Lessons from Boys

This week a pair of youngsters delivered fresh perspective on the attractions of summer at Bigadore. Theo and Luca, not yet 6 and 3 respectively, came for a two-day stay with Mum and Dad.

Once upon a time—long, long ago—I too was 6 but that was when Louis St. Laurent was Canada’s prime minister and you could get a new car for $700. I hardly remember. To watch young boys figure out, instantly, what are the major charms hereabouts is to have cataracts removed and memories defogged.

Young girls periodically also do us the honour of paying a visit and they have their own lessons to offer as to what is valuable and what not.  But in my experience young girls do not spend much of a day rolling and rassling about like grizzly cubs nor, when they find themselves at the mouth of Bob’s brook, commence instantly to constructing dams and bridges.

Among the amenities we lack at Big Bras d’Or is a trampoline. But we do have a skookum Lee Valley hammock that the laddies quickly and comprehensively determined would serve every bit as well. Snakes, spiders, centipedes and sowbugs seem endlessly fascinating to a boy—as they still are to a few 67-year-olds—and we have a bountiful supply of them all just outside the door. They boys reminded me that a mason jar furnished with litter of greenery makes an excellent place to study the habits of an inch-worm.

In the coals of a little bonfire we roasted wieners and marshmallows—Luca insisting of course on being his own cook. What could possibly be better fun? I’d forgotten that one of the cabin’s holdings is a boys’ Meccano set. Once spotted, and before you could say ‘Here’s some fun’, the Meccano contents were on the floor and assembly of a construction crane well underway.

Eying Bob Nagel’s new walking stick, the urchins thought it desirable to have shillelaghs of their own. They soon did, debarked by none but themselves.

Now into my fifth decade as a summertime denizen of these parts, I love the place as well as I ever did, but here’s an admission: sometimes I am distracted by the goings-on in Ukraine or Gaza or Nigeria—listening to World Report I allow the mind to wander—and I forget what counts most around these parts. You know, the rusting hulk of the old pickup up the way, the taste of fresh-picked blueberries, the fascination of dead jellyfish down at the old swimmin’ hole.