Out Walking

Coming Home to Joy (Notes from Kaihura)

[I wrote these recollections of our recent mission trip to Uganda while on the long plane trip coming home. They are by no means all I have to say about the wonderful people of Kaihura, but they begin to tell about what it is like there, and what it is like to leave. Please continue to read the Embrace Uganda blog to hear more.]

When I walked down the loading bridge to the plane in Entebbe, a blast of cold air hit me. Air conditioning. Settling into my seat, I realized that I had suddenly crossed over, from a mostly pre-modern world to a very modern world. It made me sad.

I am still trying to hold in my mind specific images of Kaihura, particularly the faces of our friends. Saturday morning they met us at Faith’s home, the orphan children from Home Again and the children from the Dorcas Vocational School, as well as pastors and adults who had welcomed and assisted us, and we walked the quarter mile down dirt roads to the tiny business district of Kaihura, the children insisting on carrying our luggage.

Our bus came. We boarded. As we looked out the window of the bus, our Ugandan friends were weeping. My friend Sam, a gifted 18 year-old young man, was standing in the back, wiping tears from behind his sunglasses. Joanne, with whom I played many games at Home Again, was her usual placid self, but tears were in her eyes. Daniel did not cry but stood right in front looking at me. He wrote me a letter, and drew a picture of flowers for me, but at 15 was too concerned at becoming emotional to deliver it himself. Stephen, who has broken his arm, was looking on. I pointed to each of them and waved, wanting them to know that I was saying good bye to them as individuals, that I would miss them, that there were no little people in Kaihura. When you look out and see 400 kids looking intently at you, it’s sometimes overwhelming to realize that each one is made in God’s image, that each one is a soul in need of redemption, that each one has dreams and troubles of their own.

Behind me I hear the uncharacteristic sobbing of my 13-year old daughter Anna. In front of me, my 16-year old son Stephen was crying. And so was I. Not only because I would miss them but because unlike us they could not leave behind the relentless hardship of life, a life they lived, however, with faith, hope, and love. But then as sad as it was to say goodbye to them, just as sad were those faces of the countless other adults and many children of the community who stood outside their homes and shops and alongside dirt streets and the main road and sadly watched us leave, most of whom I had not been able to get to know, leaving them to substandard, often unaffordable health care, poor education (despite the dedication of some teachers), and with neither running water nor electricity. We were leaving.

During the course of the two weeks, Stephen and I interviewed all 25 teenagers that went on the trip, in addition to some others. These kids raised their own support and often more in order to come. Some were curious. Some felt called by God. None were prepared for the overwhelming love they experienced and the work God did in them and through them in a relatively short time --- exposing self-centeredness, teaching them how to worship freely, and meeting their need for phileo love, the deep love of authentic friendship that the children and adults here gave to them. They also grew in their love for one another --- helping, loving, and sharing with each other. Practically all of them wanted to stay. Several of them cried at the mention of leaving or when they began to talk of how being there had affected them.

We adults have said many goodbyes. We forget what it is to be a teenager, where goodbyes seem for a time to be the end of life as we know it and we cannot imagine a world without whatever it is we leave behind. We have also had mountaintop experiences only to return to the mundane plain of life. We know that life will go on, that we will return to the familiar patterns of life on the other side. We say we have perspective. And yet we too easily guard our emotions, steeling ourselves against disappointment. Maybe deep down we are tainted by a cultural cynicism. And yet what these young people give us is a sense of the intensity of experience because they are less guarded, more engaged emotionally, and more in touch with the present moment. Can you remember that time in your life? It’s worth trying to remember, worth letting go of talk of perspective and letting the intensity of the moment, whether of sadness or happiness, wash over you. Then you will go on, but you will not be the same.

I don’t want to be the same. Perspective tells me that I live in a different world than my Ugandan friends, and yet my heart tells me we are the same. I find myself already adapting my conversation and attitudes to the world I live in, and yet I feel a bit estranged. I am home, and yet ill at ease, aware that something is amiss. Something is. To use scriptural words, being an “alien and stranger” on the earth takes on new meaning. I’m feeling alienated. It feels strange. And yet it feels better. I have a better sense that this world is not my home, that my citizenship is not here.

