All That – and Civility Too

One of the rewards of a summer season at Big Bras d’Or is the opportunity it avails to hang out with young people. We are pleased that even as our best-before date recedes further and further into the dim dark past, nieces and nephews – great-nieces and great-nephews too – seem to feel that a few days at the cabin with Uncle Butt and Auntie Jan is a reward worth the long drive required to collect it. The gratification is that much greater when the young folks – not yet flung into the hormonal cauldron of the teen-aged years – are engaged, civil, considerate and polite.

 

Naomi came for three days with the girls, Hannah and Sara; their stay was a delight from start to finish.

We climbed Coxheath Mountain on a hot day. I would have considered my fitness pretty decent but the steep climb soon reduced my legs to limp spaghetti and had the ancient heart pumping only a little slower than a hummingbird’s. Meanwhile, the youngsters scampered up the hill as if it were a mere pimple. I felt the passage of time.

We paused to study fellow travelers – a toad here, redbelly snake or strange caterpillar there – and appreciate the panoramic vistas availed at the top. I did not object when someone suggested we stop at the summit to rest and ingest granola bars.

Back at the cabin, by popular request, I built a typical Uncle Butt-style bonfire. Cousins Lynn and Louise joined the family circle. We waited patiently for a bed of coals to evolve, tossed water-soaked corncobs – still in their husks – onto the coals then savoured the proceeds rolled in butter. No one grumbled about the payoff.

The cabin porch provides an excellent front-row seat for the annual Kelly’s Cove fireworks display. The show was more dramatic and longer-lasting in 2016 than ever before. After dark the girls sought and got the opportunity to whip the old folks at card games. Naomi and young Sara prevailed at ‘Golf’ (I finished last); Naomi and Hannah won at ‘Hearts’ (I was not in the running). I relished the girls’ savvy and speed and the remarkable range of delighted facial expression Sara displayed at beating the tar out of her old uncle.

It all ended too soon. On the last morning – how strange is this? – the kids wanted a tour of the St. James cemetery to see the tombstones of their ancestors. One by one they contemplated the markers, starting with their great-grandfather, proceeding all the way to the final resting place of their 5Xgreat-grandfather Angus Livingstone, first Scots settler in this part of Cape Breton.

You imagine – a long weekend with kids who were nothing but fun the whole time, and what’s more, genuinely wanted to learn all they could about their forbears. 

Naomi dear, feel free to bring them back whenever you want.