5 July

A French breakfast, a loaf of bread, drowned in maple syrup … like I’ll never see anything again, while the heat rises outside.

Jamie my host and comrade has told me we’re all screwed, we’re all going to hell in a handcart – which is a cheery way to start the day.

And I have to pay this guy for my accommodation!

May as well have a stodgy meal down the road in Ingonish, to take in the news.

Jamie’s US intervention at the start of my day, surrounding my breakfast table. According to him, we’re all toast.

That as may be, yet my toast is French! Liberally doused in Canadian maple syrup, served with a pot of English Breakfast tea.

Feel like the only way to break the connection is to go up a mountain, and make myself unavailable.

In the shaded car park, more of Ontario. A forest, a cure, a volcanic path, in the wilderness above Ingonish. Temperatures rising.

The spiral staircase, the cries, the whales, the wildlife. Looking out onto time itself.

When I move forward, everything behind me starts moving forward … it’s a game I’m complicit in, yet can’t stop.

We play by the rules, even though we have no conscious knowledge of what they are.

Up ahead is one of those peaks that moves away from me, the closer I get.

The Franey, where the ancient trees cling to the mountainside in vast clumps of slow-moving activity, looking down emotionless on the grandeur of the sparkling blue water; volcanic activity covered in a thick green blanket.

In an opening, in an instant, my heart starts missing a beat.

The naked thought that this is a high, until the winding loop goes higher and higher still, to a more obscene view.

A picture that was created from out of nothing, the objects perfectly arranged although flawed and mis-shapen.

Providence nowhere to be seen, scarpered on a bike to the next National Park trail. Glacial awareness, sat in the red chair.

I couldn’t make this up, I couldn’t write it down. It’s nature on an industrial scale, mass-produced, thousands of years ago.

Snakes on a trail are crossing over without warning, slithering into my way in full camo, and slithering off again as if nothing has happened, as if no-one is bothered.

The secret squirrels don’t give a shit, too busy sorting out their nuts.

Yet they all have a common language, the forest inhabitants.

I’m just a bystander, passing through before passing on – not understanding, passing out.

Me and my hiker companions stand around at the real peak, expressionless; walking back and forth on the rock, constantly wanting to verify that what we’re seeing is in some way real, in some way that yes this is happening.

But not very much is happening.

Until the college frat pack arrives, perfectly formed, chiselled from granite.

We arrive up here for the photo opportunities, not for the view, and then we all follow each other down, walking the line, a stream of life, temporary invaders, roughing up the scene that plays out before us.

And then we all disappear off in our out-of-state cars to the next photo opp, a land which lies in sometimes inconvenient folds and inclines.

For the can’t-be-arsed, the lookouts in the lay-bys, a constant stream of rental cars and RVs.

My final Cape Breton Highland fling is up the 200 steps to the lakeview lookout, staring down on the islands floating around, and the narrow strip of beach beyond the whitewashed house.

Cape Breton, I’m leaving you. I’m driving along proven roads, to get to a place I’ve seen before.

Past roadside businesses, the tartan shop, the multi-coloured Volvo, the packs of sidelined old yellow buses.

All the time the landscape gently reconfiguring itself with a flattening outlook.

Around Bras d’Or to stay with a bear on the lake.

For some reason, I boogie board into the hostel, to have an unnecessary discussion about the price I’ll pay. I end up with a room … which is relieving, since that’s why I’m here.

After a meal and a beer, I stand outside in the warmth of the falling dusk, overlooking the lake, talking travels with CJ from Toronto, in a stop-start conversation.

We are distracted by a chaotic firefly display directly in front of us.