Awe & Wonder
When you've visited a place, can it ever be new to you again?
First, the roads looked familiar. We were in Canada, but it was so similar to the US, and so close to my home, that it didn’t feel foreign. Then, we passed the city of Toronto and made our way into Quebec Province, and everything changed. It felt European, different, strange and yet exciting.
The further north and east that we drove, the wider my eyes opened with wonder. Signs in French, no English translations. Warnings of moose on the side of the highway. A two-lane highway through brusque New Brunswick countryside, lonely at night without light or direction.
A thundering gorge. A fiery sunset over Fredericton and beers at a table with a new writer-friend. A Highlander statue in rainy New Glasgow. Then the Welcome to Cape Breton sign, and my heart pounding. Finally. After a year of planning. After years of bucket-list dreaming.
I’ve spent the last week on the road, from Detroit to Quebec City to Fredericton, New Brunswick, to three different stayovers on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia (Baddeck, Dingwall, Cheticamp). Finally, we arrived in Lunenburg, to the place I’ll call home for the rest of July, and where I’ll host a writers retreat at the end of this month.
We hiked to a waterfall. Hiked to the edge of a cliff high and craggy over the roiling North Atlantic. Watched purple jellyfish bob to shore at a rocky beach in Ingonish. Listened to the roll and slap of ocean waves at Dingwall, on the very northern tip of this immense mountainous island with long history and furred with trees.
As we drove along ribboning roads through Cape Breton Highlands National Park, as we drove above the clouds and then far below to the lapping shore, I thought, maybe I’ll never return here. Because how could I ever recapture the awe and wonder of the first time in a new place?
How can we ever recreate the awe and wonder of any first time?
I’ve been writing in my journal, which is damp from the mist off waterfalls and rainy days in the far northeast. I’ve been recording my thoughts by hand, noticing the smoothness of stones, the metallic shine of sedimentary and volcanic mountain walls.
Are we always chasing the new? Hoping for the fever of discovery? Craving it? Trying to recreate it, as writers who notice and record the details of moments?
For what - to hold the moment close? Keep it forever? Make it more than a memory? Live in it a little bit longer?
The other day I started writing an essay about how I don’t remember all the things that others might remember, even when we were together in shared moments. Is it that I remember different things, based on my interest and attention? Or that we only claim the moments that mean something to us and forget the rest?
It’s been a long and full week of driving and exploring and discovering and doing. We’ve climbed and dipped and tasted and sang. I bought a book on Sunday and finished it by Thursday. (Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead, purchased at the Literary and Historical Society in Quebec, where much of the story takes place. Boy did I learn a lot about Quebec history and culture!) I read Kiersten Modglin’s The Quiet Retreat in a day (retreaters: don’t read into it as foreshadowing for what’s to come later this month!).
I can’t really know a place by driving through it, only taste it, sample it, listen to its stories and voices. But it’s a start.
Wherever we go and whatever we do, the places and people we meet along the way prod us to question our core beliefs, our deepest desires. I learn about the Acadian expulsion and consider how my identity has been unwelcome in places and parts of history. I visit the Gaelic College and think about the lost languages and cultures as people assimilate.
Where will you go that will help you know yourself better? And where can you visit to ignite awe and wonder long dormant?
I was in Cape Breton on 9/11 hiking a rock filled stream oblivious to what was happening in the world. My world for a few hours in the forest and streams. A real sense of place and then........
Lovely post. Love the pictures.