I don’t want to be the same. I don’t want to forget. I plan on surrounding myself with pictures of my Ugandan friends, visible reminders of faith, hope, and love, and talking about what I heard, saw, and learned. If I can remember the faces of my friends standing on that roadside in Kaihura, I can change. God can do a work in me too. We may have had tears, but God promises that “those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy,” shall “come home with shouts of joy” (Ps. 126:5-6). I’m not happy about leaving. I’m not completely happy about being home. But there is joy knowing that God is at work in Kaihura. . . and in me.

The Manor House

Tonight I drove to Montreat College, a small school on the outskirts of Asheville, North Carolina. They have asked me to do a review of their Music Business Program, They put me up in a huge old house off their main campus called the Manor House. It's pretty creepy.

I'm alone in the house, apparently. It's one of those old houses that has several staircases leading to an untold number of unpeopled rooms, with bookcases lining the walls, huge banquet rooms, and even a swimming pool in the basement. There are even hidden panels in the walls where during Prohibition former tenants hid the alcohol. It reminds me of what old professor Digory's house must have looked like in "The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe," just waiting to be explored. But I haven't found a wardrobe yet. Come to think of it, maybe it's more like Hitchcock's Bates Inn: the only sound I hear right now, besides that of me typing, is the drip drip drip of the bathroom faucet.

Of course I don't believe in ghosts or disembodied spirits of any form, and yet in some way the former tenants of this place remain, their collective memories only vaguely discernible to me etched in the chipped paint on the walls, the creaks in the hardwood floors, the well-worn books, the slightly out of tune piano, and in the depression in that empty chair, just there, outside my door. They're all here. Long ago this was a home, and then they left, or died, leaving behind only the presence of their absence --- and one day that too will be gone.

I need to stop that drip. If I do, what will I hear then?

In Ordinary Time

"Be still, and know that I am God."  (Ps. 46:10a)

One of the reasons I have visited Arizona and other Western states once or twice a year for the last 25 years is, apparently, for solitude --- to be in a place where I can listen to and see things I have difficulty experiencing in the Eastern urban area where I live. Even in a park near my home, the sounds of traffic, airplanes, and people’s voices are ever-present --- the horns and motors, the drone of planes, the bits of “he said, and I said, and can you believe” kind of conversations that I weave in and out of, a constant soundtrack that obscures a more subtle layer of things to see and hear.

Last Wednesday I stood beneath this enormous concrete cross about 25 miles east of Nogales, Arizona, just past the wispy community of Lochiel, constructed as some sort of memorial to one of Coronado's fellow conquistadors by the side of the dirt and gravel road we traveled on through the fields of the San Raphael Valley, making our way to the old mining town of Bisbee. There was no one around. Not a car. Not a house. Not even livestock. We passed two vehicles on our journey --- a Border Patrol agent and a mailman in a dusty pickup truck, both doing their lonely work along a not so well-traveled road.

Given the lack of man-made sounds and structures, I was entranced by the few things I did see and hear when we stopped our car. There was the cross juxtaposed with the clear, empty blue sky --- a testimony, a claim, a reminder that we are not alone. There was a windmill flagged by the biblical name of Samson. Surveying the landscape, there was a single shade tree, perhaps an Arizona sycamore or scrub oak, golden fields of grass, called llanos, as far as I could see, and mountains and hills on three sides --- behind us, the Patagonia Mountains, north of us, the Canelo Hills, and east, the Huachuca Mountains --- their colors changing as the sun moved lower in the sky, shadows growing longer with day’s end.

Listening carefully, at first I heard nothing, just silence. But then I began to notice the soft rise and fall of the wind, the gentle rustling of the grasses, the occasional squeak of the windmill as the blades turned. I heard and saw a few cactus wrens, alighting for a time on the telephone lines stretched overhead, and I looked up and noticed how the wires form a musical staff, the wind’s whistling sound like a song stretched over them.

