There
is something magical about crossing into and stepping foot in another
country.
Even
now, having thus stepped many times, the joy and wonder of viewing different
license plates, highway signs, languages, and cultural markers conveyed on
billboards and shop placards never fades.
For
Barbara and me, this was our first foray into Canada. As Southwesterners, we had both been to
Mexico, many times over borders such as El Paso-Juarez, Laredo-Nuevo Laredo,
and Brownsville-Matamoros; and in my
case a natal family trip through the core of the country that included
Monterey, San Luis Potosi, Mexico City, and Acapulco.
But
we had never been to Canada. Our visit
was short but memorable:
We
drove through the Ontario countryside to Toronto, where we paused to roam a big
provincial fair that just happened to be taking place. I remember being especially impressed with a
big-screen documentary focused on the magnificence of water, “earth’s greatest
cleaning agent.” Yeah, I thought, soap
and detergent ain’t nothin’ without water.
We proceeded eastward, skirting Montreal for a drive into rural Quebec. Barbara was able to cobble up some of her
high school French when we stopped at a cafe in the town of St. Georges for
lunch, driving thence for our first look at Niagara Falls. The spectacular sight did not disappoint, but
rather enlivened images held of the fabled falls from many sources featuring
this natural wonder as a backdrop for the seemingly perfect honeymoon.
Barbara
and I crossed over the border in very early September 1975. We had timed our arrival for a multi-week New
England sojourn, the crowning event of which would be a look at the region’s storied
autumnal foliage. Once in upstate New
York, we visited the Kodak plant and museum and the Remington Museum of Western
Art in Rochester. We camped in the
Catskills at a spot where I took out my iron skillet and fried my first chicken
since embarking on the Big Trip; a
charcoal fire heated the skillet and then roasted a panoply of vegetables and
potatoes.
We
entered New England at the New York-Vermont border, toured the capital of Montpelier,
then proceeded to the New Hampshire
capital of Concord, where we took a long time to understand that a very nice
respondent to our question as to the whereabouts of a high school replied that “Can-kad
High School” was just a few blocks away.
We had throughout the trip a routine of taking a daily run whenever
possible on the track of a local high school.
In this case, Barbara and I were halfway to the high school of reference
when we realized that “Can-kad” was “Concord” in the local dialect.
In
New Hampshire, we also visited New Haven for a perusal of Princeton University
and a look at the Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain homestead. On to Maine, we rumbled around the capital
and capitol of Augusta, took a mystical ride through gentle mountains from
which moose peered at us from foggy bluffs, and headed to southern shores
replete with scenes of fishers going about their vocational routines and also
in our Moby Dick visions saw whalers from centuries past exercising their own
professional preparations.
I
had become a fan in recent years of Neil Young, so that his line, “Twenty-Four
and there’s so much more” was a perfect musical backdrop to my birthday of like
numeration,” celebrated magically and with delicious delight at a town within
the stunning Acadia National Park, where we dined on the ultimate regional delicacy:
lobster.
Barbara and I counted the visit to this park one of the best on a trip
of so many stunning natural
landmarks:
Acadia
is a land where legend and history mingle coherently and at this park present a
complete education of vital ecosystems where ocean and river and forest and
field coalesce and support one another,
as
if instructing humanity to the do the same.
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