Larry Gibbons
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Living our story

20/12/2013

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What a whack of snow we’ve been getting! I haven’t been able to park my snow blower since last Thursday. Today is Thursday, which makes it over a week and I will have to use it again today. Even though I was out in the blizzard last night freezing my organs off.
snow blower
Break Time for Snow Blower
We know we’re living in an out-of-the-way place when the weather forecasters tell us that a big storm is coming and that we’re now experiencing the quiet before the storm. What friggen quiet? Is there such as thing as a storm in a storm?

You see, Cape Breton is stuffed full of micro-climates and these days my muscles are threatening to bring out the guillotine and start chop-chop-chopping off the cloudy-headed mini weather pattern’s barometers unless they cease and desist.

A couple of weeks ago we were hit with hurricane force winds and rain. So the snow left over from a previous storm began melting away and pouring its juices into the river. The winds and the flood waters took at least another six trees down. Two fallen trees also blocked our lane. Out came the chain saw.
Test question: what’s one of the main differences between a maple tree and a spruce tree? Answer: the maple tree is a deciduous tree and the spruce tree is a coniferous tree. Deciduous trees are hardwood. Coniferous trees are softwood.

See, I know the answer. So why didn’t I think about this piece of info when the chain saw was cutting and zooming merrily through the spruce tree? Why didn’t I recognize that a maple tree is a different kettle of corn? Because it is “harder”. So why did I stupidly not bother to make an undercut beneath the incision I’d inflicted on the top of said maple trunk? Which led to the maple tree putting a death grip on my chain saw’s guide bar and chain. My excuse is that I was in a post-flood-plus mice-piss-in-snow-blower-foul mood. Anyway, I used an axe to get the tree to let go while I tried to shout over the river’s incessant babbling, “Let go, you basket!”

freeing chain saw with axe
Praying for help...
The next day, I was in a small engine shop, where I had the nice mechanic put a brand new guide bar on my chain saw. And after I paid him and was heading for the door, so I could get home and wreck another piece of equipment, I heard the mechanic say, and I quote: “There’s another one here with your name on it.” Good to know. Har, har, har.

We live in a forty-five foot trailer. It falls a tad short of being a palace. Yet when I got up one morning, (as I usually do, thank goodness), and peered out of our bedroom window, I witnessed a beautiful sunny day. I then hitch-hiked to the front of the trailer, where our living room resides, put some wood into the wood stove, started the fire and when I turned around to look out the living room window, guess what? It was pooping snow. I kid you not.

car buried in snow
Abominable Snow Woman
However, there are positives. For one, I don’t need to go to a gym to keep fit. Here’s another negative turned into a positive. Our road is one of the last roads to be ploughed. Do you know what that means, aside from our being trapped? It means it’s a perfect surface for me to ski on. Up to the mountains, through a gorgeous grove of snow-laden birch, spruce and fir. Until the snow plough arrives.

A few weeks ago we were in the city, where we were enjoying its attractions. Pubs, taxis, libraries, movies, stores, malls, people, cars, more people and cars and noise and restaurants and buses and noise and smoke and fumes and a part of me was loving all the stimulation and conveniences. But the other part of me soon began to give me the elbow and clear its throat and nudge, nudge and it didn’t take me long to get the message. I was missing the quiet, the fresh air, the quiet, the animal sounds, the cawing, my snow blower farting its way down our long lane, the quiet, no exhaust fumes and nights with bona fide darkness. Where we can really see the stars when the clouds aren’t dragging their asses across the firmament.


I have a theory. Like most of my theories, it’s probably rife with error but here it is. I think that people become slightly neurotic when they are in an environment of constant stimulation. Maybe their brains close up a bit so they won’t become overwhelmed by the excitement and the constant exposure to others.

David Thoreau wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

art in natureNature's Art
I’d also like to throw this quote out, seeing I’m in a quoting mood: ”Ah,” exclaimed the old man, “such is the strange philosophy of the white man! He hews down the forest that has stood for centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of Mother Earth, and causes the silvery watercourses to waste and vanish away. He ruthlessly disfigures God’s own pictures and monuments, and then daubs a flat surface with many colours, and praises his work as a masterpiece.”

Who needs wilderness nowadays?  Don’t we have the virtual world? Don’t we have poorhouses?

Couldn’t resist.


Here comes another quote, except this time it’s a writing quote by Sydney Cox, taken from his wonderful book titled, “Indirections for Those Who Want to Write”.

 “When you tell a story or write a poem, it is from your point of view that you select, reject, arrange, make form. The thing you write about must interest you wholly, must seem so vital that you accept no current or approved view of any item of it, but look at every constituent from your point of view...”

And maybe that’s what we’re doing. We’re living life from our point of view. Creating, just like somebody created a Walmart or a Costco. Creating something different is what makes a life or a story or a poem vital. Our story.

Hang on, one more quote from Sydney Cox: ”You can hardly fail to notice that the writers who most delight and challenge you do not look at anything from quite the angle that any of the broad terms designate.”

