Driving Minnie's Piano (7 page)

^{On the shoreline, melting snow
and ice give a pile of kelp and seaweed an otherworldly glistening
quality in the sunlight, like it is a monstrous tendrilled sea
creature, beached but still alive. I take off my gloves and lift a
long belt of kelp to the sun before tossing it back into the
sea.}

^{With my back to the wind, my
face to the sun, it almost feels warm but when a sudden belligerent
cloud steals the light, I feel the haunting return of the sadness
and loss I felt this morning.}

^{I look west to where the
cliffs are magnified five times their height: illusory, massive,
steep and white. The sun soon regains its power over the sea, the
beach and the dunes as I turn around to go home on this empty and
extraordinary day, approaching Christmas on the Eastern Shore of
Nova Scotia.}

^{Winter Surfing and the Search for
Sanity}

^{Winter surfing in the Atlantic
Ocean in Nova Scotia is both a sane and beautiful thing, and I rely
on it to keep me clearheaded in what often seems to be an insane
world. Nonetheless, when my business associates across the country
and beyond learn that I go out into the ocean, midwinter, paddling
my surfboard offshore to ride the face of waves generated by winter
storms, they often observe that I must be crazy. But they are very
far from the truth.}

^{I run a small book publishing
business out of an office in my home at Lawrencetown Beach. From
the window of my office, I look out over a salt marsh, sand dunes
and, beyond, the often steely grey-green expanse of a vast body of
water. Our coastline faces south and slightly west so the sea
before me stretches from here to Morocco with nothing much in
between except Bermuda and possibly the Azores. On a cold morning
in February I walk upstairs to my office, put some kindling in the
wood stove and proceed to get some work done. I make phone calls,
send faxes and fire off a handful of e-mails across Canada since
we're awake here before most business is underway in parts west. Up
until now, it has been cloudy, with a blasting west wind that sucks
the heat up the chimney and away.}

^{All too soon, the rest of the
world is waking up and I find myself wrestling with printer
software that isn't working, a phone call from an author about
translation rights, news about a truck headed east from Winnipeg
with freshly printed books that has broken down somewhere near
Thunder Bay. My accountant phones to let me know about a small tax
problem, the Internet service provider tells me my Web site has
some glitch that he refers to as “fatal,” and on the voice mail is
a message about a book project that I was hoping would come my way
but has found a home with a larger publisher. It's not shaping up
to be a very good day.}

^{And then the wind switches
from west to north. The ice pellets falling from the sky vanish and
the sun appears. I look away from my computer screen to discover
the sea no longer has a military colour. Because of the shifting
lighting, it's several shades of magnificent blue. And I see the
light north wind tossing back the tops of waves into plumes of pure
white wonder. Clearly, it's time to forget about work and go
surfing.}

^{Now, I don't exactly need to
wear a three-piece suit at my publishing job (in fact, in the
summer, it's a t-shirt and shorts), but as I transform from small
businessman into Canadian surfer, there is a sort of Clark
Kent/Superman thing going on. I shed clothes, put on long underwear
and get swallowed up by my drysuit and wetsuit hood, then wade out
into the snow. I stash my board in my station wagon and drive a
short distance to where the waves are breaking.}

^{The headlands are covered with
white, the spruce trees on top of the hills are green and the icy
rocks I have to slip and slide over to get myself into the sea are
glistening like jewels.}

^{The water is cold (who would
have guessed?) - just hovering below freezing. February and March
have the coldest water of the year. The air temperature is a
semi-tropical minus ten Celsius. (I'll surf down to minus twenty
but after that I find that my face muscles freeze and I start
talking funny.)}

^{I push off into the blue sea,
knee-paddling while above gulls swoop and arctic ducks fluff up
their wings as they float on the surface.}

