The Lansdowne Letters: Early Scribbles

My parents and I viewed the imminent approach
of break-up quite differently in late April, 1961.

While they laid in food and supplies
and worried about medical and dental emergencies,
I was excited by the romance of true isolation in the wild.

No in.  No out.

Causeway to the Father's Island

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Painting by Don MacBeath 

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

  

A year or so later I tried to capture
what I was feeling at the time
and scratched down:

Spring was the key
that began to unlock
the frozen grip of winter.

Our very souls ached for it.



Early Scribbles
Photo by Louise Barbour 
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




But our joy was mingled with vague fears and apprehensions ~
Break-up time was drawing near.

The novelty of break-up fascinated me.
For a period of five or six weeks we would be marooned.
We were the Robinson Crusoes of northwestern Ontario.

Spring Draws Close in Northern Ontario

Flickr:  James Vincent Wardhaugh  License

All about me spring was written into the land.
The snow retreated leaving in its wake a riot of colors.
Red shrubs interwoven with black, grey with rust.

Golden dead flower stalks bravely withstood
the gurgling rivulets of water
trickling from the melting snow to the lakeshore.

The air was filled with the pungent, dank odor of damp earth,
rotting twigs, and the dead sweet fragrance of dried flowers.

Song birds filled the bush,
and the honking of sleek Canadian geese rang in the sky.

Canada Geese in Flight

Pixabay   License

  

Spring had come.
And with it came mud, thick black mud.

Overnight our school ground blossomed into
an intricate maze of canals, locks, cities, and dams.
What pleasure we children, both copper and white, 
took in the moulding of the cold black muck. 

Halfway down the slope in front of the school
we would laboriously construct a huge dam.
Beneath it we carefully and painstaking laid out
a beautiful city with roads, canals, ditches, houses, boats, and cars.

While we built, the water would build up behind our dam.
When all was finished we would step back and survey our handiwork.

Suddenly with a wild shriek, we would leap unto the dam,
rip it apart, and watch with satisfaction
as the water raged down the slope leaving havoc in its wake.

We never tired of this.

My School and Friends

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario, Canada

Photo by Don MacBeath, Fall 1960 

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

When I read my young scribbles about the North,
I see that girl who was and always had been fascinated with nature,
and who was and always would be a Romantic.

I also see that kid mucking around,
creating and destroying mud worlds
with the wild abandon of childhood.

By the time I wrote these scribbles I had matured,
become too old to muck around in the dirt.

I had better things to do,
like learning to jive and to twist,
to follow the Hit Parade,
to experiment with lipstick and mascara,
and to chase boys in a whole different way.

The Twist

by artist Thomas Hart Benton

Flickr:  James Vaughn   License

But you can't deny your basic nature,
and before long I was drawn to literature and geology,
back to mucking around in the dirt
and reading English Romantic poetry.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



On the Shore of the Annapolis Basin
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada
July 24, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Notes:
1.  Romanticism:
     Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement originating in Europe
     near the end of the 18th century.  It emphasized emotion and individualism, intuition over
     reason, the pastoral over the urban, and glorified the past and nature.  Wikipedia

     "To see a World in a Grain of Sand
      And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
      Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
      And Eternity in an hour ..."
   
      William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, poetryfoundation 



For Map Lovers Like Me:

Location of Lansdowne House

A Map Too Fun to Pass Up!

pxhere.com

Location of Lansdowne House

Known Today as Neskantaga

Wikipedia