steveskafte

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EVENING DAYDREAM

Everything has changed in my childhood living room – the carpet, couches, chairs, lamps, and even the window. But the view remains the same. All my life, there's been something about watching sporadic traffic pass on Clarence Road below. When I was young, and time seemed slower, the space between cars seemed such a long stretch. It was a kind of drawn-out evening daydream, as headlights rounded the nearby corner, and turned away east or went west by me. I remember times spent here with my childhood paranoia, thinking that every late arrival marked some terrible accident. In those years before cell phones, never knew where, why, or how long the delay. I find it very easy to love this perfect contrast of blue and orange, twilight and incandescence, and the period of time they share the same intensity. It's a balance that settles me out just right.

April 28, 2024 Beaconsfield, Nova Scotia

Year 17, Day 6013 of my daily journal.

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HOME IN SHADOW

For me, forsythia has always been the most distinct sign of spring. Lit up like fire in a sinking evening, bright sparks of yellow while everything else turns blue. It's a simple appreciation, colour crashing into colour, waiting on darkness to draw it all down. There have been long stretches of my life when I only felt free after nightfall. In my late teens and early twenties, it was an escape from a day-long job I hated, the only free hours left to me. Dimming stillness was a good antidote for the anxiousness of sunshine. Past a certain point, calm calls me home in shadow. The chill comes quick on these clear sky nights, feeling the temperature falling by the minute. Won't be long before the shiver settles in, and my backyard goes black and orange in the streetlight.

April 27, 2024 Beaconsfield, Nova Scotia

Year 17, Day 6012 of my daily journal.

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THE DRAW I FEEL Today, the Bridgetown Baptist Church burned to the ground. It's a strange feeling to watch a building you've known all your life get reduced to nothing but rubble. It was built in 1891 – so there's no one alive who remembers when it wasn't here. I suppose you'd call it an eccentric structure. With a half-dozen different peaks and roof lines, and two separate spires, I can't think of another church that reminded me of it. I've got a lot of scattered memories of this place through the years. My grandparents attended through most of my childhood, back when George Neily was the pastor. Later on, it was Brian Wallace, my next-door neighbour. I went to Vacation Bible School every summer, attended two of my cousin's weddings (one was the first I ever photographed), and the funerals of my great-uncle Jake Turksma and grandfather Bob Skafte. For the most part, though, I loved this building for the sake of itself. Going up those narrow steps by the entrance to the attic alcoves was always a thrill, feeling like secret quarters were calling me. All the little hidden places sparked a sense of adventure, a curiosity for the eccentricities of architecture. People come and go in a haze of half-memories, but this roof and these walls outlasted generations. The faithful always say that a church is the people, and a building just a chapel. But to me, structures are the true heart and soul of things. They deepen the draw I feel for home in a way that humanity can't often manage. I've long since drifted from things like services and sermons, but the silence of old wooden structures feels familiar as ever. Just a handful of landmarks form the heart of my hometown, and this was surely one. It's a genuine loss. April 26, 2024 Bridgetown, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6011 of my daily journal.

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PROCESSION PASSING In most small towns, it's extraordinarily easy to be a stranger. Never believe anyone who tells you that "everyone knows everyone". The thousand or so folks within town limits of Bridgetown, plus those on the outskirts like me, make more names than you could ever remember. When I ran my art gallery on Queen Street, people would regularly ask: "How long have you lived here?" "All my life," I'd reply. "So have I," they'd say. Yet we'd never met before. It's pretty easy not to recognize a face, but what we can recall are shared experiences. Going to the skating rink, the school, various churches, the Legion, Pharmasave, V&S, Tim Horton's, or the Graves family grocery store. So even though you don't know me and I don't know you, we feel the same sting when one of those memories gets snuffed out. Maybe that's why I saw an endless parade of vehicles circling as I stood here. Like mourners to a funeral, procession passing by. The old Baptist church is now a blank spot on the map – and it's a map made up of folks like us. April 26, 2024 Bridgetown, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6011 of my daily journal.

