Yep. Halifax. Canada. My parents had decided that they wanted to do a family trip at least once this summer, so we settled on a road trip to the Bay of Fundy. That translates to sight-seeing, with my parents doing the usual touristy thing leaving me doing the usual young adult thing: A whole lot of nothing. I enjoy seeing the sights as much as the next guy, but I’m a more active person. I need to be doing something as well. That’s why I enjoy hiking. You get to head out into beautiful scenery, have some enjoyable physical activity, and then there’s the reward of whatever view you’re hiking to. However, simply walking around one town or another is frustrating to me unless it’s somewhere completely different like Venice. There’s no destination, no purpose, no objective. There’s minimal effort and I find it banal to wander around somewhere and simply “soak in the view.”
I think I tired of sightseeing and traveling for their own sakes while I was still in Europe. Perhaps if I had a friend around my own age to get into trouble with, it would be different. Maybe. How, I don’t really know. Crossing three states and a Canadian province to simply walk around a town that looks like a quiet, clean version of New Bedford seems inadequate though. I don’t get any particular thrill from simply seeing things. I grew up looking at such pictures online or in magazines or books, so the sight itself is seldom awe inspiring. The journey isn’t much to talk about either, as most of the time you’re staring at miles and miles of tarmac or the airplane seat in front of you.
So when we occasionally actually did something, I was nearly thrilled for the change. Example: We went to see some sort of strange, balancing rock on Long Island, across from Digby. Instead of driving up to it, my father and I got out of the blasted car and hiked for about a mile to get to it. It was a short hike and an easy one, except for over sixty stairs at the end of the trail. It also went through a lovely forest and involved a little effort to traverse. The rock itself was boring. Even so, I would have gone either way because there was an activity!
Oddly enough, the object of the trip, to see the eighty-foot tides that the bay is famous for, was addressed last. As we started heading home, we diverted to a place called the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. Some of you may know them as a place that Charles Darwin wrote about in his “The Origin of Species.” Some of you. Not me. I’d never heard of the place beforehand. Haven’t even read all of Darwin’s book. Either way, it’s a cool place. I’m not too clear on the geology involved, but something made the area into a sedimentary rock-based fossil extravaganza. People started pulling up fossils in the 1800s and the place has been under examination and excavation ever since and they STILL haven’t found all of the fossils! There are so many of them that the institute has no need to pick up any more, which left us literally walking on fossils!
We arrived just before low tide, so once done with our tour, my father and I took a stroll to the water’s edge. At least, that was our intention until we realized that there was about a football field of sticky, slick red mud between us and it. So much for that idea. Still, looking out across a beach that stretched nearly a quarter of a mile from the cliffs to the water, and knowing that it would all fill up again in six hours, was interesting. I only wish that we could have gone far enough to let the surf chase us back. Yeah. It’s supposed to come in that fast. It goes out far enough that there is a “Not Since Moses” fun run at the beginning of August each year that takes you across the ocean floor while the tide’s out.
Surf race or not, I was glad to get back home. The first thing on the agenda after unpacking was to meet up with some friends and hang out. While that sounds like inactivity, we had an objective: To enjoy each other’s company, enjoy the night around us, and to watch the ocean and relax. I suppose that enjoying each other’s presence might have been what my parents, or at least my mother, had in mind for the trip. However, for someone my age, that sort of thing’s value becomes voided since you’ve been living with that person for twenty years. Friends, on the other hand, are hard to meet with especially when you’re at college. It’s a rare treat. To make it even better, at this age, there’s more room for spontaneity when you’re with friends, also known as stupidity. That evening, for the first time in all the sixteen years that I’ve lived in this town, I went night swimming. It was unplanned for, so I swam in my boxers. It was also cold, the bottom rough, and shallow. And it was amazing. Even when I later found that I’d cut up my foot on something, I thought it was totally worth it.
This is the sort of thing that I’ve been looking for. Even though Marion is boring in general, I like to be around people who can make it seem new, or do something fun with it. I like the flexibility of being with friends; the power to do as we please at the drop of a hat and be ourselves. No matter what sort of relationship you have with your parents, you can’t really be yourself around them. There’s always some sort of expectation, some barrier either your family or society has set. It’s only taken me a long time to see just who is crazy and fun to be like that with. Those are the people I need to look for and the people I need to see more before the summer ends.
Oh God. The summer’s ending.
Shit.
Song of the Week: This happens to be my father’s favorite song by R.E.M. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
