Thanksgiving 2

My second and thrid days in Pictou went much the same as my first. Time with my family continued to be pleasant, with good conversation, good food and good times. To be blessed with a close, kind and dynamic family is one of the most rewarding things one can have. There’s no end to the riches such a family provides, from the nourishing environment it provides in youth to the diversity of knowledge and experiences shared through gatherings like the one I was part of this weekend.
We need not be born to such a family to be enriched by the many joys one can provide. True friends create an equivalent atmosphere with nearly as much ease. What is there more rewarding in life than sincere and developed friendship, whether between people who are related by genetics or by mutual respect? To paraphrase Charles de Lint, It’s the family you choose that matters.

Last night before dark I took my cousins Zach, Rachel and Courtney down to the beach and started to skip stones. It’s been a long while since I last took the time to work at perfecting the art of skipping stones. The play between moving waters and a thrown rock is an interesting one, at once a near-meditative fluidity and a motion that can out-pace the eye (one often relies on the ripples to be the sign of the stone’s continued journey). The stone chosen must of course be reasonably flat, but a quality throw makes the shape of the stone far less relevant than might be expected. In other words, trajectory and velocity (the prouct of human will and skill) matter more than aero- and hydrodynamics, at least in my limited experience. Finding a worthy stone is easy, but making one skip 100 or 200 feet requires some skill. As simple and unimportant an act as skipping a stone involves a myriad of forces interacting and time practicing to perfect. What must we then look at to understand the complexities of our own lives? How do we live our lives in a manner that transforms us from sinking rocks to swiftly leaping stones crossing great waters?

The remnants of a tropical storm are releasing high winds and plenty of rain on Nova Scotia as I type this. Power has been lost in several parts of the province and may be here as well. In the last year I’ve become rather used to periods of time when I don’t have electricity, so I’m not too worried about that happening. However, I’d still rather have a few conveniences I value. Between the numerous days I’ve been without power and the months I was scrounging just to eat, I think I’ve learned what is worth having and doing, and I’m thankful for those experiences, as unpleasant as they were.