Watch for disappearing
acts. Magicians always get you to look at something while they pay attention to
their tricks. Then Voila! Out comes the foolery and you are left wondering how
the heck did that happen.
With playoff season all
around many wish that there will be magic tricks pulled out of hats. How far
can the Hounds go? What kind of magic would that be anyway?
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| The 2015 ice follies
One of my favourite
magical things is a book. Each one has the potential to be a treasure. A few
weeks ago, when I was in the main branch of the Public Library, a display caught
my eye. There was a table of old books that no one had borrowed for a long,
long time. The display asked people to try one of the possible “discards “.
Inside each of the almost cast offs was a thank you book mark. So I picked up a
dark blue hardcover from 1959 - Hugh MacLennan’s The Watch that Ends the Night.
The MacLennan name threw me back to high school days, however this book was
unfamiliar. But I was feeling sorry for the unwanted volume and was glad to
help out.
|
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| Locked in Agawa April 27 |
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| A Sand River run to the beach |
What an amazing read. Never
mind thanking me - thank you Library, thank you. And after reading it I
discovered that the book won the GG award for 1959! The novel centres on pre-
WW2 days in Montreal then goes on to the 1950s. MacLennan is a master. The main
characters give insight into the thirties that I knew existed but did not have
the “feel” of before. The novel put me right into that era. With clear imagery
and insightful dialogue to reflect the times, the plot intersects a physically
weak but strong willed woman with her wandering, magnetic, doctor husband, a devoted
new husband and all the individuals existing between their lives. It was so
interesting to read their take on their future, our present. And the comments
on their present is now our past. We are not such a new world after all.
By the end of The Watch
that Ends the Night I had a fresh perspective on the endings of almost all
things. It gave me a different way of looking at the natural world too. We all
have been watching the slow return of warm spring and soon-to-be summer days.
Our hyper vigilance makes the signs seem more pronounced. I heard, and then saw, a wavering line of
geese trying to keep its V shape. But the quivering lines often collapsed into
a rather wavy version of the classic alphabet letter. I felt an angst that echoed
ancient roots. There they were so high up, so vulnerable, yet they were making
it.
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| Sand River makes it to Lake Superior |
And then there’s the
lake. A few days ago we woke up to see WATER out front. The next day all the
broken bits of ice had returned. The bet is on I hear. May 1st you
say? For that bet we should ask the four leggeds. They seem to know when the
ice is the weakest or safest. They always manage to gain a bit more ice time.
About a week ago, in the very early am before things got really spongy, with
the sun lighting up the farthest half of the lake, I saw a wolf trot between
the ice build ups about 300 metres from shore. The crunch of my boots hitting
the cobbled shoreline startled the wild canine into making a bee line for the
far end of the beach. It took about five minutes for the wolf to travel about
three km. All I could do was stand and admire.
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| Montreal River mouth April 2015 |
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| Water tries to show itself |
This week the ice is indeed
very iffy - to say the least. Lake Superior is a dark grey, blue and white
quilt. Look closely and those chunks are two feet of ice sponge. The ice is decaying
from the bottom up. The chunks are so compromised that when you hit them with a
rock or poke then with a stick they immediately disintegrate into hundreds of
tinkling ice needles. Candling is the name for it and the skinny long icicles
make great ice cubes for a cold drink, but not for going on. As a friend says,
“It would be like walking on tissue paper.”
So here we are at The
Watch that Ends the Ice. We should all get an award this year. It has been a
long wait. Right now the ice is old and transparent, resembling my mother’s
hands as she was aging. One of these days it will pull a magical disappearing
act. But in the meantime what do we watch? The playoffs, the smooth talking pre-election
politicians or the real act....the grand flow of life that never stops moving.
Keep your eyes peeled. There’s more to this trick than you think.
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| I'm tree hiding till the snow's gone! |