some of this is true

An addendum to the previous post about my trip to the beach, inspired by Daorcey’s traumatic tale of killing a magpie, which, for those of you who aren’t from out West (it seems people in Eastern Canada don’t know what a magpie is), is basically a fancy crow, the same way frites at the CN Tower rotating restaurant are in fact just fancy french fries.

On the second and final day of our trip, we were driving north from the beach back into Bridgewater, up a winding secondary highway through quaint coastal towns and villages. The twists and turns down Highway 331 — the Lighthouse Route, which as it turns out has very few lighthouses, if any — would have been fun to drive down if it wasn’t so terrifying, with the 80-km/h speed limit and the non-existent shoulder.

We were eating cherries and listening to Danny Michel and then, as I came around one of dozens of bends, out it jumped.

I don’t know exactly what it was. A gopher or hedgehog or something similar, stark black, and it moved so fast. I’ve convinced myself it wasn’t a dog or a cat. Too quick and graceful to be a K-9, I reasoned, and it just didn’t look like a cat.

It bolted out, from the left, as if it had been waiting, and then under the car. I drove straight. It dodged the tires, but unfortunately something — its head, for example — couldn’t quite squeeze underneath the Nissan Altima’s innards. There were a few thumps below us and then, to confirm what had happened if there was any doubt, a lifeless body flopping behind in the review mirror.

It killed the mood but I kept eating cherries because I didn’t know what else to do.

I’ve killed bugs before — spiders, mosquitoes, etc — and have ushered my fair share of fish and frogs to their death. But I’ve so far been mostly able to avoid any mammalian casualties — though I’m not sure why that’s worse.

However, there is one case about which I may never be sure.

When I worked cleaning and driving cars for Discount Car and Truck Rentals, one day on the way to the airport, driving the shuttle on a clear day, I noticed a brown gopher on the highway with it’s head sticking up the way a hiker takes in the scenery after walking up an mountain. I didn’t see it, of course, until about two feet before I passed over it. The van continued driving along Barlow Trail smoothly, and I masked my horror to hide my apparent guilt if any other drivers had seen.

In hindsight, after hearing and feeling the life get knocked out of whatever I hit on the way back to the beach on Tuesday, as fate collided with its brittle little body, I now have my doubts about whether or not I actually ran over that gopher years ago in Calgary. I didn’t feel or hear anything, and the space under the minivan was surely enough for it to escape any serious injuries.

But we’ll never know. And the story makes me feel better to think that gopher, having escaped certain death, walked off the highway with a new appreciation for life.

Where I live, on the top 22nd floor of a university residence, in a giant two-bedroom family/graduate apartment with lots of space and what could be the best harbour view in the city, the fire alarm goes off on a frequent basis.

It may only be weekly — and it’s probably even less most of the time — but any amount feels frequent when the bells are clangning, the high-pitch squeel fills up every space in the building, and the unreasonably calm voice on the intercom tells you either to “wait for instructions” or — with faster bells and longer squeels — to “evactuate, evacuate, evacuate.“

The first-stage alarm happens more often. The second-stage alarm, when we have to walk down thousands of steps to get outside, seems to go off — as if by magic — mostly at night. Once, it was 4 a.m., the first time I was here during a second-stage alarm, and it was terrifying and I thought for sure this is what it feels like right before the building falls down.

And it went off again last night. Someone on the 17th floor, which when we peaked in while passing on the stairs was filled with smoke, had forgotten how to cook. They burnt their food and then kept burning it. Apparently, we heard, they didn’t even leave when the recorded voice told them to.

This, I will not miss.

We move in a week. We’re moving into a two-bedroom flat on the main floor of a big old house. It’s nice and feels like a home, not a jail apartment, and the walls are all painted different colours. The bathroom is big and there’s a giant windows onto the street and our yard.

Here it is from space.

My third move in two years, first across the country and then across the city. I’ve got more stuff and less time to move it, and I haven’t really started packing.

But it will be nice to move, to be in a place where I won’t have a thousand neighbours all looking for ways to set off the fire alarm.

We went to the beach, south of Bridgewater, a small community west of Halifax where, amazingly enough, they have not one but two bridges spanning the LaHave River. It was cloudy and humid but still nice, and the beach wasn’t too crowded and the waves were a modest size. We fell asleep in the sun and the deceptively overcast sky still burnt our skin.

There’s an island in between Halifax and Bridgewater, slightly southwest of Chester, called Oak Island. Many people believe there is treasure burried on the small island that is close enough to land that, if there wasn’t a manmade causeway, you could easily swim across. Decades of time and effort and millions of dollars — not to mention at least a half-dozen lives of people killed in the search — have gone into finding the treasure with dissapointing results. Digital pictures, from a camera snaked deep into the “money pit,” apparently showed a human hand.

Years ago, the island was somewhat of a low-budget theme park, with tours. Today, much to our surprise as we drove across the causeway, and passed numerous No Tresspassing signs, it’s closed, the interpretive centre grown over. The canteen barely standing.

We parked the car and stepped over the chain blocking the roadway into the heart of the island, and walked down the path, stepping over at least one snake and past two deer eating in a clearing. We followed the path around in curves, out into the shore, and as we came around a bend that we would later learn was just metres away from the money pit, a car rolled up.

“Can I help you?” the woman inside asked, and with few options, I acted surprised that we couldn’t be there, in spite of dozens of signs so far telling us otherwise.

We were escorted off Oak Island — and away from any hopes of finding the treasure — by the nicest person who could have kicked us off. Slightly annoyed that, again, she had to respond to tresspassers from away, she told us about how her stepfather was still trying to hunt for the treasure, and they were in the middle of applying for a treasure trove licence and that, she believed, there was something burried underneath the island she has called home for a decade or more.

We continued on to the beach, to the old inn with a pool out back where a clerical error cut the price in half, where it was so hot we could barely stand it, within walking distance of the River Pub where we drink two pitchers of beer on the patio that straddles the LaHave.

And it was good, treasure or no treasure.

It was a long week. Thursday, more specifically, was a long day. An
air force helicopter crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing
three crew members and injuring four. I was called in early and sent
to the military town of Greenwood, where the men were based.

I drove two hours in the pouring rain, sheets of water on the rental
car that blocked my view of most of what was in front of me, which
would have been approaching me at 90 or more kilometres per hour.

But I made it, safe and sound, and listened to officials disclose a
few details of what happened, and then mostly give the refrain of
it’s-to-early-to-tell.

But, of course, we wanted more, and I trolled the town to find friends
and family, to ask them at such an innapropriate time how do they
feel. It was a long and hard day, and it was depressing. I was
thankful that most of the people I talked to didn’t know any of them,
and terrified when I found someone who did. But I suppose it should
have been, or what kind of person would I be.