RECUPERATION #3 – Belief in Magic

Here I am on a Sunday in Nova Scotia beginning to write a blog post on magic and the belief in it as part of a recovery/recuperation process for serious diseases. 

Yesterday was a good summer Saturday for Halifax, sunny skies, occasional cloud, high of almost 30, and only a light breeze off the cool ocean, a good day for a swim, so we headed for Chocolate Lake.  All three of our children were there, along with our three granddaughters (aged 4 to 7) and two daughters-in-law.  All this was magical enough for me as I came down the steep roadway on Lorraine’s arm to the beach area and set up my folding chair in a bit of shade.  I felt like an old crock (I was an old crock!) among all of the beach-loungers and the splashers and swimmers, but I was at the beach in my suit, possibly going to have my first swim of this season.

I made it, this skinny old guy being helped into the water by his son and daughter and even got in before she did  and got to splash her as she continued to hesitate.  What I didn’t expect, however, was how hard it was to swim.  For one thing, my flotation was gone, and for another my skinny arms couldn’t move me fast, but swim I did for a couple of metres.  Next time we go, Lorraine said, we’ll bring a pfd.  Great, I thought, that’s how I learned to swim about 60 years ago (only they were called lifejackets then). 

So where’s that belief in magic?  All I’ve written so far, I think, concerns mainly physics and physiology.

Actually I didn’t particularly believe in magic myself until yesterday afternoon after the swim when we went to my mother’s grave at St. Phillip’s in Purcell’s Cove (she died at 90 last August 27).  This was the girls’ first visit to the grave and they brought special rocks, including one from California, and sea glass they had collected in Purcell’s Cove to place on the stone.  Then they gathered flowers to arrange as well.

When it was all arranged and photographed, I asked if anyone there had ever found a four-leaf clover, and E., the 5-year old said, You mean like this? and picked one from the grass right next to the grave.  

It was perfect.  Several of the adults said they’d never seen one before.  Now that was magic!  It was a wholly magic time.

And then tonight, just as we drove down into Purcell’s Cove, an osprey hit the water right next to the car and lifted off with a fish.  If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

So #3 on the list of recuperative strategies (they are in random order) is a belief in magic.  I’m a believer!

RECUPERATION #2 -- Yesterday, Monday, was a busy day, and I cried several times.

The first was early in the morning.  I had watched CNN late on Sunday when Anderson Cooper  interviewed a British reporter who was inside the Free Syria Army about the battle for Aleppo (“the mother of all battles” according to Bashar and/or Maher, the last and perhaps the craziest of the coldblooded al Assad killers still clinging to power).  The news for what seems like aeons has been declaring that  the FSA could never win against the huge armaments of the Syrian military, yet here they were, not being massacred as so many had been predicting.  The account of that reporter of the spirit of the FSA as they defeated a heavily armed military outpost in Anadan, plus reading the insightful and hopeful account of the battle, Tarek Barshawi’s “Victory for a Free Syria”, moved me.

Watching the TV report and reading the Al Jazeera analysis/opinion piece did affect me deeply Sunday night, but what actually made me cry was trying to tell my drowsy beloved as she struggled from early Monday morning sleep this good news, this something we could try to hold onto after being immersed in Syria’s conflict of cruelty and possible hope for over seventeen months now.  So I cried for Syria (tears of hope and heartbreak and outrage) as I told her.

Later in the day, after unsuccessfully looking for live crabs under the draped seaweed of Cleveland Beach while family was delighted to be on the sand and in the sun swimming out in the waves (a first for our Ontario granddaughter), Lorraine and I were explaining things about my recent illness to an intelligent, sympathetic, and knowledgeable young naturopath.  I started to tell him that one of my other doctors had said I was doing really well.  Saying so made me cry.  Don’t know why exactly -- I mean it was good news -- but it did.  I cried as I started to tell him and my Lorraine filled in the details while I snuffled in his office.

Even later in the day (early evening), I opened an e-mail from one of the smartest, dearest,  most capable young people I know  Her name translated into English means "emotion", which is one part of what I love about her.  She wrote from Türkiye of her struggle to find words to write to me (she had recently had word of my illness). 

Here’s part of what she wrote:

I can only hope that you are doing better now. I'd read somewhere that in Greek mythology, when people wanted to make wishes, they'd offer a lock of their hair to the gods. I don't know how true that is but I've buried a lock of my hair in the Artemis temple for you. I don't think health is her forte, but she is supposed to watch over young women and since I am one, it seemed only appropriate to give it a try.  

