the walk in the woods

I was waiting in line yesterday for the H1N1 flu shot. It was a beautiful sunny day, the wind was brisk but the sky was blue and true behind the golden yellow trees.

"Did you hear about that girl that was attacked by the coyotes?" The man in front of me turned around to make conversation. It was, after all, 11 am and the clinic wouldn't open until 12. Not to mention there were sixty people ahead of us already.

I must have wrinkled my brow in confusion. I had definitely NOT heard about a girl being attacked by coyotes.

"Up in the highlands," he said. "On that Skyline trail. They flew her to Halifax, and apparently she passed away this morning."

Now, the Skyline trail is probably THE most well-travelled hiking trail in the Cape Breton Highlands. It's mostly flat, wheelchair accessible, and it takes you right out onto a gorgeous and dramatic ridge, where you look out over the highland plateau, the ocean and down the shore to Cheticamp. Also, there is a very good chance that you will see a moose up close - they are thick in those parts of the park. Because of its accessibility and popularity, until this moment, I had not really considered this hiking trail as actual WILDERNESS.

After all, I was there myself only a month ago. By myself, like this girl was. And on the hike in and back out again, I passed people every two minutes or so. Even in the fall, this is a well-travelled hike.

As we waited in line for the flu shot, the air cool but the sun shining on us, I asked the man about it. Nothing else was known, really. Just that the young woman had been hiking by herself, that some other hikers came across her and somehow got the coyotes away, and then later when the RCMP arrived, that one of the coyotes was shot. That the woman was airlifted to Halifax, and then passed away this morning.

"That's crazy," I kept saying, and thinking. "Coyotes don't attack people!"

I waited in the line. We chatted about other things. Eventually we got in the door and into the organized chaos of the vaccination clinic. Kids crying, nervous adults rolling up their own sleeves, the nurses holding the vials up in front of them as they extracted the vaccine into countless needles. I got my own shot done - the whole time still debating to myself whether I was doing the right thing or not - and then sat for 15 minutes to make sure there wouldn't be an adverse reaction.

I went back to work. I talked about the flu clinic and the coyote attack with my co-workers. We all shook our heads in wonder and shock. And then I finished my lunch and went back to my computer, where I looked up the latest on the story. I found out the woman's name, and that she was a young folk singer just starting her East Coast tour. She had wanted a short hike and some time to herself. How familiar does that sound? That was me, just a month ago. Exact same hiking trail. Not a whole lot older.

What happened up there? Did the coyotes have rabies? Why did they come close to a human and then actually attack her? I hope we find out. I love coyotes - to me they are the voice of the wilderness. When I hear them yipping and calling at night, my heart thrills. They are so intelligent, so resilient. The harder humans try to kill them, the more they survive, even thrive. So we need to know what happened in this freak accident, so that we don't live in fear of going into wild spaces. So that we can be better informed when we visit the wilderness. So that we don't act only out of fear, and do harm to other members of the species, when it was only two animals whose motivation we don't yet know.

This whole thing makes me sad. I'm sad for Taylor Mitchell's family and friends, for whom this has happened so suddenly. One day has made this awful difference, taking from them their lovely friend, who was just starting out her life, really. I'm sad for the Skyline trail, which will now forever have this mark on it. I'm sad for the coyotes, and for the wild predators in general - too long people have considered them only as vicious creatures that kill anything nearby, when in reality they are sophisticated, wise, generous and fascinating.

This whole thing continues to be jarring. Disarming. It doesn't make sense. After all, I have lived my whole life in Cape Breton, taking many hikes in the woods, in wild spaces. I walk on a dirt road through wilderness, nearly every day. I have seen moose, deer, raccoons, foxes, even the odd bear. I have only seen a coyote once in my whole life. And, when it sensed I was there, it took off, melting back into the trees.

How I wish those two coyotes had done so, two days ago.

who ya gonna call?

Well, it's November again!

And that exclamation point is about all the excitement I can muster.

