Sunday, May 18, 2003

I've reached Entrelacs, which is just above Chertsey, which is just above Rawdon. I haven't had much sleep but I'm somehow doing just fine, and I went for breakfast with Uncle Simon and his little boy, and then took the bus here to Arnie and Anne Moore's home, which is where Claire lives. Joe, her boyfriend, is visiting as well. It's an old farmhouse right on a lake, taken apart piece by piece by Anne's father and hauled via Bombardier to the current site; you can still see blue numbers on it where he labelled it. "It was like one big Lincoln Log set," Anne said. After having dinner (eaten out on the porch overlooking the lake and hill beyond) and after doing the dishes, I sat in the rowboat, still tied to the dock, and put my feet up on the front bench and looked and looked at the lake. The whole thing was a massive indigo, like thick drippy oil paint, light reflecting in deep blue off the ripples caused by Daniel throwing the inner tube with gusto into the water. Joe caught a fish by casting right from the dock; he washed the guts out right there. The place where we're staying (we being the three of us, Claire, Joe and I) is a little cabin about a minute's walk up the dirt road from the main house, and I walked it in my bare feet tonight, peepers singing in the inlet nearby. I haven't felt so close to Cape Breton (in more than one way) in a long time, and I wonder if I want to go home at all. Things will be the same, won't they, and will I too revert to my former, untravelled self? But that's the fear I have in my moment of weakness, and then I look at the people here and the proof they are of the preciousness of life, and then I think that things will really be OK. And really, I'm doing fine, I just miss certain things, certain smells, certain folk.

I'm happy though, happy and well-fed and well-loved. And Claire has promised me a back-rub later.

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