^{I take long, deep strokes into
the sea and pull clean winter salt air into my lungs. Soon, a
couple of friends will join me, but right now, I'm alone in the sea
with a big smile on my face. Even though my journey to the place
where the waves are breaking takes eight minutes of paddling, I
feel like I'm a million miles from the claustrophobia of mainland
North America. The high cliffs of Chebucto Head, far to the west,
shimmer on the horizon, bolstered to near triple their height by
the mirage effects of the winter sea. A container ship leaving
Halifax Harbour also appears magnified like some huge
extraterrestrial vessel. I myself am a tiny speck on this immense
ocean, overwhelmed by how perfect it feels to be here, now, ready
to tap the immaculate energy and grace of the sea.}

^{These waves have travelled
hundreds of kilometres from a brutal North Atlantic storm now
wreaking havoc on fishermen unlucky enough to be working the tail
of the Grand Banks. But here each wave is a work of perfection.
I've paddled to my take-off point and sit for minute, watching my
breath make small clouds in the clear air.}

^{The waves are about two metres
high - “head high,” as we'd say. They roll towards me, then arch up
into perfect peaks as the offshore wind pushes up the face of the
waves, making them steep and smooth until they cascade forward, top
to bottom, some creating hollow sections big enough to tuck a
surfer into.}

^{I wait, dwelling upon the
euphoria of it all. I've abandoned the warm inside-world of work
and life tied to the continent. Now I am drawn into this other
plane of existence. I see my own version of the perfect wave headed
my way. Three deep strokes and I'm off, dropping down the smooth,
angled hill of water, an easy take-off at first but then the wind
pumps hard against me as the wave goes vertical and I pull myself
up onto my feet. I'm jamming a bottom turn just as the tip of the
overhead wave blocks out the morning sun.}

^{I go left and pull up higher
onto the wave as it begins to feather. Then I do the usual: tuck
down as the lip of the wave starts to spill forward, a pure
two-metre waterfall. I'm shrewd, cunning and all powerful, a small
sea god in my endorphin-charged brain as I speed across the face of
this blue-green wall of water.}

^{But for some reason, I
discover I'm not as clever as I believed. Sure, I've escaped from
my office, left the troubled and vexing world of publishing behind
me for now, but the sea would like to remind me that I am only a
vulnerable guest in this winter domain. I am a player in the game
but have no real control over the rules that can change at any
time.}

^{I discover that my speed does
not match the speed of the wave collapsing behind me from the peak.
I tuck lower, adjust my position on the face of the wave for
maximum warp only to discover that I'm too high up and fading too
far back into the hollow bowl of the wave.}

^{I realize this just as the lip
of the wave connects with the left side of my face. It's cold,
numbing and as powerful as a Mike Tyson punch to the jaw. I'm sure
I release a colourful syllable but nothing more as I lose my
footing and pitch forward into a chundering mass of whitewater as
the collapsing wave throws its salty weight from on high down upon
me.}

^{I hit the surface
spread-eagled and then get slammed by the impact of a ton of winter
water. Just for the record, water is more dense in the winter. When
it hits you, it carries more tonnage. If it could get much more
dense than this, it would be frozen and then it would hurt
worse.}

^{Winter wipeouts are not
pleasant but they are temporary. The trick to minimizing damage
when working your karma through a winter wipeout is to dive deep
and then come up quick. The idea is to let the wave go past you
while you sink beneath the vector of energy.}

^{The only problem with this is
that you have a sudden craving for oxygen and the cold water on
your face is causing your brain to seek asylum elsewhere. When you
come up gasping for air, your lungs hurt and you feel the first
sign of the brain-wrenching ice cream headache that is exploding
inside your skull. Evolution has not prepared the unprotected human
face for even seconds of immersion in water below the freezing
point.}

^{I gulp air, tough out the
minute or so of the brain implosion and then get back up on my
board and paddle back out towards the sea. I go through the
checklist: I'm alive, I'm surfing, I will be a little more cautious
on the next wave.}

^{Right about then, a great army
of grey clouds advances from the north and I see the squall
advancing from the land. The sun is swallowed and it begins to
snow. Because of the strength of the wind, the snow does not really
fall to earth. This is horizontal snow, blowing straight into the
waves, straight into my face.}

