if the world gives you lemons make lemonade...

itinerary
but what if you hate lemonade.
not being able to reach marine atlantic when i got into the hojo’s - it seems that unlike other transportation corporations they close at night, when there are ferry crossings, i rang the first thing in the morning to see if there wasn’t space on the ferry at midnight to-morrow on the first one out.

both were booked. in fact there was no space on the ferry until monday and i would have to buy a cabin.

am in shock. it looks like i will not be able to get to the rock at all. i cannot afford to keep staying in hotels here while i wait for i won’t have any funds to ramble the province heading down to the outports and spending time as i made my way slowly to the avalon.

it is my fault, i didn’t book, i knew that the crossing was popular but i also thought that marine atlantic would somehow know the popularity and thus have enough ships to accommodate the numbers. i didn’t want to rush, i am constantly rushing. i was driving i wanted to see what was in between, to stop at things that made me curious i didn’t want to worry about missing a departure. i am paying for it.

after the initial shock, i was fine, i would head down the coast to cape breton then wave at the departing ferry and head back along the southern shore. got in the machine tried to have a look at campbelltown stopped at a pathetic boardwalk to look north into the eastern time zone then headed out rationalising that so far it it has been a pretty good outing. major plans have been changed but serendipity allowed other encounters.

i didn’t know what the north shore of the st lawrence was like but i now have seen the southern one. not having to make time, i was able to stop and in stopping run into people where once again - stumbling to communicate in french - i get some personal idea of what life is like here. while it is more subtle in gaspésie the thesis is the same. people choose to live here, why - not asked in condescension but in curiosity.

simply, the outing would be modified again. but after a while it wasn’t the same. i would be constantly wandering - right now the tiring part of the day is having to move on by 11 when i have to be out of the room this goes against my work habits of working late into the night. the rush comes in packing and quitting the room. it is things minor that take up an inordinate amount of time. since i don’t know how far i am going to go in a day while i usually pull up to a town at 9PM it is more like 11 before i am settled.

there was no destination. no place to sit, relax and digest what has happened. pouch cove is that. it it the quiet time. the working late into the night with only the sound of the waves. it is getting up and heading out slowly and calmly in the morning. it is means rituals by will. the ending of the day by actually making dinner rather than going out. there would be none of this.

there would be no meeting up with friends no amount of time so that a visit becomes more than that. more and more i realise why i prefer winter when time isn’t so expensive that one feels that it has to be used efficiently.

the back of the machine was packed with books and snaps to drop off. i had planned provisionally to be taken to some resettled places along the great northern. there was an opening at the discovery centre in bonne bay with the sackville snapper in it.

it was sort of the feeling that one gets when there is a break in, after the initial shock things seems fine until one starts to itemise what was lost.

this was the tenth year of me going to the rock.

i stop at community centre by someone having a garage sale, mary comes over wondering what i am doing, i show her my book of snaps what i am doing and she tells me of the area. i always wonder what people consider important about where they live and what they want from aways to see. she got it after seeing the work she mentioned an unused ball park, mentioned how all the little towns across the area were consolidating but did mention making sure that i see acadie - shippagan and miscou. left when someone stopped that actually wanted to buy something, knowing full well that the day would be like the others a lot of stops and u-turns.

i was keeping to roads that were closest to the coast as i realised that every crossroads brought potential with it and i couldn’t deal with such decision making. experiences come from choice, the choice would determine the experience but there would always be one.

walked around dalhousie - photographed a city gardener but found that i couldn’t function in cities, to many corners meant too many choices. didn’t bother to leave the machine in bathurst which seem fine but again i was freezing up from the choices and stimulation overload.

stopped again to photograph the arts motel sign and saw a table outside the motel which looked like people actually used it. rang the bell to talk to the owner to see if i could photograph the table.

the owner looked at me as if i were completely stupid, staring at me then the table then me, after a while i stated that it was ok if she said no i simply liked that it looked like someone just left. i showed her my book of snaps, still unimpressed she allowed me thinking that it would be the best way of being rid of me.

then i asked to make her snap.

with someone to divert her attention - the coca cola delivery had come - she consented.