I looked at my watch and realized that seconds and minutes and hours don’t mean much here where time might be measured by the position of the sun, where most days are the same except for the variables of weather. Let’s just call this ordinary time, where no clocks are ticking, no appointments waiting, where there is no “breaking news,” where what happened today on the stock market is of little interest, where the machinations of the politicians in Washington have little impact, where no one cares who did what to who in Hollywood or what happened on The Office last night.

One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, majors in a celebration of silence, of learning to reflect on and contemplate our lives. That’s difficult if we are always in an urban environment. Buechner says: “Pay attention to what happens to you. Pay attention to who you see. Pay attention to what you say, what they say. Pay attention to what the day feels like. Observe. That wonderful phrase, ‘religious observances,’ means, among other things, just what it says. Observe religiously. Observe deeply. Don't just get through your life, as all of us are inclined to do, on automatic pilot, not much noticing anything. “

I think of Elijah, asleep under a broom tree in the desert outside Beersheba in Judah, waiting for God to do something, anything, or sleeping in a cave in Horeb, waiting for the gentle whisper of God’s voice in the wind, a voice saying to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

If I lay down here and slept, awakening on a new day, it would likely be the same. The tree would still be doing its important work of photosynthesis and shade-bearing, the windmill still turning, if there is wind, or not. The cross would still boldly if silently make God’s claim to every square inch of this universe and make restless travelers like me consider a Kingdom where a king comes not to take the riches of the land and make vassals of its peoples but to give not only riches but His life away.  Christ, the King of love.

It might rain, or it might not. The wind may blow, gently or with bluster, or not, faintly humming over the telephone lines overhead.

It’s all strangely comforting. If I’d had time, I might have stayed awhile, looked around, and better listened to the sound of ordinary time. Who knows? I might have even heard a voice calling my name, saying to me, “What are you doing here?” and then, “Go back the way you came.”

The Thing About Home

There's certainly nothing new about coming home from vacations.  There is the long list of emails, the voice messages, the grocery bag of mail and unpaid bills, the shocking reality of the heat, the resumption of duty (work) and the fading remembrance of leisure.  I wish I was better at re-entry.

But there's also the joy of home, of familiar things, of seeing friends again, of the regularity of routine, and the love of a place --- this place.  I think Mary Oliver says it best in her poem, and so I'll leave it at that:

Musical Notation: 2

Everything is His.
The door, the door jamb.
The wood stacked near the door.
The leaves blown upon the path
     that leads to the door.
The trees that are dropping their leaves
     the wind that is tripping them this way and that way,
the clouds that are high above them,
the stars that are sleeping now beyond the clouds

and, simply said, all the rest.

When I open the door I am so sure so sure
     all this will be there, and it is.
I look around.
I fill my arms with firewood.
I turn and enter His house, and close the door.

Well, of course it's just home, that's all, just a place, and yet it's suffused with eternal significance.  It's His.  I'm glad to be here where my daughter flops on her bed and stares out her window, where my son walks the back yard deep in thought, where my wife picks up where she left off with laundry, meals, and more.  I'll find a favorite chair, just for a moment, and savor just being here, before life begins again.

Day 15: The Pull of Home

It's difficult to escape the pull of home on your last day of vacation.  We're looking out the window, trying to pay attention to what we see --- the orchards and rolling farmlands of the Annapolis Valley, the bay in the distance, the forested hills, the history of a place we are speeding through --- but it's too difficult.  Walking the quaint main street of Digby, I take it in, and yet I don't.  It's not home.  I'm going home.  And so I just give in to it, allowing the conversation to turn to the week ahead, the plans we have, our hopes for the rest of the Summer.  Normalcy will return.  I'll be able to remember what day of the week it is.  Mealtime will be regular (and less!). 

