time of year here.

Thus, I await an inspiration, a reason..raison d'etra". But fishing and a new month and week appear and I remain. placed in time along the beaches of memory, a place that love seems beyond the reaches.

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?

Warm Rain to Cool Blast

The cliche that time rushes past seems apt today. I was thinking of nearly flying along the highway in my corvette between Grover, Colorado and Carpenter, Wyoming. It was the fastest I had driven a four wheeled vehicle then. We hit about 135 MPH. My then young brother-in-law was with me. The low prairie hills seeming to rush up and into a clear sky, the other side uncertain. Up and down. The Vette's fiberglass body seeming to float as the sixth gear could pull no more speed with that gear ratio and horsepower. What a rush.

Now I prepare to leave my island home for an undetermined time-perhaps for always. That seems unlikely but I can't see over the hill as the wind rushes past beyond the now security of my little harbourside apartment. There is a woman here who loves me deeply. There is another lost to the world beyond my reach who I love eternally but in vain.

Shel has said she is coming to get her remaining things soon. I have given my notice to my patient landlord that I must head South with the flocks now ahead of me to see my teenage children and sister. Leaving the women behind, my new social group-as flawed as it is, as well as the ocean vista, is painful. I feel I could relapse anytime and await the winter blow and snow piles-The driving maritime ice storms and warm hearts.

But all illusions end this way. Passage into and out of this torrent of time is but for the memories taken as are the breaths of fading lilac-scented breezes and the hint of deep true long lasting joy and suffering. Life is about loss and how it is dealt with in the turmoil that is a human soul. Grounded in my loves and stories of past glory-that fleets and ebbs with my harbour tides.

But what an honest and beautiful effort that has been made. In no way do I regret my awfully early retirement and mission to the island. Now after all it is home. I dance with my Mary each weekend. She makes island fishcakes as lovingly as my mother baked bread or taught me to love what is real and natural. Somewhere along this road of years I became a romantic dreamer. Lost in that which is the finest to hold and the most painful to lose. But what a driven glory.

I know now the deep sadness and rural hardships that shape the lives of those who feel imprisoned in this paradise. In the telling of life journey to my friends here I see the blankness of longing-the unknowing as if the words and images of my life are so strange that they are sometimes unsure and afraid. I have learned the dialect. I have learned the food and the joy of an ocean harvest and the bounty of of a place that is an Eden. So my wife was right to fall so far and deeply in passionate embrace to this place in the sea.

In my own heart the wanderlust of a thousand journeys takes root again. The long path back to reality and another country to the rush and crowds that toil for that which I have lost or simply left behind as worthless trappings of a vacant life.

So times sweeps on with me as the unsettled passenger. As across the prairie grasses in that angry red chariot of my overfunded impious youth. Look forward and not to the rear says the driver. She has no need for the luscious safety of the past. Its soft security darkened as the red-mud surf of my beach at Green's Shore is during the unrelenting harsh January blow across the ice filled bay.

No time to waste now. Only to collect the fragments that remain of here and her, and her. I only hope at full throttle someone hasn't just pulled out ahead of me over the next rise. I won't be able to stop.