I’m writing this morning from vacation after having taken off to the Great White North on Saturday. (Any other products of the 80s remember that song “Take Off” by the McKenzie Brothers that stormed the airwaves in ‘81? Or is it just me?)
Up here it’s all about basking in the semi-rustic glories of nature. Tall trees. The call of the loons. Gently lapping waves kissing the dock. Soaking up the sun. (Sorry, Doctor Dermatologist—but I am slathered in that God-awful mineral sunscreen.)
Cell service is spotty at best so I’ve had a challenge uploading pics and now that I have I am unable to caption them. So what follows is a pic of where we exit the boathouse to make our way to the island.
So today My Haiku, which I typically call “Maiku,” is a Canadian Haiku…which I guess makes it a Caiku. Or is it a Maicaiku?
Whatever you call it, here it is:
Porch. Coffee. Dock. Book. Music. Water. Wine. Dark nights. O Canada…oh…
So I’m here in a place called Gracefueld Quebec, on a lake called 31-Mile Lake (that, quite counterintuitively, is apparently only 18 miles long, so go figure), on a small land mass known as Poplar Island. I’m here with one of my bestest besties (a friendship dating back to the very early college days), three of her friends from the West Coast, an Ottawa-dwelling sister of one of those friends, and a very special guest who arrived yesterday afternoon, my friend’s 86-year-old mom, who has been coming here “forever” but who hasn’t spent a month up here in a very long time. So her being here means so much, in so many ways, on so many levels and sharing this space with her makes the experience positively sublime.
Needless to say it’s a special place in and of itself, but it’s the people who make it special to the point of almost spiritual.
We arrived late Saturday and now it’s early (too early for me, like I could have used an extra hour or two of sleep, but it proved elusive) Monday, so we’ve only had one full day. Still there have been more laughs than I can count, and even though I only met a few of these folks last year, we fell immediately into a familiarly comfortable pattern which definitely accelerated the pace of relaxation and enjoyment.
Pre-trip we collaborated on a “Canadian-artists only” Spotify playlist. That was a fun and funny exercise. No Neil Young on Spotify? No problem. kd Lang has us covered with her fantastic cover of “After the Gold Rush.” The Canadians among us have tipped us off to some artists we from the US had not previously heard, say, Blue Rodeo, and it’s also exposed me to some other fun artists (The Paperboys, for example), and a soul-stirring cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” by Diana Krall and Sarah McLachlan. It’s so good. Listen on your fave streaming services as soon as you finish reading this. So we’ve been enjoying listening to that (for the most part, some of the songs are kind of cringe 😂😂😂) as the vacation’s official soundtrack, we relished our dock tim, though I didn’t make nearly as much headway reading as I’d have liked. I maybe got through 25 pages. Oh well. As my dad would have said “that’s what tomorrows are for.” Major bonus points for the pleasantly surprisingly high water temps which made swimming a treat and not torture. Pros and cons to everything, apparently even to global warming. We had a fantastic Italian casserole dinner (aka lasagna), lots of chatter, and some of us enjoyed a bourbon nightcap (couldn’t let those giant ice cubes go to waste) before calling it a (perfect) day. Relaxing so deeply is very tiring. There’s no ambient noise or ambient light, it’s impossible not to be in a perpetual state of chill here. It’s calm beyond measure, and the perfect antidote to my general temperament.
Speaking of relaxing, it’s time for me to get to another day of chilling, which means putting on my slippers and heading to the porch with my coffee.
Thanks for being here week after week after week and especially for sharing this gorgeous Canadian slice of life with me. You know it means the world.
Love you too.
And I’ll leave you with this reflection of the lake post-sunset last night, as seen from my seat on the porch: