The sea at Soup Harbour was as ghostly as any, I felt, even if it was fresh water. With sixty kilometers of waves between my porch and Rochester, the water might as well have been the Fundy between Digby and Saint John. Well, no. Because those tides, at least, yield better fish, and the villages that break the Fundy's cliffs seem to have changed little, as if the sea had accepted, at least, not rejected, a small but stable population that has remained since its arrival. The shores of Soup Harbour, on the other hand, have the marks of past lives that remain but as marks. What life there is seems transient: birds find no shelter from the wind, and those pickup trucks that brave the rutts of unpaved roads stay only long enough for a few beers and as many broken bottles, or to dump a load of garbage. The odd dog-walker, drawn by the vista, returns but unsustainably, for no matter the vista, if surveyed oft, fades dull.
Our house, for instance, is an old farmhouse, now a cottage, the barn having been torn down, perhaps old and full of years, but more likely neglected, a failed life. The farmhouse, by the light of an evening fire in the little stove, seems cozy enough. But in the endless gray of cloudswept days, or even by the faded sun at its pitiful November zenith, the drab old floors reveal cracks that can never be cleaned and a long. long.. winter. We never did see the summer at Soup Harbour. We never could eradicate the fleas.
But Soup Harbour was beautiful. And that was half its haunting. Our stretch of beach, that is, the one nearest to the old farm house, was by far the most beautiful, perhaps, that I'd ever seen. A gentle curve of great Aspens, looming directly from the steep slope of rounded limestone pebbles, faced the Westerlies and persisted daily, meditating upon the waves, until each setting sun they greeted, with not so much as a nod, now for the eighteen thousandth time. They, I felt, had seen many ghosts, and yet they commanded respect, which the dead gave, and the living generally not, so that, though living, the aspens seemed to lean toward the past rather than the future, though they endured its wind. For past winds are presently still, but future winds are blows hanging in mid air.
Glimpsing what I thought could only be the shape of the chipped white paint of the old hand pump above the well, Ellis would bark frantically. Reassuring him, I would, that it was nothing but the same bit of cast iron that daylight made utterly disinteresting to him, I could not help but shudder at the possibility, that his senses were better than mine. After all, I could see but little and be deafened by the unyielding wind.
