Sep 25 2009
To the lighthouse — Elaine
“Today I just want to get in the car and go,” Archie says. It is the first day of our summer holiday at our cottage in Cocagne, NB, and already Miscou Island is beckoning. We always drive until we get to the very end, to the lighthouse. It is a pilgrimage to the northeastern-most point of New Brunswick, to remote a place of beauty. Even on a cloudy day everything is luminous: rocks, flecks of sand, old lobster traps, scrubby trees, sea birds and, of course, the surf. When we’re there, a shift takes place.
Getting to Miscou is a relief. The drive isn’t easy. You have to really want to get there but then, at the end, I see the tall, massive, octagonal shaped, red and white lighthouse held down with guy wires and even though the lighthouse is so huge, the restraining wires give the illusion that it could float away like a balloon.
The Lighthouse
I have to crane my neck way back to see the top against the blue, blue sky. This sky color can only be seen once you reach the ocean. You don’t get that color anywhere else, only here. Everything opens up inside. I can see and breathe and the amazingly good smelling air has a healing quality. The rhythm of the waves calms me, the whole journey is a metaphor for my life the past couple of years.
It has been a struggle to work three jobs and travel back and forth between two locations, only seeing my much loved husband on weekends. Finances haven’t been easy, either. They rarely are during a time of transition. The grind wears me down but we are trying to start something new, but I do know where I want to go and the life that I want to have.
Anyone fifty-plus knows making big life changes isn’t easy but unless I take steps to reinvent and renew myself, life becomes rote and unconscious and is a kind of death. After a low emotional ebb, after soul searching and praying, something opens up in me, just like the sky at the end of Miscou Island. I have that feeling of freedom, I am dwelling in a place of magical beauty and can see the big picture of my life. That’s what pilgrimages are meant to do.
Walking as mediation
I love to walk. I like to get a measure of a place through my stride, so down the beach we go sometimes looking far out across the water. I can see the deep, inky blue hills of the Gaspé from here, and they beckon. White cumulus clouds skirt the top of the hills, like icing on a cake. I like the feeling of connection to Quebec, a faraway kingdom, one that I’ll have to visit someday, too.
The sounds of the surf are fairly subdued today and the rhythm affects the way I breathe. They relax me. If I stop to listen, I can hear music and singing in the sound of the water. If I were a musician and could write down this musical score, it would be transcendent, brilliant, even. This place brings out the creative in me.
Beach stones
One of the biggest treats of Miscou Island is discovering the rocks and stones. Note to self: I must look into the geology of this place, but for now, I cast my eyes downward and look for interesting specimens. Almost all of them are tumbled into smooth spheres or ovals. Some are striped in layers of black and white like Yin Yang symbols, some are splashed with a deep red like spatters from a careless artist’s brush, some are speckled like a bird’s egg. All are beautiful, especially when they’re glistening with water. They are all sculptural and I want to take them all home — Miscou, please come with me!—but I have to settle for just a few and put them in the pockets of my hoodie. The rocks make me look like I have a lumpy tummy and they clack in my pockets as I continue to walk along.
Miscou beach goes a long way around a snub-nosed tip of land with inland tidal ponds along the way, each one a slightly different ecosystem haven for gulls, terns, cormorants and ducks. These pools, surrounded by razor sharp beach grass and succulent beach peas are full of life, the water’s surface still and glassy, or faintly rippling from a kiss of the wind, counterpoint to the moving, frothy surf. The seabirds dive here, spearing small fish.
Another treasure that I love to find at Miscou is beach glass — broken shards from pop or beer bottles or old cosmetic jars. The surf here rolls the glass smooth and frosty-looking in fairly short order.
I know glass, I used to be a stained-glass craftsman. Glass is basically silica — sand heated to extremely high temperatures and rolled into sheets or blown into vessel shapes. I like the cycle and irony that beach glass represents. Sand is made into glass by people, glass is made back into sand by nature.
The most common colors are clear white or brown. It’s always a treat to find green, blue or even sometimes purple or red. Into my pockets these jewels go, too. I’m going to continue the circle, another spiral higher and make these gems into some kind of art once I get enough of them. Then maybe I’ll bring it down to the beach and offer it up to the god of surf.
Engine Trouble
All of my imaginings are interrupted by the sound of engines. Two four-wheelers speed toward us, rooster tails of sand thrown up behind them. Deep tracks are left in the impressionable sand. I try not to be annoyed or judgmental, but I say to Archie, “How can they think that’s fun?” He looks at me like, Don’t you understand the energy of boys? I’m on a pilgrimage, and I guess they’re on a noisy, destructive quest full of adventure, danger and daring.
