I moved to Nova Scotia at the beginning of September, for school, and 10 years later – almost 10 years to the day – I moved back to Ontario.
When I think about those trips, the first thing I see is asphalt shimmering in the late-summer heat. The Trans-Canada Highway rolls and curves ahead, swelling on the uphill stretches to accommodate passing lanes, slimming down again as the road descends. The yellow line holds steady down the middle of the road; the white line breaks into dashes, solidifies, breaks up again.
I am on a bus, travelling to Antigonish, N.S. I have my forehead pressed against the cool glass. I'm looking out, watching fields roll by at first, but as we get closer to my destination trees take over, crowding up close to the side of the road. I read the exit signs and try to puzzle out the names of the places we're passing: Shubenacadie, Musquodoboit, Stewiacke, Merigomish. I roll them in my mouth like strange hard candy; the unfamiliar combinations of consonants and vowels have a flavour I'm not accustomed to. Just outside New Glasgow the bus crests a hill, and opened up in front of us, like arms held wide in anticipation of an embrace, is the ocean.
Those open arms will never cease to delight me. Each time I make this trip I look forward to that view. It's made more special, perhaps, by its fleeting nature; as quickly as it appears it disappears again as the bus crests the hill, for now I'm in the highlands of Nova Scotia and the hills rise up around me in their own kind of embrace.
Page 1 of 2 – Austen's homage to the East Coast continues on page 2.