^{I can no longer see the
headland and can barely discern the next set of waves approaching.
I let two slide under me and then paddle for the third. Paddle,
stand, drop, bottom turn and then slide up into the pocket again,
only this time, going right instead of left. All I can see is snow
pelting me in the face. It's cold, wet and creates a crazy visual
kaleidoscope since I can only see about three feet in front. It
makes the whole event that much more interesting. I have to feel
the wave and use intuition to decide what it will do next. Luke
Skywalker on a surfboard. In winter.}

^{Amazingly, it works. I get the
buzz, I lose myself, I slide off the end of the wave onto flat
water close to a couple of pintailed ducks who have flown a
thousand miles south from the Arctic. I greet them with enthusiasm,
puff hard into the flakes of snow driving into my
face.}

^{There are more waves and a
pair of other middle-aged surfers who join me to regain their
sanity the same way I do. By the time I come ashore, there are
great icicles of salt water hanging from my shaggy hair that
protrudes from my wetsuit hood. My lips are bluish and my fingers
are nearly too numb to work the key into the
ignition.}

^{But the clouds are gone, the
sun has reappeared, the world is a glistening white. I'll return to
my office, plug myself back into the so-called real world. I'll
hammer out a few problems, wrestle some numbers to the ground,
maybe even write a few paragraphs.}

^{And then, by late afternoon,
having done six hours of work in three, I'll put on my drysuit
again. The wind will have died down. The sun will be sinking in the
west, setting the water on fire. I'll be back in the winter sea
dropping down the face of a smooth, elegant wave, the one that has
been destined and waiting for me to arrive. I will go left again
and discover I am tucked into a hollow green room of water
advancing towards its own destruction on the shallow rocky shores.
The setting sun will be in the open doorway at the end of this
graceful tunnel as I close my eyes briefly, then open them again
and slide back out into the world of oxygen and frozen
dreams.}

^{The Year of the Skunk}

^{My two-hundred-year-old
farmhouse was built with the wood of barns torn down and of timber
scavenged from the beached remains of ships that wrecked in
terrible storms off the coast. In the winter, otters slip and slide
over the wind-whipped dunes of snow on the frozen marsh, seals come
ashore and sometimes sprawl on the gravel road until I chase them
back towards the sea for their own safety. In summer, great blue
herons stand on one leg in the shallow pools in front of my home
and deer invade my garden to savour my peas and Swiss chard until I
erect scarecrows from old orange shirts and red
pants.}

^{My house sits on a loose stone
foundation with a damp basement dug by hand by men who wrestled
away rocks the size of basketballs. Beneath the living room, there
is bedrock that reaches down to the molten core of the earth. The
bedrock allows only for a crawl space, providing a warm, welcoming
shelter for creatures from the wilderness. And that's the beginning
of my story and the beginning of my problem.}

^{An old house with crawl
spaces, cracks in the floorboards and drafty slits in the walls is
a great invitation for creatures of the wild. Some years, mice
arrive by the dozens, invading the kitchen cabinets, consuming
cornflakes, candy bars, and raisins. Their pestering presence
pushes my family beyond reason. I catch the mice in small plastic
traps that do no harm. A smudge of peanut butter on a kind of
teeter-totter lures them inside and triggers a door to drop. I
drive them to the beach and set them free in the dunes, wishing
them well but requesting they not return to my
abode.}

^{Weasels appear once or twice a
year. My wife, Terry, found one - pure white in his winter garb -
lounging casually on our sofa one morning as if he belonged there.
He had stepped on the remote control that turned on the television.
It was as if he'd come inside to watch his favourite show. Terry
screamed and the weasel fled. Another arrived one spring day and
toured the house several times, until he returned to the kitchen.
Here, he danced around in the cabinet of dishes and bowls, making a
great fanfare about his presence, unconcerned with the leaping and
barking of my dog.}