Home. Fire, family and friends.

A crackling hearth

Crisp ice laden leaves

Thigh high drifts

A crackling hearth

Slow methodical drips

Slipping grasping earth

A crackling hearth

Sodden fog burning dry

Sweat stained brow

 

A crackling hearth.

I am distant, lost and estranged, miles and miles away. My breathing shallow and quiet. I grow deaf to cacophony of the woods and the water. The rhythmic crackling is comfort. The world reduced to a circle of flickering warm hues glancing from root and rock.

A crackling hearth.

My focus wanders and finds solace in the flames. The campfire is a window to the past, to home.

Home.

It is far from where I grew up, fourteen hours give or take. Every year my brothers and I would make that pilgrimage to Northern Quebec. Away from the place we lived, away from it all. We almost always make it late in the day just as the sun dipped into the lake. Our tar chinked cheap and ramshackle one room cabin patiently awaiting on its haunches.

My Grandfather bought it years ago as a hunting camp and pet project for his boys long before the area became cottage country. Surrounded now as it is by lakehouses, it remains hidden and secret squirrelled in a small bay behind a smaller island. We have some peace.

No power or water runs on the property to this day, and so it will remain.

We spend our time playing cards, cooking, canoeing and swimming. All the while trying vainly to escape the ravaging hordes of black, deer, and horseflies, praying for bats. We sit by the fire and listen to old unspoken traditions and laws that govern that place. There will be no technology here, if it is not powered by people it is not welcome. The night draws in and all that is left is the haunting stories told by the loons, echoing over the glass lake.

The yodel and wail is like nothing else. One thing is certain, each loon has a home and they sing about them at night. I’ve travelled far, but never have I found so many mysteries as in our Canadian wilds. Robert Service penned it best – there are strange things done. Now for truth and fact, when a male loon leaves his home territory he changes his call and song entirely. We know this from radio-tagging and recordings.

What we don’t know is the best part of the story.

So it goes. Ancient memories of mine drawn from dream or some inherited wisdom: Loons cry out to tell the story of the land. They are describing their home and their history. All to soon, Winter comes and they flee for the sea, taking their young. When they return, the prodigal sons pick up the exact unique calls of their fore-bearers.

This is where the magic happens.

Sometimes, through storm or chance, predators or sickness, no-one makes it back home to raise young and teach them their song. The lake will lie silent. Soon comes an interloper, an outsider. Perhaps a second son or lost soul. With no relations or lessons they move into the vacant space.

Yet they sing. It isn’t their own story they are singing into the night brought from some distant home, it is the story of the land. Before long a piercing song can be heard echoing through the dark, the exact song heard before. Through some mystery the new settlers have learned, and sing the same songs of home. They will pass it on to their young, and it will continue. This is their new home. And they pass on the song to their young.

There is something permanent and transitory about home.

Strange things are done.

When the night draws near, and I am far from home I can stare into the flames of a small fire and lose myself. Lose myself and the distance and go home, return to that camp in the woods. Back to the blackflies and the loons crying in the dark. To singing the same song of that place. When the fire burns low and the coals die out and the chill sets in I shiver back to reality. Cold and alone. In an instant the song is drowned by the cacophony of the present. I cannot sing the song, not when I am away. But it resonates within me and I rest assured.

A crackling hearth.

It will have to do. Until I make it back to that lonely lake in Northern Quebec. Home.

 

Well, that was rather morose. Cheer up! When I don’t have a campfire I just tune into some Radio Radio for some down-east Chiac.

As always, questions comments criticisms most welcome.

 

 

Bonsound Records.“Radio Radio: Deckshoo” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 6 May 2010. Web. 28 Jan 2014.

Cash, Johnny. “Cremation of Sam McGee” Robert Service. Online video clip. Youtube,15 Nov 2008. Web. 27 Jan 2014.

“Loon Behavior and Calls” LoonWatch. Northland College. n.d. Web. 28 Jan 2014.