As I get ready for fall...
There’s a fat-petalled wild rose spread out on my Regal Stove, reposing, slumped like a tired flamenco dancer, sweet-smelling, so pink pink against the dirty black metal. Another present from son Ezra who’s pulling wheelies on a friend’s bike on the Cove road. Daughter Ella, barefoot in skimpy orange shorts, is dangling from a poplar tree (having forsaken Artemis Fowl for the moment).
I take the short walk into Hant’s Harbour. Friday evening and the loudest thing is the blaring white of the lighthouse across the harbour at Custard’s Head. Save the occasional ATV. Save the off-key clamour of gulls decorating the crab-plant roof.
Hant’s Harbour is protestant white. As in all the houses are white. Probably take a mayoral declaration or clerical nod to add a brush of colour to a window sash. Sometimes feels like an Angela Lansbury set. Only the place isn’t particularly postcard pretty. No chorus-line of saltbox houses or lobster traps. No knot of old men in woolies and wellies hunched over an old wooden bridge. No, this is a working Newfoundland community. Thank god. Two general stores, a post office, museum, senior’s club, library, (the school was torn down last year) and, on the highway, a gas station with gift shop. It’s far more than pretty.
At Janes’ store, over a single purchase, Muriel and I hold a 10-minute conversation. The weather. This morning a biblical rain, probably spun off from Hurricane Katrina, has us all, once again, thankful that we live in Newfoundland.
Early evening I make my way up over and down the hill to our own craggy piece of paradise in Caplin Cove, and wondering how the sun does that here. A bugger of a day and then the sun throws a bone out over the hillside. Enough to make silver platters out of all the puddles and potholes along Meade Gardens Road, enough to make a hummocky ridge crescendo to silent, standing applause; enough to make the bowl of old green meadows shimmer like a litter of young kittens.
I’m never ready for fall. The very sound of it.
I take the short walk into Hant’s Harbour. Friday evening and the loudest thing is the blaring white of the lighthouse across the harbour at Custard’s Head. Save the occasional ATV. Save the off-key clamour of gulls decorating the crab-plant roof.
Hant’s Harbour is protestant white. As in all the houses are white. Probably take a mayoral declaration or clerical nod to add a brush of colour to a window sash. Sometimes feels like an Angela Lansbury set. Only the place isn’t particularly postcard pretty. No chorus-line of saltbox houses or lobster traps. No knot of old men in woolies and wellies hunched over an old wooden bridge. No, this is a working Newfoundland community. Thank god. Two general stores, a post office, museum, senior’s club, library, (the school was torn down last year) and, on the highway, a gas station with gift shop. It’s far more than pretty.
At Janes’ store, over a single purchase, Muriel and I hold a 10-minute conversation. The weather. This morning a biblical rain, probably spun off from Hurricane Katrina, has us all, once again, thankful that we live in Newfoundland.
Early evening I make my way up over and down the hill to our own craggy piece of paradise in Caplin Cove, and wondering how the sun does that here. A bugger of a day and then the sun throws a bone out over the hillside. Enough to make silver platters out of all the puddles and potholes along Meade Gardens Road, enough to make a hummocky ridge crescendo to silent, standing applause; enough to make the bowl of old green meadows shimmer like a litter of young kittens.
I’m never ready for fall. The very sound of it.
[my editorial column in WORD, newsletter of the Writers' Alliance of N&L, fall 2005 issue. I'm still in Caplin Cove in the summer & whenever I can during the rest of the year. ]
2 comments:
Nicely written Alison! I suppose flamenco dancers slump now and then, but I hate to think so. I love the music and try hard to play it.
Are the children yours?
Michael
Thanks Michael. Yup, my kids enjoy the Cove, the great swimming hole, the outcrops, cobble beaches. forts. Great place.
Post a Comment