And yet as much as I love it, it's not forever. Ten years later I'm in a car driving west and this time there is no ocean to greet me. We join the great pulsing artery that is Highway 401 and drive across the top of Toronto, and then we split and turn and split again, and soon enough the smog and the city are behind us and we're on the Burlington Skyway. The water is open beneath us – Lake Ontario and Hamilton Harbour – and this time the names on the exit signs are old familiars: Stoney Creek, Grimsby, Beamsville. Off in the distance the Niagara Escarpment rises.
And then the fields start. Rows of peach trees, apple trees, grapevines stutter and blur as we drive past. Niagara's greenhouses are pale bubbles floating in the fields. Sometimes I see the wink of a light from a freighter out on the lake. I am sad that I've left Nova Scotia; I am excited to be in Ontario. I am leaving home; I am going home. I am somewhere between beginning and ending. It finally occurs to me that as long as I'm in Canada, with a hill at my back and water at my feet, I'm where I need to be.
Austen Gilliland is the senior copy editor at Canadian Living Magazine. She lives in Toronto, but her heart resides in the highlands of Nova Scotia.
Page 2 of 2 – On page 1, discover what makes the journey to Antigonish, N.S. so beautiful and epic.
