This afternoon I spoke on the telephone with a young girl in the kitchen at the Mississippi Golf Club. Beginning this coming Friday the outdoor patio is open for business! This constitutes the first capital social news we’ve had in some time. I cannot imagine a summer without the golf club for breakfast or lunch. The fairways have been open for some time already; but the absence of socializing, eating and drinking is Anathema to a golf club no matter how devoted the members may be to the game per se.
The greater importance of the event is that it represents what we hope will develop into further regression of the pandemic and dilution of the existing COVID restrictions. Our particular interest focuses upon travel restrictions both internationally between USA/Canada and provincially within the current eastern bubble of New Brunswick/Nova Scotia/PEI/Newfoundland.
On the more immediate front is the yearning for the opening of the personal service industry; viz., spas/massage parlours/barbers/hair stylists/manicurists/pedicurists. No doubt addressing those intimate concerns would in turn heighten more forward-thinking fashion apparel than sweat pants and T-shirts, contributing to the overall recovery of the economy. Traditional “shopping” has become an association with a forgotten world.
During my customary sail today through the billowing emerald fields adjoining the undulating highway to Renfrew County I considered what marvellous things in life I have not seen and have not experienced. The current travel restrictions made me think of this. I concluded however – after an exceptionally brief analysis – that the impediment is chimerical and that the time to worry about that has in any event long passed. I have select friends who are by any measure widely travelled; namely, my erstwhile physician (who gives new meaning to discovery and relentless athleticism); my law school professor (who now has the singular pleasure to regard the universe from an island in the South Pacific); and, my local colleague (who is intent upon seeing the entire world and who so far is doing very well at it). Accomplishments of this order are the triumph of only a few.
No doubt it is a requisite feature of accommodation that one succeeds to “rationalize” one’s way out of a jam. I have never considered myself widely traveled even though I once regularly flew and sailed to Europe and naturally did the customary jaunts to the Caribbean and throughout Canada. Importantly I feel no deprivation for not having seen India or China; for not having ventured to Africa; for holding back on the South Pacific. This admission is clearly disembodied from good reason. Who wouldn’t want a “Slow Boat to China“?
For the foreseeable future my exploration is confined to the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia and the barrier islands of the United States of America along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The draw of being able to motor there and back is for me unsurpassable. I shamelessly confess though that my adventurous spirit is increasingly limited to having to deal with estate agents and front desk clerks at hotels and resorts.
When one is secluded within a comfortable nest the allure of the world beyond is a spirit that thrives on intelligence, novelty, history and discovery. These traits are a far stretch from the more insular aspirations of accumulation and habit (though the two obviously co-exist). It is one of the few laudable economic instincts of mine that my travel patterns have an element of domesticity. By this fortuity I characterize my own wandering instinct as limited to conventional pleasure and luxury. And if the truth be told I subscribe to the gloomy adage, “There ain’t no ship to take you away from yourself; you only travel the suburbs of your own mind“. I succeed to turn this quip on its head by interpreting that poetry, photography, music and film adequately capture every possible emotion without having to leave home – or perhaps as a means to unearth one’s own mysteries.