October 25th, 2011
Published by: mooresb
Orange Moon Over Jeddore Harbour by Leslie Hauck October 25th, 2011
Dispatches From Halifax It’s 7:30 AM and still quite dark because the sky has been burdened with clouds full of snow. Like timed-release capsules, they are dispersing their therapy slowly and carefully, a shower of gentle, soft flakes. I look away from my computer screen occasionally to watch the light get stronger, higher on the Round Field just in front of the horizon line of dark green spruces; to gaze there I look over my clump of Sumac trees and one Larch tree that not long ago brightened the landscape’s palette with nearly flourescent orange and red, and bright gold. There is a misty quality to the air and the light; could be a touch of fog.
The Viking boat gets a bit bigger each year (now they are talking next year’s being as big as a small canoe), and so does the crowd; but the ambiance is wonderful in this electricityfree house full of candles and kerosene lamps burning. The youngsters play in the hall and 2 bedrooms up the spiral stairs shining flashlights down on the adults and giggling. We all know each other well, many of us work together in a group advocating for our forests, and it is an opportunity to work the room and chat with some people I don’t see as often as others. My neighbor, Darren, has rowed over departing our side of the harbour, West Jeddore, at sunset with the huge, orange moon on his bow, and then departing the party in East Jeddore with a big, old ship’s lantern lit, sitting in the stern of his boat.
I have been in a phase of waking and rising any time from 4 to 5:30 AM, so by 6:30 I had both stoves crackling and the house well on its way to cozy warmth, coffee consumed, yesterday’s dishes washed; I was ready to go upstairs to my office and check my email. It has been quite nice to avoid it for days. But before I’d even gotten out of bed that morning I was laughing out loud to myself about what Adam did the night before. I think I can say I have never laughed out loud, alone, in a dark bedroom after just coming out of sleep-full unconsciousness. Last night was the 2nd annual gathering of friends -- the evening has no identifying name yet -- where around 45 people, big and little, pack into Kate and Adam’s small Cape Cod style house, the main floor containing one open room for sitting, dining, and cooking. We talk and laugh, and eat and drink our way towards the focus of the evening. This began as a New Year’s celebration between just Kate and Adam, making a model Viking ship out of papier mache and a fabric sail and launching it, aflame, into the harbour below their house. It ritualized a way to identify those things they each wanted to let go of, and make new wishes for the coming 12 months. Now, they invite all the people they know who live along this Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, stretched out along a 50 km shoreline, but still defined as neighbors, to join them in this ritual. We pen our wishes on scraps of wood and birch bark and fill the vessel with the fuel for its fiery demise.
I’m sure this is not really as unique a group of kindred spirits as it seems to be to us. It has been rolling along for years continually adding people, beginning about 15 years ago as a small snowball when I first met Joyce who lives up the road from me. Then Darren moved back home after traveling the world and bought the little house around the bend. Parties and get-togethers began to freckle the years’ calendars, and some of us like Kate and Adam, Joyce, and me have annual gatherings with a theme or focus. That snowball has kept on rolling and getting bigger and bigger, and I remember someone at one party giving Joyce and I credit for starting it all. Probably everyone of us except Darren are CFA’s, ComeFrom-Away residents of The Shore, people who may not be sure why they moved here in the beginning, but know now; people who for some reason have a bond created by living on what used to be ‘The Poor Shore’ – where you could buy a house and some land cheaper than anywhere else in a onehour radius of Halifax where many people work. 1
October 25th, 2011
But I think the bond has to do with the ocean that we all live beside or in close proximity to. The communities of the Eastern Shore cluster along the drably-identified Highway #7 that runs east from Halifax along the often brilliant blue Atlantic Ocean side of the province. Communities are strung out along the edges of peninsulas, long fingers of land that jut out to the sea creating elongated harbours with a variety of characteristics – some harbours are so shallow they’ve been dredged for at least 100 years to allow fishing boats safe harbour and access to wharves built in front of their owner’s house. Some like mine, are deep and broad in places with islands dotting the water for visual interest, exploration, and bird habitat. But the bond really has more to do with finding people who share your values and visions; that is what makes this collection of people so rich in spirit. The snowball keeps getting bigger and bigger. So why on earth was I laughing at poor Adam who, towards the end of the evening last night, got a really nasty cut on his finger? By this morning he was describing the event as How I Got A Nasty Cut From A Faaht. (Adam grew up in Suffolk, England so when you read that again, use a British accent.) This literally bloody near-miss all began with a Christmas present to Adam and his wife, Kate, from Kate’s sister. It was a ball of slightly gooey guck that one was instructed to place in a glass and push around with one’s fingers, making all manner of realistic fart sounds. We all, kids and adults, played with this all evening scoring much laughter. Later when only the die-hard party people were remaining, Adam concocted a way to really get a good laugh for himself: he put the glass in his back pants pocket with his hand in the glass intending to push his big, long fingers around in the guck for a truly realistic fart as he sat down. Before there was even the opportunity for the