What goes around

We woke to the season's first snowfall: about five centimetres, wet and heavy. I dropped my shoes in a plastic shopping bag, snugged my feet into my winter boots, and walked to work through large, scattered snowflakes. Pausing on the footbridge, I looked down the canal toward the Chateau Laurier and Parliament Hill. The snow obscured the Peace Tower like a mist. The trees bore crowns of white. The few remaining ducks skirted the fringe of ice along the canal and clustered close to the warmer water trickling from a stormwater outfall. I should feel thrilled by the first snowfall; but, really, I just feel oppressed. Perhaps I'll feel more excitement when I can pull my skis from the basement. In the meantime, I can't help thinking of the long winter before spring comes around.

All things come around again. I thought of the past on Saturday night, sitting in the Raw Sugar Cafe with a group of friends and new acquaintances, listening to Jen, Patricia and Carmel (3/4 of the Elizabeth Riley Band), drinking coffee and savouring a very good lemon tart. It reminded me of Sam's Coffee House (known as Sam's Deli during the day) on Government Street in Victoria, on a summer evening in 1980, where I first heard Ferron play. The Cafe was filled beyond capacity, and I had to sit on the floor partly under a table -- but just a few feet away from the small riser that served as a stage.

I had returned to Victoria for a summer job at the Forestry Lab after my first year of university. Although the city was full of friends, I'd found myself a housekeeping room removed from my usual haunts. When not working, I kept to myself, as if to become familiar with my own company. I grew my hair long (or, in my case, out) and took to wearing a headband to keep it out of my eyes. I walked a lot, particularly on weekends, when a day's exploration might take me across the City and back. On one of those walks, I'd struck up a conversation with someone who'd mentioned Ferron and the upcoming performance. I hadn't heard of her, but the description intrigued me.

I feel an odd connection with Ferron, that dates from that first night. I've seen her several times since, over the years -- but with long stretches when she seemed to drop out of sight. Those stretches, coincidentally, seemed to occur during the periods when my own life took odd detours. Then she and I would reappear, and I'd find myself sitting in the audience at a folk festival listening to an older, but familar woman growing into a microphone. I've never spoken with her, never been introduced. But I've always imagined that there would be a nod of recognition if we met in passing, an unspoken acknowlegement that we've both found our way and made our peace.

The difference between that night, long ago, and last Saturday night, is my appreciation for friendship. I'm still a somewhat negligent friend; it comes of an uprooted childhood (but that's not a complaint). However, I've reached a point in my life where the best times are spent with old and new companions.

Bare trees and quiet streets

We have entered the shoulder season, between biking weather and skiing weather.  This morning, standing on the kitchen heating vent and cradling a cup of hot coffee in my hand, I watched the wind rattling the few remaining leaves on the cherry tree outside our window.  The limbs of the big norway maple looked black and bleak; the sky looked grey and cold.  I curled my toes against the warm air issuing from the grate and shivered.

In the afternoon, I walked to the fitness centre in City Hall.  The wind had dropped, although a few leaves still skittered along the pavement.  I passed other people -- mostly students heading to or from campus -- subdued and huddled down in their coats.  It seemed oddly quiet for a saturday afternoon.  Even the traffic felt hushed.

Yesterday was the same.  About noon, I bundled down to Rideau Centre and the market, spent an hour reading in Chapters, and then sat at a window table at the Shafali Bazaar in the Market Mall eating chicken curry (very good) and watching passers-by.  In retrospect, I suppose the quiet lay mostly within me.  Sometimes I would catch myself staring unfocused into the distance, with no cohesive thought in my mind -- and no desire for cohesive thought.

Except... and it was a strange time and place for the realization... that I really love this world.  In the quiet of the moment, stripped down to their essence by the flat light of a monochromatic day, the streets and the people on them felt especially dear to me.  I felt a connection and a kinship to the anonymous figures hurrying along outside, and to my few, solitary companions lingering at the nearby tables.  They seemed inexpressibly noble.

Fishing Song

Down the path and through the trees.
Dappled sunlight beneath the leaves.
Riffle and pool, a sparkling brook.
Looking for a place to send my hook.
I'm going fishing.
I'm going fishing.

Cast my fly and mend my line;
drift and cast it one more time.
Lose myself to water and sky;
forgetting all life's hows and whys.
I'm going fishing.
I'm going fishing.

Oh, you might think that I waste my days,
and look on idleness with suspicion.
But I know God does not subtract,
from one's life the time spent fishing.

I've fished with my father on a cold, grey sea,
and I've fished with my boys in a warm, lake breeze.
And when they grow, I'll take my grandaughters,
down the path to the sparkling waters.
And we'll go fishing.
We'll go fishing.

An autumn to remember

According to Environment Canada, temperatures will remain in the teens until at least mid-week.  Although the nights have been very cool, the harvest moon has hung silver in a clear sky.  The air has seemed so luminous that I almost expect the northern lights to appear.  It reminds me of northern Alberta.  Most mornings have broken sunny.  Light jacket weather.  This afternoon, Sue, Anne and I sat on the front step, soaking up the sun.  A light breeze stirred the trees, coaxing down the last gold and yellow leaves, and scattering maple keys across the yard.

The fine weather has provided some unexpected chances to enjoy the outdoors.  Last weekend, members of the Co-op turned out for our annual fall clean-up and potluck lunch.  By noon, a satisfying row of stuffed leaf-bags lined the sidewalk between our house and the next.  With just a little sadness, I moved the canoe to a new perch on top of the north side shed, where it will remain until next spring.

The following day, I spent a few hours in Gatineau Park, looking for late-season ferns and fungi.  I concentrated specifically on a hillock adjacent to the lower parkway, where a tortured rock-cut had long tempted me.  Outside the city, autumn seemed more advanced, with almost all of the trees down to their bare limbs.  A hard frost the previous couple of nights had done for most of the mushrooms, and a thick carpet of leaves covered the forest floor.  But I still found a few ferns and herbs peeking through, especially on the steep cliffs of the hillock -- including my favourite, the delicate maidenhair spleenwort.  Mostly though, I marvelled at the topography and geology, imagining the pressure and the heat that had created and contorted the bedrock underfoot -- hard Canadian Shield -- and then the forces that had split and splintered, that had scraped it clean.  One particular image caught my imagination:  the sporangia of a common polypody fern framed against the backdrop of fractured, cedar-shadowed cliff.  It seemed to me that all power of the premordial earth had acted just to create a welcoming place for that one, small expression of life.