Bridgeport

It was very cold this morning - there was dull white frost turning the grass blue grey, and the air was sharp - but the sun was shining, for the first time in days. At the end of the driveway, I decided to go to the town of Bridgeport, and to see a big sky, and heaps of colourful trees piled up against it.

At the roundabout, where Lancaster meets Bridge, I felt a push not to go South, like a sharp yellow tightness in my chest. I felt myself being drawn north, up Bridge into the suburbs, llike a gentle blue plain in my heart. But what new beauty would I find in suburbia, when the sun lay to the south and splashed and sang in the muddy Grand River? I'm sensitive these days to my intuition, and it's always telling me not to do what I want to do. I crossed onto the bridge, carried along by my vision of the tumbling, rushing river. At the end of the bridge I turned into the parking lot at Joe Thompson Park, as the tightness and resistance continued in my chest. Then - "fuck it, fine!" - I turned around. My strange intuition - but I promised to listen to it. It occurred to me that my mind simply didn't want to do anything new today, so I convinced myself that going east further into the town of Bridgeport would keep me on the soft blue plain, because it was a familiar route from years past, unlike the eastern direction. This seemed to convince my heart enough to loosen a little, and I went east on Tyson St. I felt pangs of agoraphobia, and settled into them comfortably, knowing that those feelings meant I was on familiar ground emotionally, and experiencing nothing novel.

Tyson St stands in my mind as the name representing one of my dreams, to live in a very small house on the outside of town by myself, in a house with a lot of wood furniture and cast iron and exposed beams, or wood shingles, wearing dresses with wool sweaters and rainboots and carrying things with chapped hands on cold days. Since going to the Maritimes to live out this life of an LM Montgomery inspired eccentric seems far-fetched, given my current realities, I settle (in fantasy) on the town of Bridgeport. Being realistic in a fantasy makes it all the more vivid and real and delicioius.

As I bicycled down the street, and then turned on to Market St, I looked carefully at all the little houses, strange and irregular and sublime, wondering if I would discover one that would delight me in particular.

Some of the little homes came right up to the road, close together, with wild flowers growing in front of thick paned windows. Others had European inspired top floor additions, with wide glass windows, through which I could see comfortable lounge chairs. Some were tiny clapboard houses, romantic in their dullness, homey yet strange.

At then end of Market I turned and came back and found an elevated, fine gravel path running along the Grand River. I climbed on to it next to a little house, where a low foundation wall ran strangely on a diagonal, cutting through the path, so that on one side (the side I was on) it was wide and gravelly, and the other, going along beside the little house, it was narrow and made by footsteps. I could see it widening again later on when it met up with Schaefer Park to the east.

I took this path back west to the main bridge. Up on the path, my heart released like a bird rising from the river. Only sky, and woods, and water. Only this. And sun, and cold. Only. O.

A time passed. I write this as a marker of time that passed free from everything.

I swooped under the bridge, on a path I had never seen before, next to the wild river on its grassy banks, and came up back in Joe Thompson park, where I was once again touched with yellow tension. I left again to circle back to the bridge but then released my heart by tying this new space to the old one I'd just left, so that any new discovery might flow from the stillness of the old.

Although I was gripped by the strangest sharp sense of newness, I had been on this path before, 12 years ago, after a long day of biking, with my friend Emilia. We later sat on the field and ate sandwiches. I had forgotten about that meal until now. It doesn't seem like 12 years - it always feels like no time at all.

Below the path, there were great willows spreading over wild grasses and smaller trees, creating little rooms of green light beside the river. Clear ponds, islands of water caught in the low areas near the river after days of rain, reflected the light whitely and captivated me, inseparable in their gentle magic from the deep green grasses that surrounded them. It is the time of year where I say - next year, I may come to know and love this place, on the very edge of this year's beloved circle.

In order to avoid a man walking his dog, I turned around and returned to Bridge St. I followed Bridge past Schweitzer, where the big trucks are parked, where it becomes an open country road. A gravel road travelling alongside the paved is protected to the west by the high grassy banks of the elevated path. From the gravel road, I couldn't see the other side of the bank - just grass waving against sky. I was thrilling to imagine the river opening up on the other side. I climbed up into the light and wind on the embankment and looked beyond to see fields and trees, the river far off and hidden. Charming, but not thrilling. I knew the man with his dog must be coming around the bend shortly, so I came down again, feeling a little tired, and went back to Lancaster.

I pedaled slowly and happily up Lancaster, thinking of not much, in no hurry, warm in the sun, looking at the signs in shop windows, wondering how my day would unfold when this trip was over. Wondering if I should go to sit in the woods at Moses Springer Park, wondering if I could stay warm if I stopped moving. I turned right onto Lang to avoid the traffic and followed it back to Springdale and then Bridgeport.

There is a patch of woods between Brideport and Highway 8 where it curves. I locked my bike at the edge of the woods and swished through tall plants into the wet and yellow brown cathedral. Climbing a leafy, soft path, I saw movement ahead. A large, grey deer bounded into view for a moment and then disapeared. My heart beating, I followed the path up the hill, watching the woods to my right, and now there were two grey deer, leaping and bounding through the trees, th. To say that a deer leaps is to begin to understand a deer as more bird than a mammal - a deer lives half in the trees and in the air.

I didn't see the deer again, and I didn't follow anymore - I didn't want to scare them any further, especially because they were between myself and highway. I imagined them in the sunshine of the meadow beyond the woods, near the highway, two lost, gentle, leaping siblings. For, if they weren't lost, then surely this was an enchanted wood, much vaster and more capable of sustaining the wild of life than it looked from the outside.

As I came to the east edge of the forest, before turning north to go back to my bicycle, I realized a man with long hair and beard was watching me, while smoking a cigarette, from the balcony of a house touching on to the woods. I felt like an intruder, and strange in my leather jacket, helmet and white running shoes. I wondered if the man had been watching the deer. I wondered if he felt that in some way, they were his deer. He puffed with equanimity and watchfulness, like a wizard, his thoughts obscure. I moved off.

I walked slowly along the outside of the woods until they met the highway in a chain link fence. I could see the sunny meadows beyond. A little further, on the other side of the highway, I slowed my pace in the sunshine and looked back at the forest, and realized how actually large it was. I wondered where the deer were. I felt sad and worried, enchanted and touched.

I walked for the better part of the road home, in no hurry to get anywhere.