A New Kind of Country
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Synopsis
Novelist Dorothy Gilman, author of the bestselling Mrs. Pollifax series, had reached a point of no return in her life. With her sons in college, Ms. Gilman was searching for something unknowable, unnameable . . . until she bought a small house in a little lobstering village in Nova Scotia, Canada.
And so she began her life again, discovering talents and interests she never realized were hers, accepting the inner peace she had always fought, and most of all, understanding the untapped part of herself, almost as if it were a new kind of country, to challenge, explore, and love.
Release date: June 30, 2020
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Print pages: 130
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A New Kind of Country
Dorothy Gilman
The Beginning
For the sum of $10,500 I had received ten acres "more or less," as the deed phrased it, of earth, rocks, fern, wild blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, wild primroses, an incredible number of wildflowers, and, down near the beach, cranberries that glowed like red jewels in the fall. These ten acres included a large barn that stood very near to the road, and a 125-year-old house at the end of a long drive. Beyond the house the land began a long gentle slope down toward the beach—but not so gentle when pushing up wheelbarrows filled with seaweed—first through wild mallows, then primroses and wild irises down to a belt of ferns, and thence to the damp mossy bog with its cranberries until—suddenly—one was at the beach.
Mine was a lovely, wild, and primitive beach, with nothing polite about it. There were boulders—harsh, rugged boulders—on which one could climb and stand. Its floor was cobbled, with small flat rocks the water had worn smooth, and tufts of salt grass growing up between the cobbles. The shore faced a beach pond, a sheltered body of water which the receding tides left flat and green as a billiard table. But just beyond my property line, off to the left, the beach took an abrupt and spectacular turn and ran out into the harbor in the shape of a long curving finger that formed the opposite shore of my beach pond and supported the lighthouse, which had once been a handsome affair of wood and shingle, with people living in it, but was now a kind of Erector Set structure whose housekeeping chores were divided among a computer and two lightkeepers who lived in matching houses nearby. Beyond the lighthouse lay the harbor, which would be busy with lobster boats in their season, and beyond this the open ocean.
And so from the one side of the house, looking west, I could see lighthouse, harbor, and ocean. The sun set behind the lighthouse each night, trailing plumes of color across the pond; the beam from the lighthouse flashed regularly across my walls at night, and in fog the foghorn sounded, or bellowed, or moaned, depending on the direction of the wind and clearness of the air.
From the north windows I looked out upon fields of alder and blueberries, and a solitary railroad track down which, once a day, puffed the little train that brought freight and groceries to the village.
From the east window I could see the highway, and the houses and lights of my two neighbors, the Nixons and the Crowells, while on the south side lay garden, well, a field, and the matching lighthouse keepers' cottages on Lighthouse Road.
A great deal had been included in the purchase price; I had actually taken lien on a small universe. And to this universe, besides books and clothes and furnishings, I brought all my suburban ways of thinking, and made an enthusiastic attack on the particular when it was the general that needed attention. I flailed away at inconsequentials. It was early September when I arrived but I rushed to get ready for the herb garden I would plant in the distant spring. I made trips to the lumberyard in town—a distance of thirty miles each way—and brought home expensive boards, which I cut and nailed to form artistic shapes for planting boxes. It was incredibly obtuse of me. It didn't occur to me that I need only walk out to the lighthouse, and somewhere along that stretch of Far Beach I would find all the boards I could possibly use, as well as wooden barrels washed up by the storms, and bait boxes and lobster crates with hinged lids, and enough lumber to build a house. Like a horse wearing blinders, I looked and admired but from a distance, without relationship, my concentration fixed upon lists: paint deck, bring up loads of seaweed for garden, buy pegboard, nails, trowels, hang curtains, fill kerosene lamps, locate bales of hay—and each day during those first two months the sun shone radiantly, the temperatures remained balmy, the piles of seaweed in the garden grew thick, and my lists grew longer and more tyrannical.
Until one day something stirred in me, and walking into the kitchen to cook breakfast I looked out at the harbor and the ocean and at the sun slanting through the windows and I kept walking through the door and out of the house into the eight o'clock fragrance of a soft October morning.
There is an incredible luminosity to the light in Nova Scotia, a southern Mediterranean quality on a sunny day that astonishes the eye with its unexpectedness. The sun reaches the earth without smog, it glances off rocks and water, turns the sky a vivid blue and the water, reflecting it, is sapphire or cobalt and glitters under the sun until it floods the senses. Forgetting breakfast, I turned into the path leading to the beach, found my shoes drenched with dew, hesitated, half turned to go back and look for boots, and then impatiently stripped off my shoes and continued down the path barefooted. Each mallow leaf I passed held a drop of dew in its hollow center that looked—as the sun set it afire—like a diamond dropped there during the night. The grass was rough as rattan on my feet, and wet. When I reached the shore my feet ached with cold and I climbed up on a rock to warm them before I ventured on the beach.
It was low tide, and when the tide retreated it had left water and sea life behind it in small hollows and crevices. I found periwinkles clinging to the rocks, minnows in small ponds, empty clam and mussel shells, and long brittle ropes of kelp. There was a thick fragrance of salt in the air, and of rich decaying muck. When I turned to go back, something strange had happened. The sun, not high enough yet in the sky to flood the shore with light, was just illuminating a long row of rocks along the shore. Each rock was densely covered with seaweed, and in this juxtaposition—of soft golden light and long slanted shadow—the rocks looked like human heads wearing outrageous wigs of tangled hair . . . a dozen heads in a row staring primly out to sea . . . a line of gossipy ladies nodding in the sun.
I laughed out loud.
