Revelation

First comes the ploy,

then the narrative spin.

Revelation scatters the pigeons

and revisionism rushes in.

Spring Fever

Can we please....?

.... just turn around,

look beyond our noses,

beyond imagining, dreaming,

and get on with doing...

dinner parties, family picnics,

messing about with friends,

musical concerts, partisan crowds,

noise, applause, frenzied excitement,

gawping at volcanoes, 

waterfalls, the green ray, 

sipping margaritas, the sun sinking

into vermilion ocean,

bustling markets, full-faced smiles,

bawling with laughter

at badly-told jokes in poor taste,

holding hands, bear hugs, loving glances.

Let's put this year of winter behind us,

open our hearts and eyes,

smell the roses,

and live, for each other.

It is Spring, high time 

to see some green shoots, 

listen to the wind,

for the world is born anew.

Becalmed

Becalmed

Ah, to slip softly

into that stilled summer sea,

to glide away, swimming

midst silky seaweeds,

to let sundry stresses

seep away from the skin

as the salty tang

cleanses, energizes.

The rising sun sparkles,

the fresh water becalms.

Serenade to the Stars

The earth lets loose a forlorn flood of tears,

Human lives founder on elemental fears.

The world we knew not solid as it seems,

Eyes open now from puffy clouds of dreams.

They look up to the stark night sky ablaze

To marvel at that arcing trail, the Milky Way;

Mercury glows dimly beside bold Mars

As the pond's spring peepers serenade the stars.

Cocooning At Home - All Together Now!

Here we are, on this blustery grey day of pelting rain, cocooned at home. It is a great day to be so cocooned; we have power and so heat and light, we have food supplies, we have our cosy home, communication with the outside world, and our magnificent view out over the cove to the open Atlantic beyond is still there, albeit a litlle blurry through the rain-streaked windows. In truth, it is always a great day to be cocooned at home. With the weathers forever in flux, the scene is constantly changing. Tomorrow will be such a revelation when the sun comes out again and the light shimmers on the water and the snow dazzles with effusive brilliance. We will step outside and inhale the fresh salty, seaweedy tang on the breeze.

In truth, we have been cocooning for decades, sheltering from the ill winds that blow in the turmoil of gathering storms. For a decade, we escaped the city by cocooning in rented homes on the Niagara Escarpment; for two decades, we escaped the encroaching populace of the Golden Horseshoe by cocooning in our first purchased home - a farm on 55 acres, no less, tucked away in the Northumberland Hills; and then we escaped encroaching industrial agriculture by selling the farm and buying a smaller home on the Atlantic Ocean on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Further east we cannot go without falling into the sea, and so here it is that we will cocoon for the coming decades, without losing our social spirit. One year is almost in the books already. We had not envisaged missing the community of friends and fellowship in the hills as we do, but we will make amends by visiting when circumstances are more conducive. 

We are still getting to know community around here and remind ourselves that it took many years to establish strong social bonds in Ontario. Cape Breton Island is of a size that encourages cultural and social interaction as well as appreciation of beauty in nature and the great outdoors. A nascent local community built around food and farming is a very timely development in this time of cocooning. With so many people at home, it is vital that farmers and producers step up to service their local community by providing fresh, wholesome food close to cocoons. Wild animals live within a territory or environmental niche. Butterflies forage for food and produce their honey within a small localized area. We should adapt their ways!

The present cocooning of an entire populace in each community, region, in most countries is an unprecedented, extraordinary effort to protect health by containing the spread of contagion. Perversely - from our cocoons - it draws us together in common cause. By and large, we get it, grasping that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For once in our lives, we all get to pull together in mutual aid, by helping those less able to look after themselves. Forget the survival of the fittest of neo-Darwinism; Darwin knew very well that our survival is more a question of adaptation than of competition. There will be casualties and fallout. Many among us will be ill, many around the world will die, and many things we took for granted will be wiped off the menu, almost overnight, never to return. Not to be under-estimated, this will be an extended, vital change in our lives that will test our resolve, one that, nonetheless, should be embraced with compassion, civility... and cocooning. All together now.

