Terra Nova

Newfoundland -- first mapped as "Terra Nova" -- and Labrador, named for a Portuguese sailor, meaning "landowner" -- look cool on the map of North America, and because they're huge, mostly roadless, difficult to access, and nobody I know has been there, and I was seeking myself because I'd lost myself--that much I knew, but not how or when--after four years of yearning to do it I chose to spend 12 days in the province in northeastern Canada that seemed to mirror me.

Towns such as L'ans Amor ("Love Cove"; formerly named L'ans a Mort, "Cove of Death," but I'm told tourists like sweeter names), with a population of 6, are common. The words for this land are "pristine" and "extreme." The green and blue ocean is clear to its bottom; icebergs and whales swan by. Winters are abrupt, long, and bitter; no fruits, vegetables, or grains grow there; except for fish there's no farming or processing; all other products must be shipped in. You eat seafood and potatoes, and pay $2.50 for an orange. Polar bears ride into tiny towns on icebergs from Greenland and ransack houses. Jacques Cartier called it "the land that God gave Cain." Yet in June, July, and August pointed black and white fir trees cover the coasts, and lakes, rivers, mountains, and wildflowers; just now the wild irises are blooming. In Labrador it was 55 degrees and fleece was my best friend.

The road in the photo, in western Newfoundland near the Gros Morne ("Big Sad One") National Park, looks nice, but half of it is under construction, impossible at any other time of year. We didn't get to Blow Me Down Provincial Park on the west side of the island. The roads in Labrador, on the other hand, are terrible, all of them, every inch, period; the partially paved Trans-Labrador Highway breaks the suspensions and axles of buses. Awesome. Extreme. With trackless sea and stone and fjords and icebergs and timber you get a sense of the entire planet. And I got a sense of my place in it and that there might be more to the story of my life.

Sole Picnic

On my screened porch, on a brawny picnic table built on the spot because assembled it wouldn't fit through either door, is where I serve most summer meals, but another picnic table, much older, waits patiently in the shade beneath the twin giant oaks, its paint pummeled off by at least 15 years of rain and snow, its joints rotting. About every other year I nail, C-clamp, or wood-screw its raggedy pieces together, hoping it will last one more year as a buffet table or a stand for my cast-iron grill. But this summer I hadn't hosted a buffet nor had I grilled. Patient as ever, the shabby eyesore looked appealingly toward me each day while I refused to consider risking splinters, wasps, or the ticks and chiggers teeming in the taller grass around it, but most of the time it was beneath my notice.

Today was the day, a perfect September day, about 78 degrees, sunny, with cotton-ball clouds in a vivid sky, the grass recently cut; and almost everything is still so intensely green I thought, "The earth is covered with plants."(A marvelous fact.) As I gazed at the decrepit picnic table I suddenly understood it, and loved it, and set my dinner out there: a bowl of jambalaya, a flaxseed wrap, and a beer.

Usually I picnic in the open air away from home, doing it a pleasant number of times during this mild summer, but today I woke again to how amazing it is that I can cross the lane, sit down, picnic in my own Missouri yard right in the mainstream flow of life, "bugged" only by a very small wasp which drowned in the jambalaya.

The planks in the grass are the last surviving pieces of a cold frame Demetrius built in 2002.

Taking My Self to Lunch

I only wanted to get the heck out of the clinic for bone scans and blood draws and after fleeing what I call the "Casino" (where you bet your life) I wanted to live it up, so I stopped at a Cracker Barrel on the way home and bought myself a double order of trout plus fixin's and coffee. I sat across from myself and said, "You've really accomplished a lot this past year. You took some chances and I am proud of you. You helped people out. You saw your family and friends often. You passionately loved. You've taken blows and punches to the gut quite gracefully, or if it was proper to fight, you fought. The mistakes were okay. It's all good. How lucky you are to be healthy and not dead yet like some folks. The best is yet to come. Shucks, I even like you a lot, and other people do too. You know, if I was you I'd be pretty happy."

I recommend that you take your Self to lunch soon. Or to a candlelight dinner. Tell yourself how good-looking you are and how much you love your Self. (Don't hesitate: It's the only Self you've got.) There's only one catch: Your Self has to pay the check.