GOLDEN HOUR

There is nothing like a road trip during golden hour. I just drove to and from Toronto via rural Vermont, Quebec and Ontario on the lip of Lake Ontario. There were dramatic, dense clouds in rainbow charcoal on the way there, and a brittle amber sugar scrim over-lighting the sky on the way home made more dramatic by a huge, nearly full moon. It watched me from just above the thick industrial hydro power lines that serve Montreal in a surrealist fashion, the invasive, omnipresent pampas grass pink and waving. I saw more hawks in three days than I’ve seen in the last three years combined. They are trying to tell me something. The vultures are back for the year and they were everywhere. They brought me comfort. 

I also saw massive plots of land completely stripped; all the trees smashed, splintered and in huge “garbage” piles, waiting to be burned I assumed. It looked like the darkest part of war and it broke my heart. The land was scraped of all life. When will people learn? It was total destruction. It looked like billionaire money and it hurt like hell. I tried to focus on my audio book “The Beet Queen” by Louise Erdrich. It didn’t work. I had to turn on some sad music and just let myself feel it. I cried a bit for that land. 

Despite that I am still high from walking around Toronto, a city I love, I feel the presence of my friends who are gone now. Way too many and too young which gives a melancholy tinge to my day as I pass the places we once hung out together. I love being out of “city practice” and then suddenly “in it”, my senses assaulted in the best way; a white german shepherd with a massive boner waiting patiently for his human to come out of the coffee shop, the man pouring the batter into the tiny metal walnut-shaped molds on the conveyor belt at “Walnut Cake” at Manning and Bloor, a drunk man telling me “The red looks good! That’s it! We’re goin’ dancin’!”, An empty jar of Cheeze Wiz abandoned on the lip of a cappy AC unit outside a restaurant. Those are the things I guess I took for granted when I lived in big cities sometimes, but now they fill me with delight. 

The best thing a saw in the golden hour light were piles of fluorescent red apples in the center of the highway where the semi hauling them had tipped over. They looked like a priceless treasure, but I worried for the deer who will surely risk their lives to eat them.

What small detail has delighted you lately? 

Sorry about the bugs on the windshield…