I'm riding the ferry now from Digby to St. John, a three-hour crossing of the Bay of Fundy, a place that has the highest tides in the world and home of fifteen different whale species.  Every now and then I go out on the deck with binoculars, hoping to catch a glimpse of our largest mammal.  Nova Scotia is behind us, and after a brief sojourn through southwest New Brunswick, with a stop in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea for dinner, we'll cross the border at St. Stephens (home of Ganong Chocolates) and be in Maine, on our way to Bangor and a flight home in the morning.

When I consider where we've been, I realize how much we have seen and experienced.  We've learned a great deal about Canada and Canadians, and have been treated so well and graciously by everyone.  On the whole it's a cleaner and more environmentally-conscious place than the United States.  And yet it's a place that by and large treats Christianity and its churches as a matter for historical preservation.  I have a sense that very few people attend church.  Is this what is in store for us in the United States?

I'm looking forward to being home --- home to heat, humidity, and summer haze.  It's part of what makes home be home.

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There were some pleasant surprises on our way to Bangor from St. John.  St. Andrews-by-the-Sea was a delightful waterfront town, with nice shops, accommodations, and restaurants.  It was like Bar Harbor without all the people and tourist traps.  We ate at The Gables, a place with a great view of the harbor and seating on a porch over the water, and decent seafood and pub fare.  Two miles across the water lay Maine.  It was a fitting way to end our time in Canada.

We drove on to St. Stephen, not stopping at the chocolate store, and proceeded through the relatively unbusy border crossing with no difficulty.  I simply answered a few questions, showed the agent our passports, and passed on through.  A customs declaration (which I had taken the time to fill out) was not required.

Leaving Calais, Maine, we passed through the Moosehead Wildlife Refuge.  There were large expanses of marsh and grassland, bordered by a river.  Seeing a viewing platform, we stopped to take a look through the binoculars set up there.  No moose were sighted, but we did see three bald eagles on their nests and enjoyed listening to the various birds in the area.

Proceeding down Maine Highway 9 (which is a nice broad two-lane and relatively untraveled, we enjoyed the approximately 80 miles of forest and low mountains.  It's a very unpopulated area.  We occasionally stopped just to get out and savor the cool air and vistas.  We'll miss it.

Tomorrow at home?  97 degrees and humid.

Day 14: Behind the Veil

"It has always seemed to me, ever since early childhood, that amid all the commonplaces of life, I was very near to the kingdom of ideal beauty.  Between it and me hung only a thin veil.  I could never quite draw it aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond --- only a glimpse --- but those glimpses have always made life worth while"  (Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Alpine Path)

Without a doubt it is a mystical statement.  And yet Montgomery's observation, her sense of something perfect and pure that lay beyond the commonplace, is something known to most of us.  God has fixed a chasm between the old heavens and old earth and new heavens and new earth that we cannot now cross, and yet he treats us to glimpses of what it must be like, moments that we don't forget.

I'm by an open window in a bed and breakfast in the small town of Canning, Nova Scotia, on the West coast (the bay of Fundy side), listening to the sounds of the night.  There's not much to hear.  An occasional car passes by.  A muffled voice from a nearby room.  A horn, perhaps from a boat far away on the Bay, sounds.  Cattle graze and the breeze ruffles the grain growing in the dikeland fields east of here.  It's all very commonplace, and yet I can imagine that in all of what I know and see and hear now there is something of the new earth in it, the promise of more, better, soon.

Leaving Cape Breton today, we stopped for an hour at the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddock.  What a great place!  I did not realize the expansiveness of this inventor's mind.  Not only did he invent the telephone, but he also worked on perfecting something called "Visible Speech" for the deaf, built and flew airplanes, developed hydrofoils, worked with X-rays and perfected the phonograph (invented by Edison), and much, much more.  He had a passion to invent and was relentless in it, never giving up after failure after failure.  I could glimpse even in that the kind of passion for learning that must persist and be perfected in a new earth.

It was a long drive today, and yet it made me appreciate the rich beauty and diversity of Nova Scotia, and it made me long for a new earth --- not by glimpses but full on.

