Driving Minnie's Piano (6 page)

^{Despite the beauty of this
seemingly benign place, it is a coastline of nearly continual
disaster of elemental proportions. That bedrock beneath my well is
a scrap of massive rock left over from two continents in collision.
The hills that bracket the beach are both drumlins - soils and
stone left over by the retreat of immense, dispassionate glaciers
that ravaged Nova Scotia. The drumlins themselves are eaten away
year after year by sea and rain until they will one day disappear.
I'm the world's biggest fan of drumlins and have written about them
in magazines more than once. My only true cyberfame is this: if you
do a search for information about drumlins on the Internet, you
will quickly find your way to me. I've borrowed my knowledge from
scientists but have gone on to make poetry, film and fiction about
these seaside hills of glacial deposit until, in my own mind, I
have become the king of the drumlins.}

^{The spruce trees in my
backyard repeat the same lesson over and over to deaf generations.
Allowed to grow too close together, they reach tall and spindly
into the salty air. Vast acreage of this shore is forested by
sickly spruce trees with short lives due to the compacting born of
an aggressive desire to survive and compete. But given room to
grow, a black spruce, considered by many here to be a veritable
weed of a tree, becomes a grand cathedral within a decade or two.
It stands both broad and pinnacled, appearing almost royal and
sentient on the hill behind my house, the topmost boughs blowing in
the sou'west wind and the sound of the wind in the lower branches
perfecting an Aeolian chant that could inspire poets from any
generation.}

^{Below these trees, I raised a
family, taught two daughters the language of wave and stone, shared
the code of living, which is the prerogative to save all living
things, to protect what needs protecting and repair, through
unceasing effort, the damage we do to our world and to
ourselves.}

^{Here in November, the waves
shift from grim to majestic as the wind changes, and the sky turns
from grey to mauve to blue. A morning of reflection gives way to an
afternoon of surfing the backs of waves ushered in by Sable Island
storms. Beyond that, the world will catch up with me. It will track
me down by phone, fax and e-mail and keep me away from the marsh,
the shore and the sea.}

^{Although I feel myself a long
way from my own demise, I have the occasional dream of a fine
primitive burial for myself. Somewhere back up among the splendid
spruce, I see someone whose arms look like my own digging into the
soil, carving down to the hard smooth surface of the bedrock that
was once Gondwana. I see someone taking great care to clean the
bedrock surface until it appears as if it is the polished marble of
some European cathedral floor. Then my body is placed flat upon the
stone floor and I am at my final rest. I expect there are laws
against such things, one statute or several, that says a man cannot
be buried by his home above the sea, but the dream
persists.}

^{A few of us know the precise
taste of a stone plucked from the shore and placed in the mouth or
another one dug up from the bottom of a well, washed and set on the
tongue. That taste of sea and stone, of wave and land, will always
remind me of home.}

^{A Stone’s Throw From the
Sea}

^{Awake at the sound of geese
upwind in the open frigid waters where the inlet ice gives way to
the channel of the salt sea. An honest winter day of skid ice in
the driveway, heavy frost patterning the windows and three kinds of
snow. And wind.}

^{This room is cold, by choice,
at night and it makes you hurry into old clothes and a fast run to
the blossom of heat near the cookstove in the kitchen. The
cookstove singing the only song it knows, a happy companion in this
two-hundred-year-old kitchen where the dog, Jody, scratches against
the door, eager to go outside.}

^{As I look out onto that colder
world, snow sifts in like company waiting at the door. Then a sharp
punch of cold to the lungs, as I watch the dog dive towards the
swirling snow, whipping about in the wind. The hill out back with
its cranberries frozen red and ripe into the depth of winter is
covered over now with blankets of the cold souvenir of the
season.}

^{Jody barks at everything,
anything - an exercise of opinion and sound, a soundtrack for the
snow with the wind collaborating. The sky, a scud of grey-white
clouds and the wind from the north, of course. A touch of east
maybe, taking the dryness from the snow and giving it a subtle
touch of weight and character.}

