toes and twine
People are doing stuff – I can hear ‘em, driving on highway thirteen, headed to get gas at the Irving station, maybe a newspaper, maybe lunch.
Our routine, however, has been staunchly anti-doing stuff, at least in the morningtime. An important reason for this is the hammock, a new addition to the cabin this year and, frankly, awesome. Perfectly comfortable and well suited to authoring a blog post, then maybe eyes closed for a bit.
We’ve been a little busier in the afternoons. Plenty of nice meals in Charlottetown, light tourism activity, feet in the ocean, some driving around. Went northwest on Tuesday, exploring a part of the Island we’d not visited previously, through impossibly small towns and deserted roads, expecting to find some sort of commerce, but short of a nice little downtown in Alberton, well. Not much going on out that way.
I always wonder about the people living in remote places like these, trying to sneak a glimpse into who they are and what they do as we drive by their houses on country highways, some properties beautifully maintained, others having seen much better days, years and years ago most likely. What is this life like? How does it feel to be hours from convenience, from emergency response, and presumably from other people who know you well?
My wife and I choose to live in Ottawa because of its proximity – to viable job options, to parents and siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews, to medical services our family unfortunately couldn’t carry on without. So while Prince Edward Island is always tempting us to make a leap, it remains a beautiful dream, a vacation destination only.
But it’d be interesting to get to know a life of distance. I’ve heard that challenge and discomfort can promote and prompt a person to great things sometimes. Then again, maybe you’d just spend most of your days riding a lawnmower and obsessing about not forgetting to pick up milk next time you spend the day in town, because forgetting would mean a week with no milk. And that’s no life to live, either.
Maybe another time. Another lifetime.
Sorry about the traffic noise. Glad you’re getting in some good swinging!
Stuart has cousins in Alberton. Have some interesting stories – fishers and missionaries (no joke!).
Who could joke about fishermen or missionaries? Not this clean-living gentleman, to be sure.
There’s always powdered milk in the pantry. But living out in the boondocks could cause a real slide in social skills (read: fishermen and missionaries,
, as well as the very possible evolution of lawnmowing from a half hour at most to it becoming a three hour beer-riddled introspection tour de force. Twice weekly. The cost of beer alone would put you in the poorhouse.