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THE VAULT BELOW Hiking into twilight has the most beautifully unnerving sensation. I generally wouldn't do it anywhere new, but I've climbed the mountain pass of Dodge Road on many occasions in the past. Josiah and Benjamin of that name were two of the earliest settlers, responsible for making a way through these woods. Their narrow trail has a ghostly feeling about it – crowded curves and bends carrying on the sensation of centuries of travelers before. No one settled up here in the early days, and no one has since. No need, with plenty of fertile land in the Valley behind and Vault below. You can see that latter hollow from here now and then, the working farms through still-bare branches in a sinking sight below. These ridges are rocky and often exposed, hanging on while desperate roots cling for purchase. It's still as cold as winter every evening, barely above freezing, and I can feet my passing steps being only just enough to push the chill back. Darkness is like a nest that I trust to keep me comforted. I'll make it out just in time for that blue light to fall. April 25, 2024 Spa Springs, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6010 of my daily journal.

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THE HOLE there's a hole in the heart of the mountain telling you that youth is a spring not a fountain bubbling up from below with all you don't know (and more) pour me a drink let it run through my fingers take a sip and stay forever there's a hole in the heart of the mountain and it's hungry for souls like yours all that it seeks are joints that don't creak and lovers who don't lock their doors now, when did you get to be such a bore? was it when you learned your bones could break? what if told you, (there are things down here that could break more) would you still be dreaming about the end if someone found you in the very same place they lost a friend ~ ~ ~ April 25, 2024 Forest Glade, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6010 of my daily journal.

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RESTLESS TRANCE The old bridges on East Branch Road haven't got much life left in them, decades past their last real maintenance. The first span closer to the power station has mostly collapsed, and this second one won't be long to follow. Abandoned roads have held a huge defining force for me through the years. They seems to run such dark rings around me, energy that's slow to shake loose. Sometimes it pulls at my mind like a kind of daydream – all those endless kilometres and shoes I've worn through. Step after step in a kind of restless trance. Some of the oldest ways through the woods are those most forgotten, twisting ribbons through terrible terrain, chasing after wherever they used to end up. They still do, once you push through the brush, hop the puddles, trip over the ruts. They each hide that secret middle of nowhere I'm after. April 24, 2024 Bear River, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6009 of my daily journal.

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SAID AND DONE There's an old swimming hole just east of Middleton town, along the old railbed near Senator Road. Local kids passed centuries of hot summer weather, here on the shores of Morton Brook. Here lie the memories that maybe won't matter, personal histories we can't quite recall. Built up and bolted together – just trying to make sure they won't falter. Nothing defines our existence like discovering our stories are up to us to tell. Many are tempted to stick with a shared past, repeatedly engaging with what they've said and done before. But there's a beauty in being a stranger that seems to win my heart out every time. There are always new faces coming and going out here. Why not take a turn you haven't before, and see how it'd feel if you were one? Spring seems like as good a time as any to do something new. April 23, 2024 Wilmot, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6008 of my daily journal.

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THE LOWEST POINT The old Rossway wharf gets drowned when the highest tide comes through. It's nothing now but bits of rotten wood, and rocks that lost their place. A slow and sure obliteration, barely enough to lift even the smallest bow from bottom. The rolling hills of Digby Neck climb up and off in the distance, away from this, the lowest point. They drift on further from the mainland, to the islands, and then nothing but the open sea. That openness belongs equally to the sky as well tonight – nothing to obscure the shimmering moon. It's the greatest kind of feeling lost I've ever known. I hope you're familiar, at home with that buzzing energy of lightness in the dark. If there comes a time that this can't lift me up, then nothing will. April 22, 2024 Rossway, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

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UNBROKEN CHILL There are things you'll never feel anywhere but in the full moonlight. The dimmest brightness the night has ever known, cast across this boat graveyard. The Seawall sits still, not a ghost of wind to blow last summer's dry and reedy stalks. Those scattered stubs will soon be replaced by new and salt-swept grasses. They're coming through slow to an unbroken chill, open leaves just weeks away, but it feels like it could be months. The nightly mood of this season is shivering, cuts in as a reminder of how tight the winter holds. Eventually, warmth arrives. It's calling out to find me where the cold has taken hold – setting me loose from shore with the worst of the feelings that could find me. No worries, really. There's no holes in the hull of my hope. April 22, 2024 Rossway, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

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TACITURNITY my boyhood passed in a taciturn eternity all those years waiting for the quiet man to speak knocked off my feet faithful to a fault his heart and mine locked in the same vault and it was no different when he spoke in tongues though they said back then that God would fill the gaps I started to doubt it when every time he just opened his mouth and out came the same lines um-shudda-ma-kee-de-a I still hear it in my head an exchange for all that's left unsaid I would've rather traded that Holy Spirit for the ghost of a heart that let me near it but the holes are where the hope gets through at the bottom of a bottomless well the speechless fathers speak for you ~ ~ ~ April 22, 2024 Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

