© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.
Blessings come in large and small packages. We are thankful for this week’s heavy rain, which has fully recharged the cistern. It’s a partial blessing since we also await the results of the tested water and are drinking bottled water in the meantime.
A week of dreich (Scots Gaelic for gloom) has been followed by several days of great weather, so we do our errands up and down the coast, from Chéticamp to Port Hawkesbury. I never leave my phone at home any more because there are too many pictures already framed and waiting for me to find them.
We take advantage of these mild fall days to ready the house for winter and plan out next year’s garden. But the blessings of fall are fleeting in their beauty and provide a perfect excuse to walk away from the computer. The wind in our faces also pushes the scudding clouds across a cerulean fall sky, with the Bay of St. Lawrence reflecting that blue to the horizon. Shading our eyes against the late afternoon sun with the maples on fire, we can just breathe in the beauty and let it reach all the way to the tightness inside. The landscape draws it out and by the time we arrive home, we feel better.
Today’s slideshow covers several journeys over the past few weeks up and down the coast, from Chéticamp south to the Margarees, along the beach at Inverness, the harbour and marsh at Mabou, visiting beaches at Port Hood and Port Hastings. This western area has several names – the Musical Coast, the Ceildh Trail, the Sunset Coast. All are accurate. There is much to see and hear in this slice of Cape Breton and we’re trying to pack as much as we can into only a few more months. https://youtu.be/Tp5E97S_YcU
The song, Blessing, was written for a friend’s 40th birthday and I sing it on my 1999 Big Boned Beauty recording. Tom Hodgson plays guitar with Lise Brown on tenor sax. I also fiddled and sang harmony on Blessing with Lui Collins and Max Cohen in 2017. Lui, (who sings it way better than I do!) sings lead vocal and plays ukulele, Max is on guitar and vocal. We performed this in shows with Jane Yolen and 3 Ravens.
Of all my songs, Blessing has a life of its own and has been recorded so many times that I’ve lost count, though Lui was one of the first, on her Stone by Stone CD.
Maybe it works. Take a moment. Relax. Enjoy the view. Breathe.
Blessed Be.