near St-Emelie-de-l’Énergie, Quebec
Late afternoon. The long dark blue shadows
that stretched across the snow from the base of each tree, each little shrub,
each delicate sapling when I came upstairs to take a nap have disappeared now,
an hour later, into a sea of the same dark blue, and through the round window
high in the wall to my left, I can see the sun's final flares between tall pines.
We arrived at noon, having delayed the trip
from the city by a day because of a snowstorm. After shoveling a path to the
door we brought in the luggage, the bags of food and wine, a carton of twelve
bottles of Boréale, the cheese we’d bought at Fromagerie du Champ à la Meule on the way.
We added my snowshoes to the pile already stacked in the garage, and changed
from boots to slippers. G. quickly built a fire in the big stone
fireplace, and put out a half-kilo of peanuts for the bluejays, to whom she
whistles on arrival (they come in about two minutes, she confided to us,
grinning,) while S. set about unpacking the groceries and poured each of us
a beer, which we drank with crackers and pickled herring while the fire began
to spread its warmth.
Lunch was a salad, with breads and
oatcakes, followed by grapes and cheese: a soft, round triple-crème, a firm
wax-covered wedge from the fromagerie, and a Sablot de Blanchette - a sablot is hoof or a clog – a small, square block of
aged goat cheese. While we ate, the birds did too, coming and going from the
trees to the feeders just outside the windows that G. keeps full all
week: chickadees and blue jays, pine grosbeaks, and a beady-eyed hairy
woodpecker.
I love it here; the silence and the
presence of nature, the light which streams into the many-paned windows all
day, making patterns on the white walls and the woodwork. The house is Shaker:
meditative and simple. But conversation has been a strain for me. I’m tired and
drained after many days of dealing with people, of listening too much, and I’m
tired of feeling entrapped by winter. Maybe I need to be alone, or to
get away to someplace warm. Or maybe I just need this.
After we’d cleaned up from lunch G.
went into town to do a few errands, and the rest of us fell quickly asleep.
When I woke I felt considerably better; how much of my mood is merely fatigue? The others are downstairs; I can hear J. and
G. hauling wood into the porch outside, and I know no one will press me
to come down before I’m ready. The light in this north-facing room, above the garage,
will only last another half hour at best, and then perhaps I’ll sit and
meditate, or turn on a lamp and read before dinner. There’s to be Quebec lamb,
they said, and probably sherry and west coast smoked salmon, from S.’s
mother, before that. For dessert, crab apple jelly with whipped cream. Perhaps
I’ll ask if anyone wants to sit with me. Or be sociable instead, and have a
cup of tea.
(I went down, and had the tea.)
8:20 am
I woke at 3, after
four hours of sound sleep, and rose quietly and went downstairs. The fire had
died down to embers. I put the tea kettle on the stove, added a dry log to the
fire, and made myself a nest on the sofa in front, under a fleece throw and a
Scottish wool plaid blanket. The house was absolutely still. Even without my
glasses I could see that the night sky was perfectly clear, and studded with
millions of stars. The log caught and blazed, and I shut the door to the
firebox, and came back to the sofa with an oatcake and my hot mug of tea -- tilleul, linden – it seems appropriate
somehow that I should be drinking tea made from a tree. I was happy sitting there in the
darkness, the fire in front of me, the frigid silent woods encircling the house
like a mystery, and stayed awake with my thoughts until five or so, when my
eyelids finally closed and sleep came again.
My friends came downstairs, S. first,
then G., shortly after I woke at 7. I had rejuvenated the fire already,
and S. made coffee. Now G. is preparing scones which she’ll bake over
a wood fire in the bread oven, next to the fireplace. On the porch, the little
red squirrel is defending his own pile of peanuts from six bluejays, who sit in
the nearest tree, their white breasts fluffed and shining in the sunlight. The
temperature is minus twenty-eight C.
11:00 am
We’re about to go snowshoeing, after a very
leisurely morning. The bright sun has warmed the outside air to -8 C.
(about
18 degrees F.) and the animals and birds are busy gorging themselves.
During
our own breakfast, a glossy black squirrel appeared – look, it’s
Balthazar!
G. cried, saying they hadn’t seen him for two years. He was quite
gorgeous, fit for a nobleman’s hat if there were still French trappers
searching for prize pelts. After a brief moment of reticence, he sprang
up onto
the brick wall and craned his neck to get a good look at the strange
inhabitats
of the interior, refusing to jump down even when we peered back at him,
close
to the window. Finally he began burrowing for seeds at the base of the
feeder,
bringing his head up every now, his black nose covered with fine snow,
and eventually bounded away into the far trees, leaving a definitive
trail of leaps in the
pristine snow.
The shadows shrink as we approach midday.
Because I’ve seen both sunrise and sunset in the past 24 hours, I’ve marked out
the arc of the sun’s appearance and setting along the ridge of pines; it’s
still short, this east-west wedge, and the sun isn’t even halfway to the zenith
as it makes its transit.
1:15 pm
Back from a long trek on showshoes, around the new lake that was dug in the fall,
and then
breaking a trail through the deep snow into the woods, past the cat
cemetery,
up the hill and down again to the old sandpit, where we stopped to take
some
photographs and catch our breath, listening to the silence. Then we
retraced our path. A strenuous hour and a quarter, under an absolutely
clear sky, the snow
and the paper birches brilliant white against the blue. Twice I stopped
to
scoop up a small handful of fresh snow and eat it, feeling the fine
crystals
melt on my tongue. How I’ve missed being out in the woods in winter!
Now we’ll have lunch, and then a few hours
of quiet before leaving around 4:30. I think the city will feel like a shock.
3:40
A last round; watering the plants, checking
the bathrooms and living room for stray clothes, cameras, books. G. has
given me shoots of a large, spotted angel-wing begonia, and her lemon
pelargonium, which is quickly taking over the upstairs bathroom. Fortunately
it’s a warmer day so I’ll be able to get the cuttings back to Montreal without
risk.
The sun disappeared during our late lunch,
but the northern shrike made her appearance,
just as G. had predicted, sitting high in the little aspen
and frightening all the other creatures into immobility or
disappearance. She's a beautful bird, the first of her species I've ever
seen, with a lightly striped white breast, a soft grey head, a strong
beak and
a slender black mask like an elegant Carnival figure of dubious and
possibly alarming
intention; everyone steers clear. At length she flew off, the sun came
out
again, and with it the chickadees, who seem to be the mascots of this house at the edge of the wilderness, always cheerful and hopeful,
waiting for
the next appearance of the humans.