^{The uninvited snow is cold
against my bare ankles, then back inside to plug in a kettle and
wait for the kids to find daylight, and slip groggy-eyed into the
kitchen.}

^{In front of the house, on the
long frozen slab of lake, the snow does not settle but finds the
slick flat pane of surface and races off south to clutch at the
bushes in the marsh, to fashion white dunes to mimic the ones on
the nearby beach.}

^{The day will go slate-grey,
dark like a bruise, or settle into something vivid if the blue
behind the shroud above has the courage to save us. I pour the tea
and settle into a near silent meal as I long for something from the
past, some nameless thing that probably never was but it is there
nonetheless. It mostly concerns time. The passage of time, the
infinite loss of things slipping through my fingers this morning
over a bowl of cornflakes, a mug of dark tea. Nothing, not a thing
wrong here, just the fact that I can't hold onto any of it. Each
day is flying away as this one will. I want to say this out loud
but I remain silent, sipping at the steam above the cup like it is
a vapour of hope.}

^{And so the
day begins. Winter in Nova Scotia. Two days before Christmas and I,
for one, am glad this is not the holiday for I do
not
trust holidays. I trust the average day, the every day. The
day like this with the dog barking now to come in and be fed. I
test the cold again as I open the door, sense it is not as hostile
as it first seemed. More snow pours in, the dog in tow, shaking
herself from white back to black. Never have I seen a dog breathe
with such enthusiasm. And we are back by the cookstove again. I
almost touch the surface with my hands. Snow from petting the dog
melts instantly, slips in drops to the flat black plates and hisses
like a wild animal.}

^{If I could
only articulate the thing in the back of my throat. The necessity
of stopping the flow of time. Of my plan to arrest the rapid
succession of day after day. My plan is to lecture my two
daughters:
I'm sorry, but your
mother and I have decided you are not allowed to grow up. You must
stay like this for the rest of your lives. We are all going to stay
just like this forever.}

^{Outdoors, the pheasants arrive
by the side of the old pigeon pen where our two pet pigeons huddled
through the dark cold night: Rosa and Chez, waiting for me to bring
cracked corn and fresh water. The male pheasant is scratching about
in the snow, looking for the corn that is not there yet, the
humbler female prancing about. Their feet leave beautiful delicate
etchings in the snow and then the wind erases them, but the
pheasants will come back to do it again.}

^{And I am satisfied again that
we are a long, long way from the shopping malls. I bundle up in my
worst but warmest coat and pull the hood tight, tie it so it dents
my chin and I gladly go out into the cold, booted, mitted, as warm
as one can be on a day when wind drives reckless across the frozen
lake and whips shingles from the roof of my house. The pigeons are
glad to see me and the pheasants hover not far off in the thicket
of leafless wild rose, an old, dead, bent and gnarled apple tree
half sheltering them from the blast. Cracked corn for everyone, the
caged and the free. When the sun strikes away the clouds, I'll open
the door and let my birds ascend into the heavens, but now an
eagle, big as any bird I've seen, is cruising low, riding the wind
south from far up the lake. When he finds the coast he'll quit his
downwind tour and make a slow, heavy tack north to find his mate.
There will be mice to be had, despite the snow that hides them, but
he will not have my pigeons today.}

^{I walk up the hill among the
well-spaced spruce trees and put bare fingers into the snow to find
two frozen cranberries, toss them in my mouth and roll them around
like marbles, then walk on further until I come to the forest that
steals the sting from the wind. The grey wispy fungus known as old
man's beard hangs from the trees, and star moss covers most of the
stones. Snow stays mostly above, clinging to the boughs of green
needles. If the wind shifts even two degrees to the east, the snow
will become heavier and bend as it builds up on these branches,
breaking some, sparing others. Right now, it still sifts through
where the big trees have not stolen the sky.}