A brief mention of my friend and bicycle, Buddy Lee. He is miffed. Ticked off. Because he was evicted from his wood shed apartment and put into the tool shed. Which is not convenient because it’s way back at the corner of our yard. And he is sharing his living space with the bad, destructo mice who maliciously attacked Grinder, who is now living in Buddy Lee’s old bachelor pad. I just didn’t have room for both, and I specifically told my bike that he would not enjoy living with Grinder. Not unless he likes mice pee perfume.


Next blog I might try to explore why I like to give names to such critters as my snow blower and bicycle. Have I mentioned that my truck’s name is Basque?

Have a great week.
truck named Basque
My Truck Named Basque
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The Water Moves

5/12/2013

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William Carlos Williams in his poem, “The Well Disciplined Bargeman”, wrote:

“The shadow does not move. It is the water moves,
running out. A monolith of sand on a passing barge,
riding the swift water, makes that its fellow.

Standing upon the load, the well disciplined bargeman
rakes it carefully, smoothly on top with nicely squared
edges to conform to the barge outlines-ritually: sand.”

I’m not a poet nor am I always capable of understanding fully or even semi-fully what a poem means but this poem seems, in part, suitable to my present contemplations.

Thursday morning, the Middle River was showing more than her whiskers. She was three times her normal width and many times her roaring ferocity. The cute purring little kitty I call ‘Cuddles’, was in a temper and had turned into a wild tiger on steroids, looking to terrorize the jungle.

raging Middle River
"Cuddles" Morphs into a Tiger
The previous night we had been unable to look outside to see how high and tumultuous the river was, because at 11:00 pm, our power zapped out. So we couldn’t turn on the outdoor light to check the river’s progress from the comfort of inside. I did, however, venture out once or twice to check on ‘Cuddles’ before we went to bed. She didn’t seem too, too high at that time and gauging from how much snow had been on the ground, how hard it was raining, what the weather report had been, my ignorance of how much snow remained on the hovering mountains, and my state of being rather exhausted from whatever the day had entailed, I decided not to get myself tied up into worry knots.

When the lights went out, we scrambled for our lantern and flashlights, while the wind shrieked and rubbed its invisible bulk along the walls of our tiny 45-foot trailer. The walls shook and our windows rattled as the rain dribbled down our hot stovepipe and splashed in a hissy fit onto our wood stove.

At one point, we were trying to figure out which batteries were the new ones after we mistakenly mixed them in with the old ones. One of us trying to hold the flashlight steady while the other tried to sort the batteries out. To add to the drama, we were both worried that the large trees near our trailer might find it beyond their endurance to stand straight and true and instead throw up their branches in surrender, and flatten our trailer. Turning us into a can of sorry sardines.


The next day, when I reached into the top shelf of the cupboard for a box of macaroni and cheese, I found the box was soaked. Damn it, I should have waterproofed the roof when I’d had the chance. I’m hoping that most of the moisture we get this winter will be coloured white. Although I suspect that this leakage occurred because the rain was driven in by a certain kind of smart bomb sneaky wind.

This morning, I walked around the property. Saw that our landscape had been permanently changed. Learned that we had lost more acreage. Discovered new rocks and piles of both dead and still alive branches littered over our land.
tree snatched by Middle RiverBirch Departed
The saddest discovery was to see that the once tall, proud, birch tree, who had stood strong and proud against many a flood and wind, had finally succumbed to Cuddle’s force. Her massive trunk and limbs lying in the river while her roots and the soil they clung to withstood the frantic mob of waves. Some of the water jumping over the downed tree and the rest swinging to the left and turning our walking trail into another part of the river. There were other downed trees too, and it looked like the river had skinned off some grass and vegetation from the river bank. Ah, the power of the river.


Trail turned into River
Our Trail Became a River
Do you know what occurred to me when I saw the aftermath of the wild river’s rampage? I realized that the watery culprits that had caused all this damage hadn’t stayed around to gloat or ponder. No way. Those waters rushed onward and onward until they were pouring their molasses coloured plunder into the salty waters of Bras d’Or Lake. No looking behind.

And then I thought that, like shadows, we had slept in our bed while the river stormed by. Bargemen, “raking our lives carefully, smooth on top with nicely squared edges to conform to the barge’s outlines.”

I think I, like many writers, am aware of the drama that fills life to overflowing. Like the river rushing to the ocean. A maelstrom of creativity. And I sometimes wonder how much creativity I could stand to be immersed in. Because so many stories pass us by while we, like shadows, sleep in our beds or remain firmly raking sand on the barge.

What if the person at the door, who is trying to persuade me to join her religion, managed to persuade me? What mad, surging emotions would I find myself involved in if I joined this strange religion? What stories would I be able to write? Would the new experience leave my creativity lying in a pile of tossed, sorry manuscripts along the shoreline of life’s river or would I be creating more genuine heartfelt treasures?

The way I see it, we are sometimes going to be on the particular barge we chose or was given to us and we are sometimes going to be in the river. Whether we desire it or not. Besides, at certain key junctures in our lives, we have to be part of the creative/spiritual river if we want to be genuine. Roaring by the shore and not stopping to make sure everything is neat and tidy.

Isn’t creating fun?

“Sometimes the river becomes
a river in the mind
or of the mind
or in and of the mind...”


                                  from “The Mind Hesitant”
                                      by William Carlos Williams 

Middle River Power
Power Incarnate
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