Tag: travel

Saint John Arrival 09/18/2021

Just 18 hours in, I’m already in my third thick fog. This would be of the literal maritime variety, not the thick mental version which plagues me more or less constantly. The fog isn’t the surprise. The ease with which it comes and goes is far more interesting.

Between the episodes of limited visibility, the cheerful summer sun breaks loose, shining on Greg and Clem and I as we sampled beers, chased pigeons and harassed passing motorists on the streetside patio of the Cask and Kettle, just down the hill from my suite.

Up the Downhill

A 3-D aerial photo pair, for those who need pictures.

Speaking of down the hill, though I was expecting the three-dimensionality of Saint John, actually being here is like viewing stereoscopic terrain photos. The perspective in these photos is exaggerated for detail. Reality is not as hilly as those photos made it seem.

Not so with the city. It’s exaggerated for reality. And of course, gravity being what it is, the downhill portion is much, much quicker than the reverse. The effect is such that it seems sometimes as though I’m going uphill in both directions.

As I’m huffing and puffing to boost my carcass to the required altitude to return to my suite, I look around at other pedestrians to see if they are similarly struggling. It’s like being a mugging victim in New York City, bleeding on the sidewalk, while passersby completely ignore you. The same with Saint John-ites and me. Work on your cardio, TouristBoi.

After some breakfast, I think I’ll venture out into the fog, if it hasn’t lifted. Maybe I’ll walk up to the market. Or up to the harbour. Or up to the beach. Just in case, does anyone know the number for 911 in Saint John, in case this Upper Canadian’s heart can’t handle it?

-Scott. 09/18/2021 Saint John, NB

I’m a Little Concerned 09/14/2021

That’s almost Winnipeggian cold!

While one can aggravate their hypertension with the salt intake needed alongside the latter stages of a 14-day weather forecast, I’m nonetheless looking ahead to September 28.

Not only is it Tatuccio’s 800th birthday (estimated), I have a whale spotting tour scheduled from Grand Manan Island.

The predicted overnight lows in the area seem unseasonably cool. I’d better pack long pants. Maybe even socks.

-Scott. 09/14/2021 London, ON

The 15-Day Rule 09/12/2021

On the Sunday prior to departure, some of the administrative odds and ends began to resolve. I received, at last, confirmation of my home in Saint John, on the second floor of a stately old heritage building at the top of Chipman Hill.

Home.

That idea takes me back 6 years, to another September along the North Sea coast in Fife, Scotland. A friend was driving me up the coast, fishing village to fishing village, to the point where I began to wonder if it was possible to get one’s fill of fishing villages, and if I had reached that point.

Coming down a narrow road with a high wall on the right, it wasn’t until reaching the intersection at the bottom that the harbour of Pittenweem unfolded before me. It was a complete, gasp-worthy, take-your-breath-away moment. Clearly, the thought formed, “oh, I must live here,” followed quickly with some form of, “but of course that’s not possible.” Here’s what I was faced with:

Redefining ‘life’

So, why was it not possible?

A tab opened in my head devoted to the question. Travel outside of North America came late in my life, so to see everything there is to see, including the stuff I won’t know I want to see until stumbled upon, there’s no way to devote a lot of time to picking up and moving to every place, like Pittenweem, that steals my breath.

That’s what sits underneath the 15-day rule. Since conventional residency was at best impractical, a new definition emerged.

So, a conventional vacation is a week or two, at least it was when the corporate, suburban routine had a hold of me, long before work-from-home was thing. Fifteen days, though, one day more than a typical two-week vacation, could be my dividing line, given that I’ve already shuffled through more than half of the mortal coil allotment.

Anywhere I spend 15 days or more based out of one location now counts, for the purposes of my life, as residency, even if it’s not recognized by the various levels of government, near or far.

By that definition, I’ve added Maastricht, Holland, Boizenburg, Germany, and Titusville, Florida since 2015 to my Official With an Asterisk “Lived There*” list.

And now I know what the front door of my next home looks like. I get there Friday.