I have to admit I am suffering from a bad case of "bad news": a dear professor of mine from St. Thomas was killed just before the weekend. There is a link at the bottom of this post to a CBC article detailing what the police have released about the case, and which also talks about Professor John McKendy's life as a worker for peace. It's a terrible tragedy all around.

Compounding my sadness is a general exhaustion due to a busy weekend, which, although wonderful, brought more emotional strain. Suffice it to say: I'm beat. I need retreat.

However, there are still good things. There is a new dart board in my life - and let's face it, what every woman needs is a good dart board. Mum brought home some half-price cheese and chocolate from a local deli that closes every winter. Also, as well as plenty of crying, I've been doing lots of laughing. There's something about doing lots of crying that also loosens my "humour muscles", and so I get silly.

Which is why, when I woke up this morning and changed my calender to November, I saw the drawing and immediately decided on captions for it. Once I'd made them, it was only a matter of photographing it (because there's very little that happens in the run of a day that I do NOT photograph, haha), and sharing it with you.

(Incidentally, this photo also provides a great example of a script typeface, and I don't mean my own handwriting. Yes, that's right, I'm still mad for fonts!)

To Grandmaman, from whom this calender was a gift, many years ago: I hope you don't mind my defacing the illustration. It was for my sanity.

I hope you are all well. And if you're going through something rough, may you deface a calender, and enjoy it.


***


For more details about John McKendy's life and death, see the following article:

"RCMP close case in Fredericton professor's slaying."

this was the summer that was

Oh, computer troubles. How you plague me! Seriously, I don't think anyone besides me is actually interested in the boring play-by-play of my computer troubles, and even I'M not all that interested. The short version: Old Desktop was working again, but has bit the dust, although who knows for how long, and New Laptop was sent back for repairs, even though it worked properly for everything BUT connecting to dial-up Internet. Unfortunately, that's all we have out here, at least for now, so that one frustrating flaw means no laptop until it comes back. And even though I have great faith in my Computer Guy, when he says "It'll be a week!" that tends to mean, "It'll be a month!"

So without either Old Desktop or New Laptop in service, my options become:

• Use the High-Speed computers at either the IT Center or the Library, and in order to do so, either bike 6 km both ways, or finagle a ride into town; OR
• Use Mum's (admittedly, given to us for free) Really Old, Slow Desktop, and do the bare minimum of Internet work.

Even if I had a working computer here at home that went as fast as I wanted it to, or at least, as fast as dial-up would permit, I have to admit that I'm getting tired of the Internet. Now, I know, there are many great things about the Internet, so please don't leave irate comments in my comments box. But it's also a vast time-suck, especially when most of the time, what I'm doing is puttering around on Facebook.

So there are the computer troubles. And there is the fact that a lot of the time, I don't want to sit at the computer for longer than 10 or 15 minutes, a length of time which isn't very conducive to writing blog posts. But no matter — here I am, at present.

The summer, at least that part of it defined by an academic school year, is nearly over. Next week is Mat's last at work, and then we're heading to the Annapolis Valley to take him back to school. August, as usual, feels like something to be survived rather than enjoyed, with so many things going on that one must practice the art of assertiveness in order to get any time to oneself. But assertiveness does take practice, so perhaps August serves a purpose.

The Olympics are nearly over, and my intake of them has been mostly on CBC Radio, which is how I hear about most world news, including, this summer, clips about Barack Obama and John McCain, Georgia and South Ossetia, Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, and hurricanes in Florida. The Olympics aren't entirely my thing, but I did watch some of the coverage when I house-sat a friend's home for a weekend, and it was interesting, if not entertaining. What has been the most interesting to me about all of it, is when I hear the athletes talk about what goes through their minds before, during and after an event. I'm nowhere near Olympic-athlete level (as if that even has to be said!), but I do really enjoy physical activity, and get a lot out of it. And I'm also pretty conscious of my own thoughts and emotions (again, as if THAT even needs saying), so when I hear the Olympians talking about what it's like for them to go through this, it's a way for me to relate.

(Although, I will always prefer Coronation Street to the Olympics. Always.)