^{It's quiet here and deep. And
I will not dwell on stasis or permanence but go home and satisfy
myself that it is two days before Christmas and there is nothing,
nothing I am obliged to do with this day but live it for what it
is.}

^{The wind relents by eleven
a.m. and my family spills out into the bright world. The dog rolls
herself until she is a puffy white cloud with four legs,
unrecognizable except for the teeth showing in her mouth and the
yelp of adventure. My two daughters and I go out onto the frozen
lake, and after the usual warfare of putting on skates in the cold
outdoors, we skate on a smooth, hard surface hidden beneath the
layer of snow that muffles the sound of our blades. The ice
stretches north for nearly a mile to where the geese, at least a
hundred of them, have gathered in the open water. We skate without
speaking over soft white clouds until the wind begins to drop and
Sunyata tells me she remembers this very moment from a dream she
had last night.}

^{And the geese decide just then
it is time to leave because there will be hunters this afternoon.
They rise up into the blue sky and flow our way, headed towards the
sea and on to their next nighttime resting place. We stop skating
altogether and look up, deafened by their voices, then stunned by
this other thing we feel from their beating wings. It is something
that tugs at you inside. Something elemental that pulls you half
off the ice and up into the sky with them. When they pass and we
three look at each other, Pamela asks me if I felt something trying
to lift me. I nod yes but do not speak.}

^{When the birds are gone, some
new force of gravity makes us all lie down on the unmarked snow and
leave an imprint of ourselves - arms outstretched, staring up at
the sky. My daughters both immortalize themselves as angels but I
do not. I settle for leaving a scarecrow behind, the mark of a man
with long legs together and arms straight out at his sides,
faceless beneath an empty blue sky.}

^{Eventually, we follow the long
thread of our skated trail straight back home. Why not go another
route, arc out across the ice? But there is something about seeing
your own home there on the far hill, capped in snow, car buried in
the driveway, the sound of your dog barking at the back door. Why
is it that this makes you skate straight and fast when the cold has
found your fingers and thumbs?}

^{Small catastrophes of removing
skates and putting on rubber boots with frozen toes before walking
the final leg to the house. Red cheeks, cold fingers, a glove lost
in the snow. And as we stumble, stiffened with numb feet, across
the frozen marsh near the garden, it seems appropriate that I am
the only one to fall through an air pocket into the little stream
below and scoop icy December water into my boot. My daughters are
pleased to hear me howl and I pretend to be angry but, in truth,
there's something invigorating about falling through ice when it
grabs only a foot and an ankle.}

^{Inside, I wade through the
jumble of skates and boots and snowsuits. The kids have already
retreated to another part of the house to phone calls and books,
and I pull off my wet socks and howl a second time as the pain of
thaw sets in, then bang my big toe trying to put my leg into the
mouth of the oven of the old cookstove that still
sings.}

^{I build a fire in the living
room wood stove: bunched newsprint, thin kindling, some splints of
maple and quartered logs turning quickly to flame. A brief pause of
coffee and toast, then I find dry clothes and winter boots. I'm off
again to walk alone to the shoreline of the
Atlantic.}

^{There are ships at sea and
sparrows clinging to what remains of last summer's sea oats. The
dunes fall away beneath me as I arrive at the empty beach where the
sand has been bullied into the sea by winter storms. We are left
with rocks, each covered with snow and some with ice where salt
water has frozen into caps and other odder shaped hats that might
have been fashionable in Napoleon's time. The sea ghosts of morning
are gone but thin filaments of mist still lift from the surface and
drift into nothingness in the diminishing breeze.}

^{On the rocky reef beyond the
shore I see shoulder-high waves forming, becoming steep as they
catch the offshore wind, leaping ahead of themselves to create
immaculate hollow tunnels. Gulls swoop in low and nearly touch wing
tips to the faces of an unbroken wave and then, somehow, as if
drawing energy from the wave itself, arc back up into the sky,
circle and then do it again.}