I drove down from Montreal today. Although I left late, around eleven-thirty, and was off my path almost immediately, once I was on the freeway I was bumping along on the rough tarmac and peering through the windshield wipers at the diminishing traffic.
I had gassed up in Ontario, near the Quebec border, out of a defensive fear of Quebec gas prices, and that nearly entire tank took me all the way to New Brunswick. An unfortunate side-effect of that was that I didn’t stop once for over six hours. Strangely, on the topic of mileage, the car seems to have better and better mileage as I drive it more. I could go nearly six hundred kilometres on a tank but today I drove well over seven hundred and was shocked to discover my gas gauge was correct: I had almost a quarter of a tank left. I’m not sure what to ascribe that to.
It was great to see my friend and meet her Montreal friends, but it was at least as delightful, albeit in a different way, to leave the highway in New Brunswick and turn onto the potholed and patchy tertiary highway that leads to my cabin. Since I had pressed on so vigorously, I arrived at the land while it was still somewhat light, and I packed in some of my gear without a flashlight.
Strangely there are no lights on in the houses along the road and the cabins here are equally deserted. Some of the houses along the Hartland road are missing windows, showing a toothless appearance of the abandoned house to the road. I feel like I am driving into a deserted province, the lone occupant of a forgotten valley.
The creek is low so we must not have had much rain lately, and the trail is grown up with ferns and littered with fallen branches. The cabin, from what I could tell in the dark, is in good shape, although it must have been a hot day. The main area is twenty-five degrees and I was able to take a shower with the heat that remained in the solar shower.
It’s very quiet here tonight. That’s a difficult thing to describe to my friends who live in the cities and have likely never experienced real silence. The cabin is cozy and I plan to sleep well and for a long time. It’s nice to be back.
