The Boston States

We head over land and out into the ocean before the plane banks and heads into Logan, like the time I headed down the harbour through over the Narrows out to sea before the plane banked to land at the airport. Both times land disappeared but this time the implication of people didn’t there were boats, people jet ski-ing – yes in November what global warming?

While admittedly it was after midnight landing in St. John’s so nothing really could be seen the arrival was more dramatic - pitch black, the glow of the capital on the horizon then the city surrounded by darkness, even on the Avalon and the landing. Populations on the rock seemed so tenuous whereas in the hub humans were hinted at long before landfall here it is breakwaters, parasailing and gasometers.

Logan seems completely inhumane and the less said the better. I felt that I was being let off in a tunnel. I was trying to ignore it, hoping that being in New England would be close to the feeling of the Maritimes and thus one step removed from Atlantic Canada. Was clutching at straws – Tim’s, Irving Gas Bar, constant searching the number plates on the machines on I-95...

It didn’t. Driving north out of population – well driving north as there wasn’t a time when we weren’t out of populated areas – I was looking for those clusters of houses bunched around an independent village. What I found were single houses sounded by a lot of land, with strip malls. I didn’t feel like I was between places for there were always a house in view, nor did I feel like I was getting anywhere as there was never a town centre passed through.

There were exceptions, Ipswich, maybe Newburyport, but the later seem like it could have been anywhere.

An outing to the ocean at Crane Beach furthered the detachment as with the exception of a few spots along the Great Northern, Cow Head, land and sea are well separated and the water not friendly and welcoming at all.

There were hints of being somewhat close to the Atlantic Time Zone when the air smelled like northern pine forests with a hint of the damps leaves composting. Otherwise I could have been in Door County or Portugal Cove/St. Phillips or worse C.B.S.

We are so tantalisingly close to New Hampshire and Maine that I want to make a break for it.