Bridge over Matheson Brook, Nova Scotia (© Magi Nams)
Yesterday’s lull before the storm – peaceful, its warmth sweet – transformed overnight into another Maritime blast of rain and wind. I ran with Pepper through that rain and wind this morning, and then holed up in my study to write while record-breaking precipitation pummeled Nova Scotia. Periodically, the view of lawn and forest beyond my study window became obscured by rainfall so heavy it hung like a streaky white curtain through which I saw blurry glimpses of green.
On jumping into my novel, I realized a certain blurriness existed there, too, with regard to timing. I’d specified a Canada Day weekend in July as the time the heroine first explored Turtle Mountain in Manitoba’s southwest corner, but had failed to specify the exact timing of her move to the mountain later in the summer. This necessitated a crash couple hours of establishing continuity within my fictional enterprise.
Continuity is the series of bridges which links not only fictional events, but also the progression of the seasons and of life. In Nova Scotia, October is one of those bridges. This year, it’s carried us from the shore of September’s mild temperatures at summer’s death, over a rushing stream of Indian summer and capricious storms, toward November’s calculated cold.
The passage has been exhilarating – hot, cold, wet, brooding, bountiful, beautiful. Ice pellets lay strewn on the forest floor the first Thursday of the month. The following Thanksgiving Day weekend, temperatures soared to 27°C. My garden is saturated with moisture, the pockets I created when pulling out onions immediately filling with water. Golden Russett apples litter the ground and hang like bronzed ornaments on the tree at the back corner of our yard. Petunias in my planters continue to bloom, flaunting warm pink blossoms that clash outrageously with the colours of autumn. And days like today feature skies that lay like tear-drenched shrouds on the earth. Bring on the next plank.