-Scott. 09/12/2021 London, ON

Saint John Pending 09/11/2021

When you take a stab at a long shot, sometimes it pays off. It was sometime last winter when I encountered a CBC news story about something called a Workcation being offered by the City of Saint John. If you can work from anywhere, said the City, why not work here? They not only arranged accommodations, tours and social life, they offered to subsidize the cost of a month’s stay.

Work from Anywhere

I do have the luxury of working from anywhere where there’s a valid internet connection or phone signal, so I certainly qualified in that regard. In 2017, there was a week spent on the Bay of Fundy in the Advocate Harbour area, and enjoyed immensely, so I applied for the Saint John Workcation.

However, I was rejected. Perhaps my mistake was that I’d shared that I would prefer to rent rather than own, should I decide to move to New Brunswick. There was no room to elaborate that I would take some time determine where I wanted to live and would rent in the meantime.

It’s easy enough to project the intent behind the Workcation initiative, to stimulate the local economy by bringing in reinforcements to the tax base without the more complex task of job creation to initiate the influx. And, hey, the real estate transactions would be a cash flow stimulus.

2nd Time Lucky

It never hurts to put the effort into connecting, even through email, and my witty repartee (citation needed) made me memorable enough that, when a vacancy in the program opened, my contact with the Workcation program remembered me and extended a participation offer for the Fall of 2021, even though it was already half past summer.

Well, I’m flexible of schedule if not so much of physique, so my ears perked up and I requested more details. They arrived, they were satisfactory, and since, I’ve been putting together the pieces of the puzzle, and now I’m just a few days away from my pending departure.

As is my wont during travel, I like to take and post photographs, typically at the end of each day. My photographic style is instinctive. I don’t like the camera to stay in between me and the experiences of a new place, so I shoot quickly and often without much thought, my personal take on Cartier-Bresson’s Decisive Moment philosophy, a principle I’ve intellectually struggled with for over 30 years, variously agreeing and disagreeing with Henri’s thoughts on the matter.

Here, in this tentative blog that hasn’t been used much since the original idea a few years ago, is where I’m going to post photos and thoughts, should any occur to me, rather than start yet another single-trip blog. That is, at least, the intent now. We’ll see how it goes.

-Scott. 09/11/2021, London, ON

Traces and Places 11/28/2018

 

Welcome

“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta

The Desert Inn, Yeehaw Junction, Florida

So probably ole Ibn never really said that, in any language, but I suppose the thing with manufactured quotes is that attribution lends gravitas to an orphaned idea that nonetheless has impact. In the case of this Yet-Another-Travel-Blog, the speechless/storyteller idea should, I hope, hold true. 

Years ago, before I could really appreciate the essence of the words, I wrote the lyric, “we bear the traces of places we’ve been,” over a weak melody and the song has long since disintegrated into notes and syllables. However, after finding a new muse in travel started later in life, that idea comes back to me in new ways. 

There’s this urge to blog — centrally, I’m a writer by both vocation and avocation — however, I’m not a Fodor-style diarist. I seem to hunt for ephemera, the secrets of new places that hang in the air, osmotic parcels that speak truth in metaphor and resist literal representation.

So this idea foments to share my experiences in a non-linear and impressionistic way. I won’t be the sort of traveler you’ll find on packaged tours or ritualistically scouring for the best restaurants. I stumble and look over there. I raise camera to eye for unknown (even to me) reasons and I feel something indescribable when, legs aching, I edit through the day’s photos. The sights and smells return, as does the feeling of these places, changing on a street-by-street basis. 

As photographer/writer/musician, all of this fills my grey matter and recombines into imperfect output, words and melodies and images that are perhaps further from the elements of absorption than I’d ever expect, but still tied, in the synaptic circuits that perhaps only I possess. 

Yet, both life and travel offer up kindred spirits, and a single connection has value far beyond the cost of a motel room, so I offer up little things here in hopes that someone, somewhere thinks, “I know what he means.” Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. It doesn’t matter. That’s the way of art, I suppose. To speak without speaking and to find commonality without contact. 

Plus, I find this stuff fun. That’s enough for now. 

Key West, 11/28/2018