The Artemis I know best is the giant broken statue at Claros near Ephesus and she’s a tower of strength. So it doesn’t matter what Artemis’ actual forte is -- just having my powerful young friend bring the power of Artemis into this picture makes me cry again, even as I reread her message this early Tuesday morning.

So.  Crying yesterday.

I’ve told you of three significant times in one day.  There were more as you might expect – it was a day that included tears.  Of love, of distance, of closeness, of hope and of healing, of joy. 

A day like that has to be a good day and good cries like that have to be part of the recuperation/recovery process I have lately embarked on!

Cennet gibi, or A Little Bit of Heaven

It’s late on Monday night here, and we’ve just spent our first full day of a one-week stay here in Çiralı.  We arrived last night after driving in our rented Hyundai Getz from Antalya Airport through city and suburbs, mountains and tunnels, until we came to the turnoff, wound our way down in the dark for 7 km through showers and mist, and arrived at the village of Çiralı and the beach and all of its little restaurants, souvenir shops, citrus groves, and pansiyons.  We had a late and friendly dinner at the Oleander, drinking a little rakı (bir az sadece) and remembering with the staff Lorraine’s birthday celebration there on our last visit two years ago.

We tried on the beach today to remember how many times we’ve been here, when it was, where we stayed each time, and what we did.  The first time was in 2003 with our daughter E., having driven all the way from Kapadokya and winding down the small road in rain and darkness to find Fehim Pansiyon where we stayed for a night before heading on to Patara Beach and the coal-choked atmosphere of Muğla the next morning.  We have learned a lot since then; for example, find a place you love, go there, and stay there.  Which is what we did yesterday.

It wasn’t until our third visit that we discovered Arcadia, where we have now stayed on several visits, loving the wooden bungalows with verandahs and thatched roofs, the gardens and groves, the proximity to the sea, and the tables with white cloths at the crest of the beach where the most wonderful breakfast anywhere is served to you every morning.  We have told others about it and regaled those not fortunate to have got there yet with tales of those breakfasts just above the morning Mediterranean.

I love that Çiralı is hard to get to, surrounded by high rocky hills, that huge loggerhead turtles come to lay eggs (check here for the hatch) all along its protected beach, that the pansiyons and hotels are small and intimate, mostly  set in citrus groves, that the water is so clear and so warm, that you can walk to the far end of the beach and see the cut stone piers of the ancient port of Olimpos, that you can climb partway up the mountain at our end to see the amazing flames of the chimaera, and that there’s a Mount Olimpos looking over it to connect us with a rich and resonant heritage of travel by sea and small settlements around the edges of the Med, the sea that was (and sometimes still seems to be) the sea at the centre of the earth.

So Lorraine and I are staying at Baraka House, checking out this new enterprise of our friend Ihsan and following the advice in the top picture, remaining calm, deciding difficult things like whether to have another cup of tea or coffee at breakfast or whether one more piece of toast with bal kaymak is too much, what we will read, or where we will swim today.  It’s difficult, but we are moving slowly, like the tortoise on our walkway, and we think we will manage.  It is, after all, cennet gibi, or a little bit of heaven, and there's no need to rush anything here.

Crystal Crescent Beach

Yesterday, the last Sunday in January, there was still little winter in evidence, the sun was shining, and the wind was light, so we decided to head out to Crystal Crescent for a morning walk.

For someone recently arrived from Toronto, there was lots to look at and to photograph.

There were waves breaking

and the sea and sky were dramatic.

There was a thin clear piece of ice in the stream with water quietly purling up through small holes.

The sand at this beach is soft and fine.

Two women I love were walking ahead of me.

A piece of kelp from a storm lay on the grass next to the boardwalk.

And the beach was as beautiful as it always is.

Hirtle’s Beach

Anyone who lives on or near Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coastline knows about the fog.  It’s the reason Environment Canada’s forecasts in June and July often say things like: “Fog patches dissipating in the morning. Wind becoming west 30 km/h near noon. High 27 except 21 along parts of the coast.”  This is tomorrow’s forecast (tonight the fog has crept up the harbour and hidden everything but our neighbours’ lights), and the projected 6-degree difference between us on the coast and those who live more inland is caused by the fog bank that lies out on the horizon through the day and the breeze that blows from it to us.  Sometimes it is pleasantly cooling; sometimes it’s damned cold!

