One day, I am going to relocate to Cape Breton Island. Summer temperature is rarely over 30C, winter is never colder than Montreal and they get powdery snow - the kind you can do stuff in. Alexander Graham Bell retired here because he read a book where the author decribed Baddeck (B'Deck, accent on the "deck" as in G'day) as a town where everyday is like a Sunday.
I am stunned by the physical beauty of the land - a perfect blend of mountain and ocean. We went through the Cape Breton Highlands National Park drive yesterday. That ride along the Cabot Trail is magical. I feel like I was on LSD - everything just seems so poignantly beautiful and majestic. The road is cut into the sides of the mountain. Every time you come over the horizon you gasp at the expanse of nature, height and harmony. I felt no fear of the cliffs; I even ran down one to pee so I wouldn't be seen from the highway. There is a peace and orderliness that I like, and still that capacity for unpredictably savageness. But any violence from the sea is contained by the mountains. I am absolutely giddy when I walk on the beach. I think that must also be why I like the Bay of Fundy. The waters are contained in the bay.
We saw pilot whales north of the park. On the way back, we saw a mother bear and her two cubs frolicking in the bush.
At the IT centre where I am using their internet service, they have a job board. I looked through it to get a better sense of what kind of work I could do out here. I could apply for a position as a researcher and program developer for Parks Canada to develop interpretative programs for their Alexander Graham Bell centre, at the smouldering wage of $9.75 an hour. Sigh.
But one way or another, my future home is where the mountains and the sea exist in harmony.
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I totally concur with your last sentence. That's why I love travelling through Southern Portugal and Southern Spain. You drive along the roads and you see ocean on one side and mountains on the other. I always see myself living out my life within this landscape. I find serenity and peace along these roads unlike the nefarious, concrete monstrosities we have here in North America.
At Waif’s Uncle’s house in the Azores islands, I wake up to see the Atlantic ocean on the one side and the tip of Mount Pico, the highest mountain in all of Portugal, on the other. Heaven on earth isn't always waking up in the Presidential Suite of a Hilton Hotel with 900 count Egyptian bedsheets. (Though this can be pleasant once in a while).
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