Day 13: A Whale of a Time

Eddie, a man who undoubtedly figures himself something of a Crocodile Dundee of whale sightings, took us out on the ocean today just outside of Ingonish Habour to look for whales.  I've been on such excursions before, but never on a inflatable zodiac.  I was uncertain what to expect.  I didn't have long to find out.

The zodiac is basically a 24 foot inflatable raft with a center console and two 100 horsepower motors.  It carries up to 12 passengers, but today we had only ten.  A few seconds after we pulled away from the dock in the South Harbour, Eddie floored it.  We headed straight out to sea going approximately 40 mph, with Eddie whooping and hollering all the way, as he immediately spotted whales, minke whales like we had seen in Maine.

It turns out there was only one whale, but the view we had was amazing.  We came within a few hundred feet, watching it spray, surface and actually breach (rare for a minke whale).  The whale literally leaped out of the water!  It did this several times as we chased it north, occasionally breaching and often surfacing and exposing its fin.  What a thrill to see!  I have never been so close to a whale.  They are majestic creatures that are difficult to describe as such unless you experience them up close.

We also went in search of the elusive moose today.  Just north of here is a freshwater lake, Lake Warren.  We hiked the 2.5 mile hike around the perimeter, a mostly low-lying trail which at time climbed briefly onto the banks around the lake.  It was just the four of us.  We never passed anyone.  Though we never saw the moose, on the far side of the lake we did see an area of pressed down grass where a moose had either slept or rested, and in several places we found moose tracks in mud or soft earth.  After dinner at the lodge we went out via car in search of more moose, driving down some gravel roads into the forest, but we came up empty. 

As evening fell, it grew more windy and a slight rain began to fall, a rare sight these last two weeks!  When we planned the trip, I was certain we'd be seeing a great deal of rain and fog.  Surprisingly, we've seen very little.

As the end of our trip nears, I have to remind myself that vacations are not over until they're over, that God will present new things each day just like in life in general, if we have eyes to see.  Like most, I tend to live too much in tomorrow and not enough in the present.  If Jesus warned that each day's trouble is enough for that day (an admonition not to worry about tomorrow), then surely each day's pleasures are enough for that day too and are to be savored and not passed over.  Home is in my sights, but there's still much to see on the way home.

Days 11 and 12: From PEI to Cape Breton

It is with some sadness that I'm looking back at Prince Edward Island from the deck of the Wood Island - Caribou ferry.  Today I remember driving through the bucolic landscape toward the ferry, still relishing the contrasts --- the red roads and cliffs, green meadows and fields, and blue skies and sea.  I also enjoyed our stopover at the historic Orwell Farm, a restored home place and farm en route to the ferry.  Visiting the barn, my daughter discovered two timid kittens who poked their heads out from behind a weathered red door, mewing.  We toured the general store, home place, church, and one-room schoolhouse which functioned until 1969.  Our guide spent at least two years there herself.  You have to use your imagination a bit to see it as it was earlier in the twentieth century, before or not long after the advent of cars, before the drone of airplanes overhead, and before, perhaps, the tidiness bred of a more leisurely era.  (For example, the well-tended flower beds would certainly not have ranked high on the original farm family's list of priorities.)  It's easy to think of such a time with nostalgia, but while the loss can be lamented some there are gains as well (better healthcare, less grueling labor).  

After a 75 minute ferry ride, we were in for a bit of driving through the Nova Scotia countryside --- more than I had counted on!  The landscape was markedly different than that of PEI --- much more forested and less agrarian.  After a couple hours, we crossed over to Cape Breton, a peninsula in northern Nova Scotia.  We spent our first night in the very small town of Mabou (pop. 300), home of the Rankin family, one of the best known musical Cape Breton families.  (They are sort of like the Carter family in the bluegrass world, yet they are Celtic.)  The best treat of the evening was a "ceilidh", which is basically a hoedown, held in the community hall.  We heard three local fiddlers, accompanied by a pianist, play Celtic reels, jigs, and waltzes.  They even had two step-dancers take the stage with dancing reminiscent of Irish dance in Riverdance.  It was a crowd of approximately 100, most of whom appeared to be locals.  We felt right at home.  It could have been the Blue Ridge Mountains, only with different accents.