So when we drove with our friend G. toward Lunenburg County and Hirtle’s Beach on Sunday afternoon, we knew that the sunshine we were in might not last, and sure enough, when we passed somewhere near the Head of St. Margaret’s Bay, a huge plume of fog drifted over the highway and turned everything damp and grey.  Fortunately we drove out of that and Lunenburg town was sunny, but we knew that heading out past Rose Bay to Hirtle’s was likely to put us into the fog again.  And it did.

However, Hirtle’s is one of the most beautiful beaches on our coast, and it’s always worth a visit.  The waves were not much, and the wind and fog were really cold, but it was great to be there.

There was fog around the trees on the other side of the lake back of the beach (where the water was much warmer).

The wild roses seem to thrive above the tide line, and the foggy air helps make their colours brighter.

I always like the tumbles of boulders on our beaches.

And the real treat, after G. and I searched all of the boardwalks, was finding the board we were looking for, the one we had dedicated back in 2002 to the memory of our Welsh terrier who died that fall. 

We remember him well, our dog Griff, whose spirit was large..

Equi Nox: The Last Day of Summer

We had some serious summer weather earlier this month where it was so hot that Lorraine and I set up a table down in the studio (our basement) for several days so that we could work in the uncharacteristic (for here at least) heat wave.  But then, as it always does, the systems changed, it got cooler, and felt more like September.  I have even started to wear socks and shoes on occasion instead of my sandals, I heard the furnace come on one night, and when we look at the forecast now it is most likely to predict highs of 17 or 18, rather than the 33 or 34 we had less than three weeks ago.

So today, the last day of summer, was a treat, with sunny skies after some morning cloud, brisk southwest winds, and temperatures in the mid-20’s, except, as always with that wind, a little cooler along the coast.  That description does read rather like an Environment Canada report and does not do justice to the warm beneficence of today, the equinox, the day that the sun crosses the Equator (or, to be more truthful, the day the earth tilts in relation to the sun, and our northern hemisphere starts the long slide into winter).  It was a treat, a glorious day, and after doing some work in the morning we decided to head for Crystal Crescent for a celebratory picnic.

We weren’t the only ones, but the stretch of beach we stopped at was empty except for a little girl of two or three who was there with her dad, playing in and around the large castle and well he had made in the sand.  Others arrived on the beach, some with towels, though nobody went into the water except the dad who held his daughter so she could kick her feet in the waves, and still others hiked on out to the point or to the next beach, the one we have always called Cootes Cove or Mackerel Cove, but most people now know as The Nude Beach.

We didn’t bother going out there, but we did fly our kite after eating our sandwiches, and each of us learned how to maneuvre it well enough to keep it from crashing whenever the wind did a shift or a gust.

We also walked out to check out the gulls and cormorants on the rocks.

And we saw the seasonal asters, aka Michaelmas daisies (find out about Michaelmas and St. Michael, the great Archangel, here), harbingers of autumn reminding us that school is in and summer is really over.

Back at home I was walking in bare feet – after all, it is the last day of summer – to fill one of the bird feeders – after all, winter is coming – when I felt something cold on my ankle and saw a most beautiful spring peeper in the grass, the first I have ever seen.  It seemed a nice irony of the day that this tiny creature, this harbinger of spring that you always hear and almost never see, should be jumping across our lawn today and is in fact chirping outside the window tonight as I type this.

So it was a large day, and tonight is it, the autumn equinox, and the last day of this season, a nice end to a really nice summer.  This evening’s moon, a smidgen away from full, will herald autumn and harvest when it rises over the harbour tomorrow night, reminding us that the day has just become a little shorter than the night. 

Crystal Crescent Beach

Tonight the air is warm and still and you can hear the steady breaking of waves on the beach over on McNab’s. Yesterday was also warm and Crystal Crescent Beach was crowded, but more importantly there were waves then too since Hurricane Danielle had passed offshore and we were getting a little of her effect rolling in on Sunday afternoon.

Crystal Crescent looks like a Mediterranean beach with its white sand and turquoise water, but it’s not the greatest beach around for bodysurfing. It is, however, a fairly short drive from our house, so that’s where we set up yesterday for a picnic, castle building, and some swimming and playing in the waves. The problem with Crystal Crescent is the fact that it has a slightly steep slope below the high tide line and a bit of a trough where yesterday’s waves were breaking.

Years ago I bodysurfed there after a major hurricane had just passed and huge waves were crashing into the beach with long gaps between. The rides were great, but sometimes you ended up being tumbled into that trough where you might get a few abrasions from the tiny pebbles that accumulated there. You expect after a day like that to have water dripping out of your sinuses for a while and to have to tilt your head and shake it out of your ears. However, that time my left ear didn’t clear over the next few days, and I ended up having our doctor flush out a small pebble from Crystal Crescent that was resting against my eardrum and advise me to wear a bathing cap next time I went bodysurfing.