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WITHOUT OUR MEMORIES These clear spring nights come on so cold, all the bitterness of winter in tow. Absolute calm takes off the edge a little, and the heat in the earth from a long and sunny day. It radiates upward as the frigid moon shines down. Those reflected rays disappear through the brush and treetops, absorbed by a mass of wild roses. But timeless vinyl siding carries on the mirroring a little longer. The home itself is basically hopeless. Abandoned so many decades that the floors have caved through, slowly turned to a hollow hulk, in search of the bottom falling out. Like a beautiful soul with dementia, frame for a missing picture; who are we without our memories, anyway? The world carries off an almost unrecognizable beauty after nightfall, but few folks see it. Our eyes tuned to headlights and home, we watch the sky but miss its impact on the earth. For that, you've got to stand in the darkness and wait to see the light. April 22, 2024 Lake Midway, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

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FOR THE SAKE OF THE STORY As far as I'm concerned, darkness always brings its own brightness – like the sun and the shadow it casts. It's all right there in the obvious honesty, like with tragic dramas or blues songs. When I was younger, I was immersed in a religious culture that couldn't resist a happy ending, obsessed with all things working together for good. It felt like such a revelation when I discovered storytelling for the sake of the story alone. One of the great philosophical questions seems to be: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" I'm more of the mindset that it's best to remove the words "why", "bad", and "good" from the equation – and you're nearly to the statement: "Things happen to people." I'm less concerned with cause and effect than I am with my reaction to it. I choose hope, because that ensures I'm aiming for something better. I choose wonder, because I'm better off chasing uncertainty. But, most of all, I choose honesty. I've got nothing invested in pretending my heart is anywhere it's not. April 21, 2024 Forest Glade, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6006 of my daily journal.

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WORKING WITH DISORDER I stumbled upon some natural industry, construction in progress. Signs of gnawing here and there, half a dozen trees felled, and a half-dozen others on their way. The old lesson from beavers is working hard, or at least, it's the moral of their story that we're taught growing up. But there's a second lesson overlooked that always meant more to me – working with disorder. We tend to think that there's a set way to do things, ticking off a list of bullet points until we reach a pre-planned conclusion. When I was young, I tried to do that, but the process made me anxious. My unfocused mind was better at bouncing from place to place; a little of this, a little of that, eventually getting finished. It's why I don't follow outlines when writing my books, and when I speak on TV, radio, or in person – I don't have a list of points to make. Winging it has the freedom I needed, and it's more natural, anyhow. That's how it happens every day in beaver country, just working in any random order till it's done. April 20, 2024 Plympton, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6005 of my daily journal.

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THE VACANCIES With the inaccuracy of old maps, it can be real tough to tell just who lived where in a crowded area. But at the westernmost end of the seabound village of Culloden, this was most likely the Post homestead. The roots they removed to dig their root cellar have long since returned, of course, taking back the ground they cleared two centuries or so ago. All that effort to keep out the winter and the cold spring rain – the kinds of weather that I never know when to come in out of. There's something inescapably primal about poking through the remnants of lives that never expected to be remembered. Only enough effort expended to make life outlast us, pushing death aside long enough so their bellies were full and their children survived to have children of their own. The vacancies they left were never meant to matter. But somehow, that makes them matter to me the most. April 20, 2024 Culloden, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6005 of my daily journal.

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HEARTWOOD This tree was hollowed out by a lightning strike a few years back, burned out all the heartwood and left an outer trunk – still giving life to the upper branches. The charring makes this space look like a kind of black hole, swallowing all the light that tries to get inside her. It's a long way up the hollow to get here, hop the brook a few times, duck under brush and give a few furtive glances to the disturbed birds and squirrels. There's a chill to these sunny days that I find so strangely off-putting. Can't quite find the middle ground between sweating and shivering, as a tracking shade slowly slips into something more unbroken. It'll be evening soon, and the porcupine whose droppings form a carpet on this shelter will surely return. I'll be far away when those most restless shadows fall. April 19, 2024 Phinney's Cove, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6004 of my daily journal.