There is an oddity located right next door to our motel --- Our Lady of Sorrows Shrine, a white clapboard church with a lit cross atop it.  We walked right into it at 10:00.  Numerous candles were lit, and in the front of the church was the painting of the suffering Jesus held by Mary.  At first I thought it might be a good place for prayer.  After visiting, I think not; the focus on the continued suffering of Jesus, the candles lit for those presumably in purgatory, and the explicit Mary worship truly distract from worship in spirit and truth.  Better the woods and sky and ocean.

The next day, making our way up the western side of the peninsula, we stopped in Cheitcamp for a meal.  At the nondescript Acadian Restaurant (recommended by Frommers), I had meat pie, an Acadian favorite, which was excellent.  Proceeding on, we entered Cape Breton National Park, a beautiful drive that hugs the coastline of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the Cabot Trail.  This is a dramatic country, much like that of our Western parks, with mountains meeting sea in a jumble of rocks and boulders, the gulf glittering for as far as you could see.  Stopping at one sand beach just north of Inverness, we discovered tons of sea glass, something which made my wife very, very happy, as she had been looking for it ever since we left home.  We all loaded our pockets full of the tumbled smooth green, white, brown, and, on occasion, blue glass.  Never have I seen so much sea glass.  Looking for sea glass is like fishing for me: great if they're to be found, but boring if not.

Making our way around the park we ended up on the east side, in Ingonish, where we have stopped for two nights at the Keltic Lodge, the former summer home of a  friend of Alexander Graham Bell.  The lodge sits on a slender peninsula that juts out into the ocean between North and South Ingonish Harbours.  The views are incredible.  I'm already thinking about home, yet a bit of the wanderlust remains, enough for another couple days, at least!

Days 8, 9, & 10: Knowing a Place

"For lands have personalities just as well as human beings; and to know that personality you must live in a place and companion it, and draw sustenance of body and spirit from it; so only can you really know a land and be known of it."  (Lucy Maud Montgomery, in The Alpine Path)

One of my enduring memories of being here on Prince Edward Island will be spending time with my almost 13-year old daughter in all the Anne of Green Gables oriented attractions --- like a restored Green Gables or the author's actual homeplace, or in viewing the most popular Canadian musical, Anne: The Musical.  There are so few things that really engage her emotionally that I loved seeing her smile, laugh, and at one point in the musical, even cry so touched she was by what was happening.  I think she identifies with the imaginative and precocious Anne.

But it's not just my daughter who is affected, it's also me.  You can't really know PEI without knowing Anne of Green Gables, and she is everywhere in the center of the island, in Queens County.  I always regarded the book as one for children, particularly young girls, and thus I have not read it, but I plan on doing so.  Montgomery was a good writer, and Anne engages the imagination.  It's part of knowing this place.

Walking through the birthplace of Montgomery, there were plaques with quotes from her short autobiography, The Alpine Life, and I was drawn in by the insightfulness of her thinking.  So I also bought her autobiography.  It's part of knowing the place.

The last three days have also been filled with other ways of knowing this place --- walking the grounds of the historic and beautiful hotel where we stayed, Dalvay-by-the-Sea, originally the summer home of Alexander McDonald, exploring the trails through the dunes and forests of Prince Edward Island National Park, riding bikes for a 26 -mile trek on the island wide Confederation Trail through wetlands, meadows, and farmlands, and  meandering in our car down backroads.  It's difficult to describe the subtle pleasure the landscape gives. Perhaps Montgomery does it best:

"Much of the beauty of the Island is due to the vivid colour contrasts --- the rich red of the winding roads, the brilliant emerald of the uplands and meadows, the glowing sapphire of the encircling sea.  It is the sea which makes Prince Edward Island in more senses than the geographical.  You cannot get away from the sea down there.  Save for a few places in the interior, it is ever visible somewhere, if only in a tiny blue gap between distant hills, or a turquoise gleam through the dark boughs of spruce fringing an estuary."