fart sound, Adam was back standing up and exclaiming, with composure (could have been a dignified bit of profanity uttered too.) It became clear, as he not only gingerly extracted his hand from his pocket but also gingerly revealed to us what had happened and how, that before he could create the fart, the glass broke. Blood was gushing. It did eventually stop, a splint and bandage was arranged, and Adam will never live down Kate’s excellent story-telling ability. She said the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes this morning was Adam lying on his back, hands crossed on his chest, his splinted finger sticking in the air; she couldn’t help laughing. My annual party contribution to this community of kindred spirits has been 6 years of what I call a Women’s Winter Solstice Gathering. If I could create a picture of this night with paint and paper you would see by the light of a full moon a classic, old Nova Scotian ‘Cape’, the stone foundation banked and the steep roof blanketed by snow, and in a cartoon-ish way the house would have slightly rounded walls as if she was bursting with energy -- that coming from the light of candles and kerosene lamps, the 2 wood stoves warming fingers and toes as 12 to 20 women arrive, and also from the heart energy that is generated by the evening and gently held by those walls. People arrive intermittently to this women-only party after making their departures whenever they can from family, kids. We have a glass of wine or home-made beer, share food and chat with people we don’t see regularly or with the few new
Published by: mooresb
additions to the Gathering. This year there was a raucous round of tampon stories. After a couple of hours everyone is anxious to get to the mid-section of the evening’s activities. We sit in a circle and pass around and around one gift each that we all have brought, wrapped in disguise. No longer identifiable as items from our houses that we want to be rid of, these are packages wrapped to entice and pique someone else’s interest. The gifts circle the room til we each have sensed which one is calling us, then we open them one by one. Three years ago we began to realize that the packages were being picked by exactly the right person for that particular gift: they either needed the item or it had some significance for them. That was the year that Joyce wrapped up a framed photograph of me taken at her Flower Party in the early Summer, and my daughter Lydia picked that very present. Some of the synchronicities are simple and mundane, some go deeper. This year, Karen chose her gift based on the beauty of the wrapping; but as she was opening it she was thinking to herself, I really don’t need another thing in my house! Her gift was a shriveled turnip from Joyce who loves to occasionally liven things up with old dried-up vegetables. Karen had a good laugh, she could give her gift a home in her compost bin, and not have any new clutter. And Sue, a very new immigrant to our circle and to Canada, picked the most artistically attractive present which contained an odd sort of large travel bag for toiletries and cosmetics, but was full of treasures from the seashore and forests; she was so touched and thrilled and lined her new treasures up along her window sill above the kitchen sink next day. After the present-opening ceremony we break for desserts. A bit later the original purpose of the Solstice Celebration becomes the focus. We gather in the dining room, as empty of furniture as I can make it, again in our circle of chairs; I light 4 or 5 more candles stuck in a large rock from my family’s island in Georgian Bay and place it in the centre of the room. I usually make a somewhat similar introduction each year talking about this being the last of the long dark nights, that the light is coming, that this night can symbolize for us, as it has for people over millennia, a reminder of hope, trust, faith. This year I pass around two postcards from a Nova Scotian artist depicting the very theme we are celebrating: that the Light overcomes The Dark, and it seems particularly significant this year. I mention Leonard Cohen’s song lyric about how a "crack in everything lets the light get in". With a comfortable bit of silence in between, the women who have something to share do so: Ria tells us a story about when she was 6 after the war and had never seen candles before; Susan explains the contents of the centrepiece she has brought and which sits next to the candle rock -- pine and spruce, sweet grass, beach rocks, a candle – all from her place across the peninsula from here; Calla silently dances around the candles; when she is done I tell those who were not at the very first Gathering how Calla had enchanted us with another silent dance around her large, peacock-coloured silk scarf, dancing her description of her walk to my house through the deep snow that evening. Also that first year a woman taught us a chant about the Hindu goddesses of Dark and Light, Kali and Durga, and we danced the Jewish Hora around the chimney.
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October 25th, 2011
Published by: mooresb
Later I bring the group back to the evening’s theme telling how, when I heard This Little Light of Mine on the radio that past week, I knew I wanted part of my sharing to be us singing that song together. We sing it a few times too lugubriously, and I note that the sheet music says "a wonderful ‘swinging’ gospel tune" so we liven it up and then begin to dance around the candle rock, clapping. For me, the heart and soul of the evening was when the new people shared how moved they were to be there, and how moved they were to feel that warmth and spirit pulsing through the rooms. I echoed that sentiment and stated that, for me, the original purpose of the celebration was to not only eat, drink, talk, and laugh, but to make a space in our lives to gather and share serious thoughts from our hearts, to connect with each other through our stories or creative expressions.
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