At Bigadore miserable weather perseveres. Every reveille produces the same vista: fog, drizzle, showers, cold, interminable grey. Many days the fog persists all day. The opposite shore of the Great Bras d’Or is but a mile away. Above it vaults Kelly’s Mountain. Frequently the whole day passes without a sight of the mountain. Hummingbirds shiver at the feeder, then topple over from hypothermia. If there is good news it is only this: judging by their absence the blackflies suffer too. The woodstove comforts, provides stored sunshine. Last fall I left the woodshed choked to the rafters with bounteous good fuel: maple, birch, apple. I begin to fear the stockpile will not last through June.
Latin scholars need not have me point out that
Nova Scotia is Latin for New Scotland. The moniker suits. A few years ago Jan and I spent a month in Scotland on the bikes with best buds Mary and Mike. It rained every day but four. The following July, at Big Bras d’Or, the rains fell every day but two. So far June seems hell-bent on shattering the record, on making Old Scotland look good.
Lately I’ve been asked a good question: what is it that keeps me coming back to Big Bras d’Or. A very good question indeed. Blue skies and sunny days seem relics of the past. Feathered and furred wild things hide out from the weather. The binoculars are useless, the camera stays on the shelf. True, we are still far removed from the madding crowd. Of late there are no crowds whatsoever, madding or otherwise.
The more observant among our small gang of loyal readers may have noted in an earlier post that we celebrate Bigadore’s ruby jubilee this year. Forty years have passed since I first set saw to board, hammer to nail. In 1971 I was but 24. My best friend was 77. If Big Charlie were still living he would now be 117, almost the age attained by the incomparable Jeanne Calment. Kitty, my favourite aunt, hated my Shangri-la for precisely the same reason I loved it: at the end of my half mile of narrow winding woodland road it felt like the end of the world. Perfect, I thought. For Kitty it was Hell itself.
My neighbour Sarah Murray McPhail Patterson MacLean –- the world knew her as Sadie -– was a stalwart pal: good kitchen company and never any objection to the outrageous boob squeezes I perpetrated upon her person. Up on MacKenzie Hill Wally and Edith took pity on me once in a while, gave me a feed of cod and boiled potatoes. Now they are all gone. Every one.
Over the years Bigadore has availed an endless stream of projects. Never was I heard to say, ‘There is nothing to do.’ Over a string of fall weekends in 1974 I raced the 250 miles from Halifax in the wee smalls of Saturday morning, raced back on Sunday evening. With twelve hours of work each day I soon had my screened-in porch, still the best place on earth to achieve a good sleep. For a quarter century starting in ’75, whilst toiling in my Victoria saltmine, I had to make do with a month a year, always August. Emancipation in 1999 brought about a building boom: the sunroom in ’02, bathhouse in ’03, workshop in ’06. Along the way there interior improvements too: fridge, proper woodstove, skylights, cabinets, a bit of paint here and there. Not everyone appreciated the changes. But they would if it was four months they spent at the cabin rather than a few days.
Forty years will change a fellow’s perspective a tad. It isn’t novelty that brings me back, or a change in the cast of wild things that share the old place with us. No new buildings clamour that I pick up hammer and saw. Is it ghosts that draw me back? If ghosts are real -– many Cape Bretoners insist they are -– there must be a good number of them hanging about.
Back in 1971 I had a stretch in a Halifax hospital. A fellow patient, George Murray, taught me the rudiments of house framing. Ted Squires, himself a fine carpenter, supplemented the instruction. I left the hospital in April, came to Cape Breton, dismantled the derelict house then standing at Bigadore and, using hand tools only, framed the cabin in three weeks.
My great-uncle Harrison –- great in more ways than one –- insisted that it was the best thing I could possibly have done, that I saved my life by doing so. George, Ted, Harrison -- all of them now ghosts themselves.
Is it ghosts that bring me back, or merely habit? Perhaps I’ll wait to see whether the sun ever shows itself again before venturing an answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment