The Summer of '89

This post began as a comment over on First Draft, but it set my mind to wandering down memory lane, so I thought I'd expand on it a little and put it down here.

This is what happens when you get mugged in memory lane:


When I was nine years old, the summer of '89, my family drove out into the Maritimes to P.E.I for the Canadian Boy Scout Jamboree. My Father went on ahead with the local Sea Scout troop (as he was the Skipper) and Mom brought the minivan and the three of us munchkins (9, 6 and 3).

After CJ'89 finished, we spent the rest of the summer wandering around. First we explored P.E.I. and then New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. On a whim, we went to Cape Breton and I fell in love. The winding Cabot Trail that looks down on the Atlantic Ocean caught my heart and my eyes and the memories are so vivid I can still taste the sea air if I concentrate.

We drove into Cape Breton Highlands National Park, just to have a picnic lunch, and we ended up staying two weeks. The breathtaking scenery and the wonderful people made our more than memorable. I remember catching eels with my bare hands in a little lagoon, playing cards by the lantern in that enormous old tent we had (I swear, you could drive the minivan right into it if you really wanted to and it still went up in ten minutes with just my Brother and I helping Mom).

But the thing I remember most from that trip was the day we spent at the Fortress of Louisburg. I climbed up onto the parapet and looked out at the ocean and knew there was nothing solid between me and Europe. The history in that place was palpable, and I've felt it other places, the weight of years and lives and toil and joy and sorrow that permeates old stones shaped by hand.

I've been many beautiful places, even though I'm not widely travelled (through most of my life, family vacations were camping trips, going to a cottage or road trips to visit the grandparents down in Toronto). I have some incredible memories: a meteor shower one incredible night on the Dumoine river in Quebec, laying on a huge slab of Canadian Shield that was still warm from spending all day long soaking up sunlight, the waterfall roaring a hundred yards away; a sunset in Algonquin park that turned the sky to red, gold, pink and orange fire; the massed bands at the Glengarry Highland games when the music was so powerful you could feel it as a physical force sleeting right through your body; Peregrine Falcons nesting in a friend's backyard, their child taking its first awkward flight; a trio of otters playing on a riverbank where they'd made a mudslide, climbing up and slipping back down into the water as we passed...
But of all the places I've been and things I've seen, none ever moved me so powerfully as the view from Louisburg has.

I have never been back there. Part of me actually worries about going back and finding things changed, that the natural beauty I remember has been paved over or despoiled somehow. Part of me worries about going back and finding that I've changed, that I don't see the beauty in things so vividly now that I am grown.

But one of these days I do plan to go back. Because I still remember the sea breeze and the white breakers on an ocean of blue that I've never seen anywhere else since. That, and the green and stone of mountains that fall right to the sea, where once or twice we saw Humpbacks at play.

One of these days.

In Defense of Hope

As this blog may quickly degenerate into a collection of venom and cynicism that could well spiral out of my control, I choose to begin with something I hope will set the tone for my writing here: a declaration of hope.

We are at a crossroads, as a species. The human race stands on the cusp of something great. For all of our history we have been children, playing in our sandbox. Making mud pies and sand castles and scarcely aware, in our way, of how much more there is for us.

But now we are older, and the sandbox is growing crowded. We bicker and fight over trinkets to decorate our little endeavours. We pull each other's hair and kick one another's shins and scream at one another. We lose our tempers and kick down what we have built and threaten to tattle. We refuse to share. We refuse to get along. We push the smaller children aside and bully each other viciously.

There is so much more for us. There is an infinity just beyond our horizons. A universe brimming over with more than we can ever use. Wealth flows in endless rivers just beyond our fingertips, because we will not stand up to take hold of it. It is there. For us.

Our sun provides us more power than humanity can use in millenia. Our solar system is filled with resources we could use to heal our sick and ailing world. Wealth beyond counting, right there for us, if only we can stand up and take those first steps beyond the little, sandy world we know.

There have been a few. Brave souls who have looked and seen what is there. Fewer still with the courage to take a step, or two, outside the walls of our sandbox and return to tell us what we could have.

Think of it. Think of the awesome beauty of a future where there need be no poverty or hunger because we have abundance instead. Think of the majesty of what mankind can build, if only we have the strength to try. A future without want. A future without need. A future bright with opportunity.

An entire galaxy, a universe of energy and water and metal and stone, enough for us to build and dream and play for as long as the stars burn. Enough, and more. For everyone.

All we have to do is to take those first steps.

It will not be easy. Nothing worth the doing ever is. It will be hard, and we must make hard choices. When you are a child, even learning to walk can be difficult. Tying your shoes for the first time can seem like an impossible riddle.

But we learn, if we try. And we can help one another, on the way. Because in this journey, no one needs to be left behind. There is enough to benefit all of us.

So there you have it: The future, if we are brave enough to reach for it. Hope, if we are selfless enough to embrace it.

Or we can stay here in our sandbox, and dig for bottle caps and marbles and bits of string until it's too dark to see and there's no room left for anyone to play.