And standing there laughing on the beach in the morning sun, I felt the rigidities inside of me—the inhibitions and timidities and shoulds and oughts and musts and schedules and routines and tensions—as iron bands that encircle a barrel and hold it together by pressure.
It was startling; it was frightening; it was revelation.
I put on my shoes and scurried back up the hill to breakfast.
But it was a beginning.
For the sum of $10,500 I had received ten acres "more or less," as the deed phrased it, of earth, rocks, fern, wild blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, wild primroses, an incredible number of wildflowers, and, down near the beach, cranberries that glowed like red jewels in the fall. These ten acres included a large barn that stood very near to the road, and a 125-year-old house at the end of a long drive. Beyond the house the land began a long gentle slope down toward the beach—but not so gentle when pushing up wheelbarrows filled with seaweed—first through wild mallows, then primroses and wild irises down to a belt of ferns, and thence to the damp mossy bog with its cranberries until—suddenly—one was at the beach.
Mine was a lovely, wild, and primitive beach, with nothing polite about it. There were boulders—harsh, rugged boulders—on which one could climb and stand. Its floor was cobbled, with small flat rocks the water had worn smooth, and tufts of salt grass growing up between the cobbles. The shore faced a beach pond, a sheltered body of water which the receding tides left flat and green as a billiard table. But just beyond my property line, off to the left, the beach took an abrupt and spectacular turn and ran out into the harbor in the shape of a long curving finger that formed the opposite shore of my beach pond and supported the lighthouse, which had once been a handsome affair of wood and shingle, with people living in it, but was now a kind of Erector Set structure whose housekeeping chores were divided among a computer and two lightkeepers who lived in matching houses nearby. Beyond the lighthouse lay the harbor, which would be busy with lobster boats in their season, and beyond this the open ocean.
And so from the one side of the house, looking west, I could see lighthouse, harbor, and ocean. The sun set behind the lighthouse each night, trailing plumes of color across the pond; the beam from the lighthouse flashed regularly across my walls at night, and in fog the foghorn sounded, or bellowed, or moaned, depending on the direction of the wind and clearness of the air.
From the north windows I looked out upon fields of alder and blueberries, and a solitary railroad track down which, once a day, puffed the little train that brought freight and groceries to the village.
From the east window I could see the highway, and the houses and lights of my two neighbors, the Nixons and the Crowells, while on the south side lay garden, well, a field, and the matching lighthouse keepers' cottages on Lighthouse Road.
A great deal had been included in the purchase price; I had actually taken lien on a small universe. And to this universe, besides books and clothes and furnishings, I brought all my suburban ways of thinking, and made an enthusiastic attack on the particular when it was the general that needed attention. I flailed away at inconsequentials. It was early September when I arrived but I rushed to get ready for the herb garden I would plant in the distant spring. I made trips to the lumberyard in town—a distance of thirty miles each way—and brought home expensive boards, which I cut and nailed to form artistic shapes for planting boxes. It was incredibly obtuse of me. It didn't occur to me that I need only walk out to the lighthouse, and somewhere along that stretch of Far Beach I would find all the boards I could possibly use, as well as wooden barrels washed up by the storms, and bait boxes and lobster crates with hinged lids, and enough lumber to build a house. Like a horse wearing blinders, I looked and admired but from a distance, without relationship, my concentration fixed upon lists: paint deck, bring up loads of seaweed for garden, buy pegboard, nails, trowels, hang curtains, fill kerosene lamps, locate bales of hay—and each day during those first two months the sun shone radiantly, the temperatures remained balmy, the piles of seaweed in the garden grew thick, and my lists grew longer and more tyrannical.
Until one day something stirred in me, and walking into the kitchen to cook breakfast I looked out at the harbor and the ocean and at the sun slanting through the windows and I kept walking through the door and out of the house into the eight o'clock fragrance of a soft October morning.
There is an incredible luminosity to the light in Nova Scotia, a southern Mediterranean quality on a sunny day that astonishes the eye with its unexpectedness. The sun reaches the earth without smog, it glances off rocks and water, turns the sky a vivid blue and the water, reflecting it, is sapphire or cobalt and glitters under the sun until it floods the senses. Forgetting breakfast, I turned into the path leading to the beach, found my shoes drenched with dew, hesitated, half turned to go back and look for boots, and then impatiently stripped off my shoes and continued down the path barefooted. Each mallow leaf I passed held a drop of dew in its hollow center that looked—as the sun set it afire—like a diamond dropped there during the night. The grass was rough as rattan on my feet, and wet. When I reached the shore my feet ached with cold and I climbed up on a rock to warm them before I ventured on the beach.
It was low tide, and when the tide retreated it had left water and sea life behind it in small hollows and crevices. I found periwinkles clinging to the rocks, minnows in small ponds, empty clam and mussel shells, and long brittle ropes of kelp. There was a thick fragrance of salt in the air, and of rich decaying muck. When I turned to go back, something strange had happened. The sun, not high enough yet in the sky to flood the shore with light, was just illuminating a long row of rocks along the shore. Each rock was densely covered with seaweed, and in this juxtaposition—of soft golden light and long slanted shadow—the rocks looked like human heads wearing outrageous wigs of tangled hair . . . a dozen heads in a row staring primly out to sea . . . a line of gossipy ladies nodding in the sun.
I laughed out loud.
And standing there laughing on the beach in the morning sun, I felt the rigidities inside of me—the inhibitions and timidities and shoulds and oughts and musts and schedules and routines and tensions—as iron bands that encircle a barrel and hold it together by pressure.
It was startling; it was frightening; it was revelation.
I put on my shoes and scurried back up the hill to breakfast.
But it was a beginning.
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