Time to turn back, the lighthouse again in our view, the friendly giant. The walk back always goes faster than the walk out. In some places we retrace our own footprints. I lighten my load of a few rocks, quicken my step and soon we’re back at the parking lot by the lighthouse.
Last year when we were here, an ice cream stand had appeared when years before there was no hint of any commercial enterprise. Pretty good idea, though. Ice cream on a summer day after a long walk on the beach is pretty appealing. Nothing says summer more than that! But last year when we ordered up two cones of vanilla, they said, “Sorry, we’re out of ice cream.” We were really disappointed. But Miscou is remote and when you run out of ice cream, who knows how far you have to go to get more. All the way back to Lameque? Shippigan?
But this time, they were well stocked. We lick our generous cones fast before the ice cream melts while sitting in the parking lot. Eating ice cream makes me feel like a kid, or is it Miscou that has me feeling renewed and youthful?
Flight
We finish and it’s time to go. The drive back, we know, is long. Just as we are leaving, the doors of a minivan open up and three men emerge, two with guitars in black cases and one with a double bass. They carry their instruments toward the beach. Are they going to test the acoustics in the lighthouse or just play on the beach in harmony with the sound of the waves? Again, a bit surreal. An Impressionist painting. Actually, I am thinking, this may really be a dream.
Aug 17 2012
Morphing Miscou Beach
It was really different this time and I’m still not sure if I like all the changes. We hadn’t been to Miscou in two years and arrived on a hot, windy August day to find that the lighthouse site had been developed as a tourist destination. Pros and cons, pros and cons, I thought. But the island would surprise me again.
The massive lighthouse itself had been refurbished and was open to the public. It was now possible to pay $5.00 and climb the 96 stairs to the light and observation deck of this giant and experience a god’s eye view of the shimmering island. It’s pretty high and you have to climb through a hatch to get to the open air of the deck. So high that I only stayed out there a few minutes before vertigo drove me back inside to grip the handrail and nestle beside the huge glass lens of the light.
But I was glad I went up. I was determined not to let arthritic knees stop me. I wanted to experience the reawakening of this colossus with the giant orb. The lighthouse has been reanimated and that is good. He is the watcher and protector.
The gift shop/snack bar was another new addition. Tastefully constructed and sided with wooden shingles, it offered souvenir knick-knacks (not so tasteful), ice cream and take-out food. It seemed like a popular spot and I told myself that all of this was good for the local economy — really there isn’t much else on this island of 800 souls. Nothing original about the shop, though. It did not reflect the soul of this place.
Our first pilgrimage to Miscou
The first time we came to Miscou Beach there wasn’t anything there except the lighthouse and it seemed as if we had discovered it. The sparkling water, beautiful stones, rhythmic frothy surf and salty air delighted and heightened our senses. It made us want to fill our lungs with the wild wind. It was magical and sacred and it had a presence. It didn’t need any gift shop or scurrying tourists. We now call our almost yearly trip to Miscou a pilgrimage and we mean it.
Which brings me to the third new structure there, still under construction. Looks like it will be a small chapel. OK, I thought, something to inspire reverence. I walked over, took a peek inside and experienced something uncanny. I heard music. It sounded like an organ, then voices singing, then chanting like the kind that Gregorian or Tibetan monks do with low, resonating tones. It was beautiful.
The chanting of the wind
The wind at Miscou is relentless and it took me a few minutes to figure out that it was the wind blowing through the steel scaffolding that was making these eerie sounds. Still, it seemed as if the island’s spirit was singing to me.
Then I remembered something called Aeolian Harps developed by the Ancient Greeks. I Googled it when we got home. Aeolius is the god of the wind and the protector of an island. His harp is an instrument played by the wind. It is a wooden box with a sounding board and strings stretched across two bridges. It is placed in a partially opened window so the wind can blow through.
The character of the sound depends on the material that the strings are made of and also their length and thickness. They can be tuned to various notes or pitches. The nature of the wind and the resonating body also influence the music.
Curiously, An Aeolian harp plays only harmonic frequencies. With so many disturbing and disruptive sounds in our modern environments, these sounds can be like a balm to our jangled senses.
Wikipedia says about the harps: “Their vibrant timbres produce an etheric, almost mystical music that many people find alludes to higher realms”. Ahhhhhhh, so the spirit of Miscou did speak to me.
I am now in the process of composing a letter to Miscou Tourism suggesting they build some structures, some “Miscouian Harps” to give the wind, one of Miscou’s most dominant features, a voice to sing, a voice to carry us to higher realms.
By Elaine • First Page, lighthouse, Miscou, New Brunswick