retreat...

I've staked out some writing space at a friend's house this week, a quiet bungalow on a quiet street in a small and mostly quiet town. It's a very different atmosphere from my urban apartment where scarcely an hour passes without the wail of distant (and sometimes not-so-distant) sirens, and where my day is punctuated by the shrieks of kids at play in the schoolyard next door. Here, the only sound is an occasional rumble from the elderly furnace in the basement.

I am alone, relishing the solitude and feasting on the silence. I have a table, a chair, and a cup of hot coffee. My laptop is open and a fresh white page awaits. But I am not writing. I'm gazing out the window, watching a busy squirrel. She stops for a moment as if aware she's being watched. Then, with a twitch of her bushy tail, she's gone.

Brown and yellow leaves spin and tumble through the air, skip across the grass, and settle in drifts on the lawn. 

Across the yard, rainwater drips like tears from the gunwales of a long-abandoned canoe. What adventures does it remember? What rivers it has known? Does it miss the call of loons across some misty northern lake? I wonder...

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stillpoint is the blog of Canadian author Cheryl Cooke Harrington