This has been the summer to take more bike rides, to get my bike (named "Rocinante" after Don Quixote's horse) properly tuned up by a man who does that sort of thing, and to buy a bike basket for the front of it, into which I put a baguette or two. Actually, I haven't yet transported a baguette in my bike basket, but I have used it to carry my water bottle and towel, on beach excursions.

It's been the summer to think more seriously about committing to Cape Breton, and to think about how I might make a living here, long-term. It's been the summer to daydream about getting my own piece of land, either with an old house already on it, or my building a new house. The daydream usually goes on to include me welcoming a good friend or three into my house, and showing them my peaceful and beloved patch of land. I figure that if you sort out what you want, even if it's nowhere near happening yet, then you're more alert when pieces of the dream start to come your way. And that way, you can start to make it a reality.

And it's been the summer of topsy-turvy weather, with hot, hot heat in July, turning into cold, wet drizzle for nearly three weeks in August, and now giving us a stretch of three or four days of sunshine and a high UV index. So what that means is that now, after spending abut an hour online, I'm heading to the water. I'm practicing both the art of assertiveness and my Olympian Dog Paddle.

women rock!

So International Women's Day is tomorrow, the 8th of March, and it's a good way to follow up my last post, which was about my grandmother, Isabel. Now, I don't think Granny ever self-identified as a feminist, but she was a strong woman, and stories about women doing well pleased her. Mind you, she was from a different generation, and her advice to me for possible careers often focussed on being a nurse or a teacher, but you do have to place this into context. Born in 1923, Granny was my age (23) in 1946, a totally different era than today.

As I'm a feminist and a general, all-around supporter of women, I've got a nice holiday goodie bag for you in this post! I'm going to tell you about my rise to "national radio superstardom", as well a book I read lately by and for fierce women, which should get you in the mood to celebrate.

First up: how Cosmo and "va-jay-jay" got me on a national radio show! Well, sort of.

I was listening to Q the other day, the national radio show in question. It's hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, who is a fabulous guy from what I can tell, and he's pretty cute to boot, so naturally I'm besotted with him. He hosts the show every weekday from 2 until 3:30, and covers arts, entertainment, culture and other interesting things.

On Tuesday, he was interviewing the playwright Eve Ensler, the woman behind "The Vagina Monologues", as well as V-Day, and I loved the whole interview. I mean, I love a lot of the interviews on Q, and when Jamie Oliver was being interviewed I even had to lie down on the couch because I was so taken by it, but this one, well, this one was right up my alley. Ensler talked about how women's bodies are a battle zone, how being able to say "vagina" in public has increased as a result of her momentous monologues, and spoke about her international work and the lessons she has learned about what war does to women. And then Jian Ghomeshi asked her about the latest Cosmo cover.

I've since been given a copy of the March '08 Cosmo, which features the pop star Rihanna with a smug — or is that seductive? — look on her face, one hand hooked under the strap of her canary-yellow minidress as if to take it off, the other hand pulling the hem of her skirt up her thigh. The dress is already pretty revealing, with a low bustline, and all over the cover are tantalizing story titles like "Sex He Has Alone", "21 Naughty Sex Tips: Tonight, Treat Him To Some Boundary-Pushing Sex That Good Girls Only Dream Of", and the one that made it onto Q: "Your Va-Jay-Jay: Fascinating New Facts About Your Lovely Lady Parts."

It's the use of "Va-jay-jay" that Eve Ensler called "sad". I'm paraphrasing here, but her thoughts on the new buzzword are that it's a kiddie word, like "coochie", something a little kid says, the kind of euphemism that grown women have used for a long time because they were too ashamed or disempowered to stand tall and proud and use the proper term: vagina. Now, she added, if you're in the bedroom with your lover and you want to use that word, it's none of her business — as is anything people do during lovemaking in a safe situation. But using the word on the cover of a magazine, even though it's "hip" and Oprah says it, is like reverting to kiddie talk, and it teaches other women to be ashamed, as well.

