I've just taken a few days to try to straighten out my body clock and get orientated. I picked up the car and set up a bank account on my first afternoon then tried to shop, but had slept so little I found myself wandering around the aisles completely unable to register what I was looking at or make any decision. I bought chicken and salad and apple pie and gave up on anything else at that point. When I drove home I completely missed my street, then missed the house which is hidden behind a still thawing snowbank. Time to sleep.
Moose the dog has grown from cute puppy to splendid husky with a long back and ridiculously curled up tail. He looks all set to be hauling all the way across to Alaska to me. Tiffany and Justin have him trained up to beg, bow, sit, roll over and shake hands. He's not so quick on coming back to you when there are interesting things going on in the woods, but I still reckon he'd be fun to skijor with and more than capable of figuring out his Gee-Haw. He's got the pulling thing down no problem!
I finally felt I needed to get out and get some exercise so Justin showed the trails right behind the house. I have to love a suburb which quickly leads to frozen lakes and into forest.
Spring is just coming now. The snow was sugary enough on the trail to walk in trainers, though I ended up finally with wet feet. Where someone had cut wood along the trail the smell of resin was hovering warm in the sunshine and we walked in t-shirts until we got high and clear and then the wind was still biting. We followed a snowmachine route for about an hour and a half, over the top of a hill which eventually lead into a different drainage system and on to the hills above Petty Harbour. It is my kind of 'city' that I can walk from the suburban door, straight to the seashore along perfectly mushable trails and wind up in a pretty village that looks to be a thousand miles from anywhere. There are plenty places to run a dog team around. The snow is too patchy now for snowmachine but a few people passed us blasting around on ATVs and I was thinking I'll be wishing for my mountain bike soon. As I stood in the old Catholic graveyard above Petty Harbour I was wondering if the 'residents' would mind my putting a dog yard right there on that flat ground?!
The gravestones were a real mixture of elaborate granite carved with scenes of fly fishing, boating and duck hunting, even people's photographs etched into the rock in the most recent monuments. I wondered how different genealogy searches would be if all our headstones at home had photos carved into them from the 16, 17, 18th century. Others were just a simple, nameless wooden cross, all beaten up and gnarled in the winds. They nearly all faced the sea and I liked the wide grassy banks between them. It gives a sense that this has been a small town for a long time. Rather alarmingly though, the ground had subsided enough to just about reopen a 6ft hole at one gravesite. We couldn't see anything but it wouldn't take much more rain for whatever they buried under there to be coming right up to the surface again.
Yesterday was just like spring and though I needed to get some work done and start making contact with offices, eventually the sunshine pulled me outside and I went for an explore round Bowring Park which sits between us in Kilbride and town. It lies around Waterford River and is full of little walkways, gardens, sports facilities. I think in summer it would be really a treat and in winter, fantastic cross country skiing. It certainly looked like again we were far from anywhere, but in truth the rush hour cars passing on the nearby highway were echoing around the valley. I'll take it though, as a city park!
Today I am struggling again with being awake and trying to get some work done. I have found the local gym and plan to make their 5pm spin class so I can start to feel a routine coming back. Besides, if I don't I might be tempted to overdose on the many varieties of muffins on sale here and end up resembling one!
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