with the arrival of the delivery man came again the reason of my thesis of the rock, in large populations we are used to have things there. we theoretically know that someone delivers it or if it is the case of - say cable or electricity - see the lines that connect to the house. since there are many options that connexion is pretty much hidden. looking up one sees waves of wires. trying to trace any of them is nearly impossible.

during the parks canada residency talking to pete, i remember him saying that something would be in in a couple of minutes as the delivery person was at the 3Ts now. it occurred to me that everything came down route 431, one could trace the progress of everything that was supplied to the communities of bonne bay. ed said the same about the beer van, it would make the rounds on certain days the driver would ring when he was a stop away.

i am sure that the coca cola delivery was the same he had a route that route had a schedule but to most of us it was invisible.

this is what i wanted to see in the big land outing, in heading down the burgeo road, etc. the road wasn’t there for my sight seeing but for the distribution of goods. ironically that link has curtailed my outing but if i could be rational about it, it is fitting.

it seems that new brunswick gets little respect. it is called the race through province as people are racing to halifax or the ferry. i tended to like it as it was secure in its francophonie, most people would glide back and forth between english and french, unlike québec it was truely bilingual.


i also found that racing through the maritimes i was aware of divisions but not how the geography changes. in new brunswick there was the stunted growth of trees and at times the hint of pine that is a trait of the rock. but there were farms.

where on the island there would be the pink white and green of a wish for a past, here there was the blue white and red with the yellow star of acadie celebrating their present.

having no place to be meant slowing down even more. i was only trying to get to marimichi so i was diverting from the road even more. i was stopping to eat.

stopped at a ball park and made snaps under the observations of two lads, one who didn’t want his snap made.

at the t ho’s in petit rocher, took the egg salad sandwich and the double double out back to eat on a bench in buddy comes up with a bonjour, then says the same to a woman who arrives after me she launches into english and he follows suit.

it seems that i was at the smokers bench. grace would be glad to see the back of 2009, two machine accidents etc. she also lost feeling in her hand which meant she was on disability as her hand was so weak that she couldn’t lift anything. she asked what i did and when i was going to retire. again thought that if i had chosen the other tim’s in town...

i started to find that my assumptions were incorrect when it came to the buildings that i was photographing. what i thought were vacant sometimes weren’t they had simply changed use - a building in salmon beach. the meanings of the images were modified yet again. it was still about those around them but now the complication dealt with what those in the area felt was important some façades were in terrible shape but the insides well appointed. there seemed to be two societies those whose places looked like everyone else in north america - well tended lawns, nice siding etc. and those who i mistakenly thought as abandoned. i’ve seen this before but usually the two types keep a good distance between them.

continued to photograph minor churches which again seemed to bring things full circle - most of the anglican and united churches were not in the towns. they were modest structures - almost generic in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. i think back to what is happening in the states now with mega-churches like mega-malls being built along the highway with ample parking the main difference being that these churches could contain a dozen of the ones i am seeing now.

with time i stop again for some frites which - i am sorry to say puts ziggy peelgoods to shame, these weren’t dripping in grease and one could eat them in a teepee.

another new subtext was now to get to the edge of the land whenever possible here it would be miscou island and again it was duckish when i was made the turn on to route 113, of course when it tends to happen that when it gets dark i see more potential snaps.
more conveniences, more shops, more formal situations.

raced out to the point which was a mix of the tourist - a souvenir shop and light house - with the commercial - a parked tractor trailer. while the sunset was less to be desired there were people flocking out to see it.

i was racing back to get the images in the waning light - it didn’t help that there were signs warning of moose along the road.

it was dark at tracadie sheila, i had to fixate on the road, but what i saw of the places seemed to have potential for snaps in some town there was a night baseball game, in another a soirée, but the constant moose warnings made me nervous and for some reason i was the only heading to marimichi.

white knuckled i pull into town and cannot find a hotel. drive around town for an hour retracing steps start to head out of town but turn back as it looks like there is no accommodation. ask at a gasbar but the clerk seems baffled.

i go over to the strip mall section and still nothing until there is a small sign on a lamppost for a motel down the road. it seems that while the map has scrawled miramichi over a large area and the road looks like it takes you to the centre - the “real” centre is newcastle.
get a room at midnight in the rain too far from the wireless hub to use it. luckily there was an unprotected weak wireless connexion that made using it like listening to short wave.