Mind you, I don't find it at all surprising. I mean, Cosmo is not exactly the most feminist or empowered publication out there. But I do find it disturbing. This magazine has so much power, and so many women read it, especially young women and girls, that it's teaching a whole new generation that being strong and proud of the word "vagina" is not cool, not colorful and sexy, but "va-jay-jay", well, that's on the cover of a magazine. Sexuality is pushed in our faces on the cover of this magazine, but it's not an empowered sexuality, it's sexuality that can't quite say the right words, that regularly calls women "chicks" and emphasizes "your guy's needs."

Well, I didn't just sit there. I wrote Q a letter. It went like this:

Hello Jian,

Thanks so much for having Eve Ensler on the show Tuesday!

She's so thought-provoking, and I loved her analogy of New Orleans as the "vagina of America".

Her work is timely and necessary, and has deeply affected my growth both as a twenty-something feminist and as a proud owner of a vagina. However, this "new-fangled" feminism is up against a real cultural monolith, as evidenced by the Cosmo cover and everything it symbolizes. Yes, sexual freedom is part of feminism, but so is the strength to call one's "lady bits" by her proper name. Once more, everyone — say it with me: vagina!

I'm a big fan of the show, so please keep up the fantastic work.

Leah Noble
The wilds of Cape Breton

And then, the very next day, Jian Ghomeshi proclaimed my letter the letter-of-the-day. I was pretty dang thrilled hearing his honeyed voice reading my words, and even more so when friends from all over the country sent me messages and emails saying they'd heard the letter on air! Mind you, even though I'm a feminist, I'm also conditioned by my culture and I'm not completely comfortable going "vagina vagina vagina!" on national radio, but hey, I guess someone has to do it. And that someone might as well be me.

So that's the story of how I became a national radio superstar. And no, I don't do autographs.




In the spirit of Women's Day, here is a book I'd recommend racing to the nearest library or bookstore to collect.

"How to Live Alone and Like It", by Marjorie Hillis, was originally published in 1936, and re-bound and published in 2005 by Virago Press (a subsidiary of Time-Warner). This book bills itself as "The Classic Guide for the Single Woman", and when I first picked it up I didn't realize its vintage, and thought it was a modern book, written in the last five years or so. It's small, it looks slick, and I had no real reason to think otherwise. However, once I turned it over and saw "A 1936 Bestseller" written on the back, well, I was doubly intrigued.

In the preface, Lisa Hilton writes,

"Live Alone and Like It is a joyful reminder that feminism wasn't just about hunger strikes and bra burning... Demure though some of the advice might be, as in the chapter on affairs entitled "Will You Or Won't You?" (which concludes, rather darkly, that 'the woman always pays'). Live Alone is nevertheless suffused with a sense of exuberance at the thrilling possibilities then open to women for the first time."

Not to mention, Hillis is quite funny, though practical. Chapter 1, "Solitary Refinement", starts:

"This book is no brief in favor of living alone. Five out of ten of the people who do so can't help themselves, and at least three of the others are irritatingly selfish. But the chances are that at some time in your life, possibly only now and then between husbands, you will find yourself settling down to a solitary existence."

This solitary existence is what Hillis goes on to describe and ultimately, prescribes the methods which will add the most enjoyment to it. A single lady needs to make her own entertainment, needs to realistically visualize herself as happy rather than sad (otherwise other people will see her as gloomy, and then where will she be?), should have several passionate interests, even if on a shoestring, furnish her home to make herself comfortable (again, even if on a budget) and in general, be practical, but also indulge in her favorite pleasures, like a nice comfy bed.

"It is probably true that most people have more fun in bed than anywhere else, and we are not being vulgar. Even going to bed alone can be alluring. There are many times, in fact, when it's by far the most alluring way to go. Whether you agree with this or not, you have to go to bed at least once every twenty-four hours, and you will have to keep right on going as long as you live."

This is the kind of advice that makes perfect sense both in 1936 and in 2008, which is why this snappy little book is a must-read for anyone intending to live alone, or simply "between husbands".