Yesterday the waves were good, though not massive, the best ones about two metres where they broke. I didn’t have a bathing cap, and I did get tumbled into the trough of pebbles, had to dig them out of my ears and bathing suit, and ended up with a bleeding elbow, but I had a number of really good, really fast rides.

Toby stayed in longer, riding wave after wave, providing perfect demonstrations of exactly when and how to catch a good wave. He would ride the crest with his hands cutting through the foam, and land in a mix of sand and bubbles in the shallow water, only to head out again to catch the next wave. He wasn’t bleeding when he finally stopped, though his chest was red with abrasions, and he said his shoulders hurt from being thrown around, but he was grinning when he talked about his great rides.

We took A. out in her lifejacket past the break and rode up and down on the roller coaster waves that kept rolling in. She loved being out where none of us could touch, just swimming around and riding those great waves before they broke.

Tonight I’m listening to the waves breaking across the harbour, swallowing to make sure my ears are clear, checking the weather, thinking of all the jobs we have to do, and wondering if we’ll make it out to Martinique Beach tomorrow, where the surf will still be up, the slope is good, and the rides are long.

The season is short here; I think we’d better just do it!

Good Snow

If you want to enlarge the images for a closer look, click on them. Then you can use your back button to return to the page.

Last week when I was driving AZ home, I pointed at the dirty grey snowbanks (or perhaps icebanks) and told him I thought we needed some new snow. He agreed and on Monday we got it. It was the reverse of our usual storms here in Halifax, where we often start with a good fall of small dry snow with wind out of the northeast and end up catching the back side of the system where the winds come round to the southeast, milder air is pulled in, and the snowfall changes to rain. It can be quite a mess and there’s often little chance for skiing. This one started Monday afternoon with nice little cold snowflakes, but it changed quickly to wet snow mixed with rain, so I went to bed without much hope. However, the norwester that often follows these storms blew in and small dry snow kept falling through the night, so that Tuesday morning brought us a lovely little winter wonderland.

A nice thing about not working fulltime is the opportunity to grab a good snowfall when it happens here, because quality snow like this doesn’t often last. So Tuesday morning we got our ski boots out of the basement, found the gaiters, waxed the skis, loaded the car, and headed for Crystal Crescent Beach.

Here’s what I call quality snow. It’s bright and white and cold and dry. It forms little curls and crumbles at the edges of the skis’ tracks. It makes blue shadows and shines with tiny sparkles in the sun. It swishes under your skis and falls in small clumps off your poles behind each push along the trail.

Quality snow shows where a large hare jumped a metre and a half across the trail. It lies on the needles of the balsam firs, just like in the amazing pencil drawing Harry did. It tracks the movements of deer mice from one clump of grass to another. And it falls off the seed clumps in the alder bushes when the chickadees flit and fly through there.

It is the snow that must have made people look for smooth boards to strap onto their feet to glide on. It is the snow your ski grips when you get a good Nordic stride going and the snow you fly through on the small downhill runs, keeping your balance as you remember the feel of step turns. And it is the snow that took us out the trail to the beach where we watched the leftover storm waves crashing in the sunshine on Tuesday.

It has been a remarkably good week for snow for Halifax. More fell on Wednesday, and we had bright sun and blue skies the rest of the week with temperatures nowhere near the melting point. So Thursday and Friday were more great skiing days, and today we went coasting with the girls, sliding down a short steep slope in an old quarry and landing with red cheeks and snow in our faces.

There’s rain forecast for Monday, so all we can count on right now is one more day of good snow and one more day on our skis until the next stretch of great winter weather arrives (we hope!).

Two Sundays

Two Sundays spent with family. If you click on an image, you can make it really big; just click the back arrow to return to the blog post.

The first Sunday was a picnic at Peggy’s Cove. It was a quiet spot, away from the other visitors.

We threw snails and pebbles into the water.

We found a sand worm. T. said it made him think of Dune.

I caught a crab. It pinched my forefinger but I hung on to it.

We went up by the lighthouse, but it was locked.

We climbed on the rocks. Some people practiced jumping.

The second Sunday (yesterday) was a birthday celebration at our house.
T. is now 37 and he got his first backhoe, something he has always wanted.

S. watched the mayhem from a safe distance.

Woofer had a ride on the backhoe.

The girls decorated the cake.

It was beautiful.

They helped T. blow out the candles.

The cake was delicious. Two good Sundays.