We Made It!

We made it! We made it safely down to beautiful Nova Scotia over some 1,700 long miles! The sea-bound coast of Nova Scotia is where I grew up and where I really want to be. The Atlantic Ocean, the soothing sound of its waves breaking on shore, the tangy smell of salt water breezes, has been calling me during all my many decades away from it. “I’ve never seen the ocean,” owner of Goderich’s ‘The Book Peddler’ Camilla Keipr wistfully told me when I popped in to pick up a few books to take along with me on CFP’ re-location to Nova Scotia, which I jokingly called, “Getting Out of Dodge.”

Nothing is more alluring than the sound of the waves crashing to shore, or the tangy smell of fresh ocean air

A.J. Cronin’s ‘The Judas Tree’ hadn’t arrived as Amazon had promised, thus the last-minute trip to Camilla’s charming 2nd hand bookstore to pick up a few classics. I was lucky enough to find Graham Greene’s ‘The Heart of the Matter’, which having read it decades ago, I knew would hold me enrapt in the passenger’s seat along the 1,700-mile trek. Promising to send Camilla pictures of the Atlantic, Brian and I left her store for the last time, the usual way: as happy campers. Camilla would fall in love with the Atlantic, as most folk readily do. My love affair with the ocean began when I was nine years old, summering at an orphanage camp on Mahone Bay, and the truth is that the ocean has been calling me back, all those years I have been away. To my way of thinking, nothing is more alluring than the sound of the waves crashing to shore, or the tangy smell of fresh ocean air. My memory of sleeping on clothesline-dried sheets after a night swim remain with me to the present day. The nuns at the summer camp told we children many spellbinding sea stories, including one about the mysterious fate of the Mary Celeste.

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Being near the ocean has to be the closest we get to Heaven while still on troubled Earth

(Wikipedia): “Mary Celeste was an American merchant brigantine discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands on December 4, 1872. The Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia found her in a dishevelled but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing. The last entry in her log was dated ten days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of denatured alcohol was intact, and the captain's and crew's personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever seen or heard from again.”

The story of her 1872 abandonment has been recounted and dramatized many times in documentaries, novels, plays, and films, and the name of the ship has become a byword for unexplained desertion. In 1884, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", a short story based on the mystery, but spelled the vessel's name as Marie Celeste. The story's popularity led to the spelling becoming more common than the original in everyday use.

Children of the summer camp held fast to hope each August that they would somehow see out in Mahone Bay the ghostly “Teazer Light” that the nuns told us about.

“Young Teazer was a United States privateer schooner that captured 12 British vessels, five of which made it to American ports. A member of her crew blew her up at Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia during the War of 1812 after a series of British warships chased her and after HMS Hogue trapped her. The schooner became famous for this deadly explosion, which killed most of her crew, and for the folklore about the ghostly "Teazer Light."

Being near the ocean has to be the closest we get to Heaven while still on troubled Earth. I was blessed with summers of sea shells and starfish as a child, and blessed to have made it over miles back again. Meanwhile, thanks to all who have been praying for my, Brian’s, CFP mascot Yankee Boy’s safe trip down East. The Good Lord answered your prayers. WE MADE IT!