The White House, Margaree

If pictures could tell stories...

then I would love to hear the history of this white farmhouse, located right off the Cabot Trail in the lower Margaree Valley, just south of Fordview. The views across the broad river valley are sumptuous, especially with a full colour array of fall foliage. The sculptured old apple tree laden with plump red fruit raises her outstretched arms skyward as if in proclamation, perhaps in anguish. 

The river glides on by as it has always done in its patient path to the embracing sea. One would never guess from the far vantage point over the other side of the valley toward the house that it now stands abandoned, in disrepair, moulding, sagging, fraying, creaking. The mountainsides it is sheltered by stand sturdy, strong, ablaze with autumnal vigour.

What merriment rang out in the dining room in Thanksgivings and Christmases past? What joy was beheld by the pastoral prospects? What spirited ghosts inhabit the wood-panneled bedrooms? What foods did they grow and what animals roamed the barnyard?

The bumpy backroads of Margaree (and the length and breadth of Cape Breton Island beyond) lead past many such homesteads entangled in vegetation and throttled by trees, soon to be swallowed up entirely, reverted to wild land, almost without trace of the stories they could tell.

After The Volcano

At the end of our twelve-week stay in Guatemala this winter, we stayed for three days at the lovely Hotel Bambú, nestled in splendid owner-designed gardens on the bay on the edge of Santiago Atitlan. The hotel was founded in the early 1990s by José Ramón de Castro, who originates from Vigo, in Galicia, Spain. As we were departing, two close friends of José were saying their goodbyes after a weekend visit. We were awaiting our tuk-tuk taxi, headed for the lancha to take us across Lake Atitlan to Panajachel, thence by minibus to Antigua. Jose's friends invited us to travel direct to Antigua with them in their Jeep. Perfect - yes please!

Our route took us for our first time on the southern "coastal" road via San Lucas Toliman south along  a well-paved stretch downhill through coffee plantations, majestic trees, and open green grasslands before turning east to Escuintla on a terribly bumpy and potholed divided road reminiscent of Cuba with its vast tracts of sugar cane and associated processing plants. The bustling town of Escuintla reveals more modern dress among the locals than the traditional Mayan costumes we are used to seeing on Lake Atitlan and in Antigua. Having negotiated our way through the busy streets entirely lacking signage, we headed north and up past towering volcanoes on the last stretch, the highway to Antigua. 

With little warning, the otherwise smooth road kinked and became a twisted surface of dusty ash and gravel, a grey moonscape. We were crossing the wide river valley where rainy season torrents bring down heavy precipitation. This landscape has, however, been transformed by the cataclysmic eruption of Volcan Fuego in a massive surging pyroclastic flow over 20 kilometres in length on the morning of June 3 last year. Pyroclastic flows are hot, fast-moving avalanches of ash and rock debris of all sizes, that wipe out everything in their path. The height of the ash plume first rose to an unusual 10+ kilometres, then decreased to 5 - 6 kilometres for most of the eruptive phase. There was no warning of the ferocity and speed of this monumental event. According to our hosts, La Reunion golf course ordered evacuation by 11am. Two towns, El Rodeo with a population of 14,000, and San Miguel Los Lotes 2 kilometres north, did not receive official evacuation orders until 3pm, by which time the damage was already done, the warning too late. Both towns were buried in deep, hot ash. Though official estimates put the death toll at around 300, the fast burial of these towns make it certain that many thousands perished, and salvage efforts continued for many weeks, with survivors desperately seeking their missing loved ones. Witnessing this scene of devastation, with rooftops peeking out above the carpet of grey, with rocks and boulders strewn around, was sobering indeed. Above the valley floor, the land remained completely untouched by this savage onslaught. 

It was good to get back to the civility and charm of Antigua so fast, in such comfort, delivered right to our hotel, having seen a whole new part of Guatemala, and having avoided the schlepping of heavy baggage from taxi to boat to taxi to minibus.