I’ve arrived back at the CAP’T LEM having traveled 4, 414 miles in the good and faithful, and I might add refurbished, Thumper.
The road to Labrador City then on to Happy Valley-Goose Bay was its own brand of adventure requiring all the patients a sailor would need to cross the doldrums. What a contrast to the 70 mph freeways of Montreal to the 20 mph winding gravel of highway #500! (Perhaps I should give speeds in kilometers but it won’t. My mind never could wrap around the metric system) First it was long, very long, and dusty, very dusty! And a little rough but that’s not fair because roughness of a road is a mater of speed and speed over a rough road is a matter of patients. And patients is the prize of this whole endeavor. Without it I will get no where. So the long dusty road back to the CAP’N LEM serves a wonderful reminder of my “one mile long” philosophy of travel, “the mile in front of me”.
And out of those miles one after the other came the most beautiful things, like black bare crossing ahead of me, the porcupines, and the night I spend in an abandoned rock quarry where I woke up from the stark quietness of it all. It was so remarkably void of sound as to make me sit up and drink it in. How to describe it? It was quietness as to render all other such experiences a mere shade of gray. Even the calm at sea could not be a fit comparison to this absence of sound. At sea, though wonderfully peaceful, there is always a musical background of sails flapping, booms creaking, wavelets slapping, and things to do the instance of awakening, but here, on the road to Labrador, no sound was needed and none was made. I listened a long time and made note of the experience as one not to be forgotten, a new standard by which all life’s noise can now be measured.
The good CAP’N faired the winter just fine. Oh, the tarp was blown to shreds like the sails of a ghost ship to indicate what she had endured but otherwise all was just as I had left her. The biggest worry was that some of the food might freeze and burst and then be flyblown, so I had bagged everything that might freeze and brake open in plastic. I’m happy to report I still have an ample supply of sardines, canned chicken and peanut butter. I’ll dig deeper later.
My heart felt thanks to the good friends who looked in on her from time to time. Labrador is filled with kind and helpful people. These qualities go with the nature of people drawn to live close to and in wilderness.
The ice edge is moving up the latitudes. I’ve been told there is still ice off northern Labrador. I managed to pick up two days on the road even with all the work required to put Thumper back together. My plan was to be here no later than the 15th of June and I made it on the 13th. Still, my margin is thin, but it’s early yet, and I have my list of what must be done. So, like the road done one mile at a time, I’ll do the next indicated thing.
Waiting like a puppy!
