At first light I’m in the hostel lounge, acting out my life so far with the two other resident drifters – Emma and CJ. It’s a game of nomadic charades.
We flew in on planes, picked up rental cars, took the highway here, and now we’re telling stories, inside – beyond the firepit.
The day has barely even started, yet the yarns are already spinning and streaming.
As is the cricket on CJ’s tablet, which is an odd distraction. Every so often, one of our anecdotes gets a loud cheer from the on-screen crowd.
When we can’t stand the heat, we retreat to the kitchen, for a cooked breakfast and some steaming tea.
Eating outside in the morning sun, enjoying the view over the trees to the lake below, the calm and quiet occasionally interrupted by the rumble of traffic on the main highway, just at the end of the long drive.
Feeling the need for action before the predicted tropical heat descends, I spring up and drive over to Whycocomagh Provincial Park, to uncover a winding trail system that sweats any residue machismo out of me, on the steep tracks.
I recover my lost breath at the top. And it’s easy enough to find high spirits up here from the peak … widescreen glimpses of the freshwater lake system, toy box buildings, small people going about their daily business.
Eating my cheese sandwich at 11am, the lunchtime lawbook having been launched off the edge, feeling like a giant perched up here on the mountainside – making my own rules.
I’m taking in all of the oxygen that the trees are giving me.
In the elevated melting heat, this is open-air sauna living, sweating out the sins of my parallel lives.
Falling down the mountain I land at Nova Scotia’s only totem pole, being returned to the earth in a kind of reversed but proud evolution.
Wide-eyed, in the long process of being absorbed by the ground, in the middle of a campsite with full facilities, at the base of the lost peaks. It’s in a good place, and still with a story to tell.
Over at the empty parking lot, a wooden eagle, motionless, keeping an eye on the entrance and the one-way system … ready to swoop on violators.
Defeated by the sweltering heat, I go to queue up in the air-conditioned grocery store, for reprieve and some ice cream; and then retreat further to the restful calm of my private balcony, in still anticipation of the events which will envelope me through the later stages of today.
My host Nancy appears, wandering back and forth, shouting up that the cyclists are now due to return tomorrow, not today, all explained with an air of apology. I try to put on a cloak of mild disappointment, but it doesn’t fit well.
When I shake myself out of my fraud, I find myself halfway to Baddeck, for the summer festival / festiville.
The high street at 5pm is closed off, and difficult to tell if the stalls are being set up or packed away as I saunter through.
There are no transactions taking place, and I wonder if I’ve inadvertently missed the festivities in my sun-drunk mid-afternoon inactivity.
There’s a man with a beard and a kilt playing the bagpipes to no-one in particular on the other side of the barricades, and again I’m unsure if he’s coming or going.
I’m heading down to the pier, which is far busier than when I last saw it a few weeks ago, with way more visiting boats and holiday yachts.
Expensive-looking vessels, these; tied down, going nowhere today, champagne co-conspirators shacked up on board, toasting the surroundings and the circumstances which have led them here.
Up ahead, Captain Jack Sparrow and a parrot and the pied piper are taking a long slow falter up the pier, none of them seemingly invited to the main street celebrations, but all three of them effortlessly attracted to the drink.
Indoors, perched at the bar beneath a battle-scarred propellor, adjacent to a Big Spruce, I find myself skulking under the wooden beams and the weight of history within the Old Freight Shed.
I’m having the haddock parisienne, once again – the second time in as many weeks … it’s too damn good.
Grilled on the matter by my barfly neighbours from Cheticamp, here for who knows what except a house burger / wine bottle symphony.
At 8pm, the main street now busy, overrun: open Festiville!
Making an impression: Big Spruce / Cape Breton Brewing / Beavertails (why). Also, the music.
By the tepee set up on the lawn in front of the old town hall, traditional drumming, singing and dancing from the local Wékoqmáq folk – gripping everyone in the street and stopping them in their tracks with the loud, mesmerising cries and thumps and beats of faith, myth and legend.
The dancer skips around the circle of drummers, with bells on.
Further up, the four piece Gaelic band, the highlight a softly-sang ballad, If I Had a Hat.
Other tunes more boisterous and energetic, getting the crowd tapping their feet, and not long later in some cases breaking out into wonky dancing.
Trucker, rehab, poet, farmer. With a fireman on the mixing desk.
The fiddler hidden behind shades all of the time – back to black – eyebrows in connection with the rhythm, almost jumping clean off his dome like they have a life of their own.
Craft stalls, bake stalls, knick-knack stalls, forgotten stalls, all under an argumentative sky which falls down into the road, by Tom’s pizza place, causing a violent scene which could be a Caravaggio if anyone present had brought along an easel and some paints.
Security watch this fight scene unfold with a mild disinterest, fists flying in broad brushstrokes.
The loud pop of the first firework briefly halts the swinging arms, before the ten maybe fifteen people all pile back in again … fists flying again in all directions.
Heavy weather, this – at this precise moment, the stormy heavens above open up, a monumental downpour causing everyone to run for cover, just as the cops turn up somewhat belatedly to break up the mass brawl outside the pizza joint.
The display in the harbour washes over all of this, just about.
When we’re done with swooning over the cracks and bangs and exploding lights, we jump in our cars and zoom down the Trans Canadian, single-file, the dark of the night giving us licence to speed, as one.
A snaking midnight convoy; express, ablaze.
An Outside World 