And at the end of the day, even though feminists no longer identify themselves in the public eye by foregoing certain beauty habits, it gives me a certain kind of joy to see Julia Roberts flashing her hairy armpit. May we all see such images more often, and remember that it's normal.

And with that, I wish you a Happy International Women's Day!

"we interrupt the intended broadcast to bring you this news..."

I know, I said I would bring you a piece on Catriona's cooking, and that's coming next. But I heard this today on Maritime Noon and it was too good not to share:

"There are other areas that are more grey--I call them grey areas..."

This wonderful piece of clarification is attributed to one Dave Sulas, a retired bank manager living in Port Hawkesbury, NS, who was being interviewed on the subject of bank tellers being shafted out of pay they are owed. When I heard him utter this line I had to laugh and write it down. And then I had to share it with all of you. I mean, maybe the guy was nervous to be on radio, so it's not entirely his fault. But it still cracks me up.

Other than that, these days I'm doing alright. The garden is starting to flesh out, or rather, green out, and all the trees around are putting out leaves. The gully between our house and the neighbouring property is now fully green, whereas in winter you can see right across. When I go for my daily walks, I smell the scent of Indian pear and wild cherry trees, which are blooming this time of year. There is a plant in the garden with tiny, clove-scented yellow flowers, and when I smell it I go right back to Australia: the Cashmans' back yard in the Australian spring (Fall here), when the air is full of the scent of flowering trees, often clove-scented like these wee flowers. It's amazing how scent does that!

I've got a few books on the go, one of which is "1491: New Revelations on America Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann. It's a semi-scholarly work, but it pulls the reader in and rolls right along. Have any of you heard of it, or read it? What did you think? I'm only 50 pages in, so I can't comment completely, but it's a summary of the research of the past 20 years that is constructing a whole new picture of the Americas before Europeans--very complex societies, and a diverse history. Which makes total sense when you think about it, but hasn't been the picture taught in European and modern North American schools until recently.

And now I'm going to balance it with Leah McLaren's new book, "The Continuity Girl", thanks to dear Janice, who saw it in the grocery store line-up and thought of me. Lovely! Chick lit or fine literature? That's what I call a grey area.

taking it out on the tub

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned—and scouring. My bathroom finds this out every time I go through a break-up, and it doesn’t seem to matter how the end of the affair went, whether it was amicable, acerbic, mutual, mean or misled, there is always something to channel into my scrubbing arm, which happens to be my right.

So it was that I found myself this afternoon, listening to DNTO on CBC, on my knees by the bathtub, rubber gloves on to the elbow, Comet all over the place, scrubbing to beat the band. Rather, to clean all the gunk and grime off the tub surface. Funny how it’s hard to find the time to clean the bathroom when you’re happily ensconced in classes and a busy social life, and how it all waits patiently for you until the day when those things no longer weigh you down (or, for those of you who are still doing those things, until the day when you can no longer stand it). Tub gunk isn’t going anywhere, and it tells you that in no uncertain terms as it laughs at you while you scrub. But tub gunk doesn’t know what I’ve got up my sleeve, the most powerful cleaning agent of them all—recent singledom.

Now, I should stop here and say that this is not going to be an out-of-character, airing-of-my-dirty-laundry post. I never have done something like that and I never will—the public domain of the Internet is no place for delicates. Heck, my own clothesline hardly is. I’m only saying that I broke up with someone, which most of you know by now, and if you didn’t know, it probably doesn’t matter all that much to you anyway. The point is not with who, although if you have been reading this for the past few months you’ll have a guess, or how it all went down, but rather that it has been my experience through my long twenty-two years of life that each time I go through a break-up, the bathroom sparkles suspiciously soon after.

It truly is amazing to me how the emotions of a break-up, or of any sort of slight, can fuel the physical actions of the human body. I remember last summer, on a day a bit like this one (i.e. the sort of day women get every 28 or so when all we want to do is eat chocolate and pummel inanimate objects), going for a speedwalk (don’t laugh, if I were to jog, my already-out-of-whack joints would get abused and take it out on me later) and it was raining, a light mist. I was out on a dirt road in the middle of the woods in Cape Breton, a Nalgene bottle full of water in either hand, pumping along for all I was worth, yelling out obscenities into the soft, wet evening. These obscenities were directed at previous boyfriends, and my body was directed straight up the side of a very steep hill, most efficiently.