That's true.  The contrast of blue and green and red is something I never tire of.

Here are some things we noted about PEI:

• They like gravy on their fries.
• They serve sweet iced tea.  You have to ask for unsweetened tea.
• They rarely serve ice with drinks.
• They have no deer or moose or bear on the island.
• They have more forested land now than they did in 1900.
• They have mosquitos.  We felt at home.
• They have very few Canadian geese.  They have emigrated to the United States.
• They say "Eh" (pronounced with an "a")
• They have red dirt and many red sand beaches, some of which smell!  (It's the natural litter of mussels and other sea creatures.)
• Their motorists are extremely polite.
• They do not usually give free refills on drinks (to the chagrin of my well hydrated son, whose favorite question is "Do you have free refills?")

Life on the island is unhurried and almost genteel.  If you're looking for excitement, you wouldn't like it.  If you want to slow down, you'd love it.  I can see why Anne loved it.  And I'm loving it too -- as best I can.

Day 7: Mid-Course Correction (Lunenburg to Charlottetown)

In vacations, as with life, I often find that mid-course corrections must be made,  Yesterday, the plan was to leave Lunenburg, Nova Scotia and make it all the way to West Point, Prince Edward Island, near the (you guessed it) the West end of PEI.  I was told that the trip would take four hours.  There was, however, a surprising amount of traffic around Halifax, that is, until I remembered that this was Friday and the start of an important holiday weekend for the Canadians (July 1st is Canada Day, the equivalent of our Fourth of July.)  In addition, we left our video camera in our inn in Lunenburg, remembered, thankfully, by my son when we were only eight miles away,  So we had a late start, --- one, however, which allowed some extra browsing in art galleries in Lunenburg.

In Lunenburg, I had the sense that we had stepped back in time a bit and outside consumer society.  That was shattered in route to PEI.  We stopped for lunch at McDonalds, which was about like home except for the maple leaf in the golden arches.  It was the worse food I'd had since leaving home.  But the scenery in route was spectacular --- rolling hills of green forests, vast expanses of largely unpopulated areas, and  dark inlets and ponds of water everywhere.  I was reminded of being out west --- a great big blue sky with billowing white clouds.  It stayed this was throughout mid-Nova Scotia, through Truro and Amherst an on to the Confederation Bridge, a long expanse over Northumberland Strait, between Novas Scotia.

But back to the mid-course correction:  Going to West Point PEI would be quite a trip, and I was concerned we'd all be suffering scenery fatigue with al the car time.  I canceled the reservation and secured a room in Charlottetown, the provincial capital, so after we exited the bridge, we turned east, following the scenic Blue Heron Trail, meandering through south PEI.  The road followed the coastline.  This was different than Nova Scotia.  Rather than vast expanses of forest, there were rolling hills of green fields and meadows, dropping off into the Northumberland Srait, skirted by flowering pink and lavender lupines.  Colorful farmhouses were scattered about, and here and there, in the middle of the fields, a church, some of them obviously a center piece of these agricultural communities (at least at one time.)  I wonder about their life now.

Coming into Charlottetown, there was actually traffic and some of the typical urban sprawl, though on a small scale.  Our hotel was at the historic waterfront.  Arriving there, we discovered that it was a happening place --- the Festival of Lights was going on and the place was full of people, many college age.  After checking in, we had dinner at a Greek restaurant, paid a visit (for my daughter) to the Anne of Green Gables store, and visited the waterfront.  Two young girls had a drunken friend by the arms.  He obviously could not stand up well.  There was a lot of drinking going on.  I was almost run over by another kid who obviously couldn't walk a straight line.  Charlottetown is old, and while it is restored and lively, it looks more old than restored.  It actually reminded me of an old Southern city, like Columbia South Carolina --- aged and not quite restored.

A nice end to the evening was the rising full moon over the harbor.