A couple of weeks back I took a road trip. We camped two nights at a pullout off a rural road on L’Ile D’Orleans. Each morning I would climb the six-story wooden watchtower (no idea why it was there–it didn’t seem to be a firetower, it wasn’t manned, the tiny red light which flickered off the top wasn’t bright enough to cut through fog, or seem to do much more than signal to nearby flying objects to avoid the tower).
I spent a long, long time looking out from the top of the tower. It did a lot for me. It had been weeks since I had been able to gaze that far. That landscape was like Teresa Island: I think I could watch it every day of my life, and always feel satisfied. There was so much to see, and the nuances changed by the day and even by the hour. The first morning I just wondered: why is the geology so different on the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence? Why do most of the islands run in long striated lines, and why is L’Ile D’Orleans such a round and fertile farming bump? Which way is north and how is the island actually oriented? What are the white flocks of birds? Are the shimmering green-brown not-so-far-away masses floating in the fleuve just clumps of seaweed? Is it a bank or shoal?
I loved watching the sky. I loved watching the shadows and the movement. One could see the shadows of birds shooting across the fallow fields, the snow just melted (there were no leaves, barely buds on any trees, everything was the colour of mud, mulch, and leftover grass bleached and rotting). I was eye level with the birds. I listened to the geese in the morning, and the crickets. And the early morning farming machinery–already the locals were out tilling, some were starting to plant and then covering the rows with plastic sheeting, to insulate against frost.
My companions had a more lackadaisical approach to camping. I got up at 7 and went for a run in my longjohns (the car was locked, couldn’t get more appropriate wear but luckily my longjohns were black and shiny like running tights) while they slept. I ran down the long rural roads, gazing out at the wide river as I crested the rolls of hills, then dipping down so I could only see the red-brown cliffs and north shore mountains (rugged, arctic, barren still in the first week of may, not a speck of green anywhere). Soon I found myself trotting by a clustering of farm houses, with dogs and kids playing in the yards, gates swung open for tractors to travel, and old men out doddering down the road in their baseball caps and flannel shirts. I stopped to ask one directions. He told me he was from the south shore of the island, had lived their all his life, but now he lived in a sanitorium of sorts. He was proud of himself: he had walked five kilometres yesterday. He told me he had cancer, that he had nearly died the winter before. I wished him health. “It’s not the kind of thing that can be cured,” he said. He spoke matter-of-factly, much as if he was telling me that a frost had killed the lettuce crop. We paused a minute, mulling over his truth, and then the conversation resumed: the road did not circle back to the main road, I could either cut across the fields or retrace my steps.
As we were chatting, another old fella came up and started in on greeting his friend. His speech came out as complete garble. To me, anyways. It was extremely jarring: I had had a conversation with the first old man no problem, but the second one–who actually spoke quite similarly–had an accent, and a slurry of local expressions, so thick that I could make no sense of anything. Of course, this old guy assumed that I understood every word he said, and I smiled and nodded along. After a few short minutes I took off, slapping my feet up the road and over the hill from whence I had arrived.
I felt a little bad just yelling goodbye, not again wishing well to the old fella, but it didn’t seem appropriate at the time.
After my run I again climbed the tower. The sun was much higher, the sky bright blue, the river glinting white and gun-metal grey at certain glimpses in its flow. I came down to have breakfast with everyone, but a part of me wanted to be back above the crowns of trees, looking down on the campground and fields, the ponds and granaries, and out past where the St. Lawrence opens up, wide wide and fluvial — a zone of diadromous drift, where almost an iceberg could float by. So many, peculiar coming-togethers: the north shore harsh, barren and with winds forever gusting; to the south the Appalachians smoothed and glossed, weighted down by millenia of ice, split from the shore by the St. Lawrence lowlands; and of course the river itself, pulsing tides, spindles of salt slipping and mixed deep, the long thin fingers of the gulf breaking open, waiting for the sea to extend its hand.
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