As I was cleaning, I thought a bit about break-ups. How we work like hell to keep them from happening, but they, like anything else we consider an accident, are an inevitable part of life. This doesn’t make anything about them any more fun, but maybe, like stubbing your toe, the knowledge that the pain will pass makes it a little easier to bear. And like other unexpected demises, oddly enough, some good does come from them. I like to think of it as the “tree dying in the woods” phenomenon: tree dies, tree rots, things grow out of it. There aren’t many things prettier in the woods than coming upon an old, mossy carcass of a fallen giant, covered in new growths. Likewise, we never know what beautiful thing is going to happen to us in life as a result of a choice or a turn in the road that’s happening now.

One thing I do know: my bathroom is gorgeous, for the first time in a while. That one is pretty easy to trace. Also, hold off on the sympathy: I’m fine and I have lots of chick flicks, Maeve Binchy novels and, yes, cleaning products. Instead of concerned comments, however, you could leave your thoughts on your personal breakup remedies. What comfort has stood the test of time, when your relationship didn’t? Also, if you think this topic is a little too personal for the World Wide Web, despite my best efforts to make it as general as possible, feel free to tell me...I am interested in how I come across to you, my readers known and unknown. Just don't break up with me! Leave your comments, no matter what they're about. Let's communicate about this.

the drama! the drama!

So while I'm resting up and making sure I get better, I've also been taking daily trips to a favorite pub of mine, the Rovers Return. I'll admit, I wasn't always a fan of Coronation Street, but now that I have the time to commit to this relationship, I'm finding it quite rewarding. I'm not at the point yet where I know everyone's name, or who's done what to whom, but I've been watching for a few weeks now, and I find it's the most realistic soap opera I've ever watched. However, since I know "reality" (that pesky bugger) isn't really why people watch soaps, I should mention as well that like Days or Passions, Corrie has a high quantity of the following:

1. Catfights.
2. Convoluted relationships.
3. Interwoven story lines.
4. Cute people in nice clothes.

However, where it differs from the daytime "stories" is in the following:

1. The sets look at least a little realistic, since they're on a great big set in England.
2. There are some people who are "normal"--as in, old, or fat, or ugly, or just plain different from the tall, white, thin norm on other soaps.
3. The stories aren't just to do with sex, backstabbing, and betrayal. Yes, there's a lot of that, too, but there is also the kid who is pretending he was bullied at school so that he can stay home and do nothing, the baker whose business is going under and whose daughter tries to save it, and the grandfather who has to move, again, to name only a few of the ones I've seen since I started watching.
   

Marlo and I have been watching it together and it's great fun to exclaim to each other about the actions of Charlie Stubb (am I spelling that right, Tracy?) and the snotty kid David. And then there's the haunting strains of its theme music. I always associated this show with older women from Cape Breton, who know way too much about the storylines and gossip the same way about their hometown as they do about the show--which is to say, copiously. And I always thought, "I will never end up like them, enraptured by the goings-on of a fake British community, how plebeian!" But I guess the lesson here is, never say never. And, never break into your ex-boyfriend's flat to make sure his new girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter isn't in danger, because it will come back to bite you in the end. Because your ex-boyfriend is a psycho, didn't you learn that the first time?

As Kathy Kerr used to say (and probably still does, I'm just not there to hear it), when we'd catch an episode of Corrie together, in a voice that sounded like it had heard it all, "The drama, the drama!"

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion the CBC shows Corrie some episodes behind the BBC. Does anyone know if that's true or not?

So, until the day when I make it over to England and take a tour on the set lot, I'll have to settle for watching Corrie, 7 PM on the good old Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and talking about it with "you lot". You get extra points for using British-isms. And you know I'm serious when I say points--I follow through with prizes!