FOR THE LOVE OF WRITING
The Newburgh Native By Dustin Crozier
T
his is my eleventh year living in Lennox and Addington County. I grew up in a suburb outside of Saint John, New Brunswick and once when I was in high school, I returned to our house on Roberts Lane late at night to find my parents gone, the door locked and me keyless. I spent the next hour or so waiting on the front deck in the dark wondering if they would ever return. As I looked across the street where the houses sit closely side by side, I realized that everyone was asleep except for me and a gang of raccoons; they were busy working their way from house to house tearing open piles of garbage bags. Raccoons are a mischievous bunch. Their masked eyes are full of trouble - but trouble with a smile - like the villains on the old 1960’s Batman TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward. They certainly made a racket. They’d finish at one house, crawl through the culvert and pop out at the next house. It was hilarious to say the least and good entertainment for someone who was in the precarious predicament I had found myself in. It was an urban wildlife exchange at its best. Now time travel ahead with me to 2013. Here I am living in a rural community where I’ve started a career, found my beautiful wife and at present, working hard to raise our two girls. It’s springtime, and our four year old is in the back seat of our car playing with Disney Princesses when we come
across a cat in the center of the street in Newburgh – a really big cat, with a flat leathery tail. As we approach this cat, the car coming towards us slows down and we all watch the thing lumbering along the yellow line. It is not a cat. It is definitely a beaver. My daughter is delighted and bouncing with joy so we pull the car over to watch. We laugh and smile together, both of us feeling like four year olds. In my textbook a raccoon and a beaver are from the same genus of animal – varmitus goofus. When God was designing them he said - Man, the humans are going to get a kick out of these things! We watched as long as we could until it finally ducked down over the embankment and into the river. Perhaps he was heading up to the store to get some Township garbage bags before we interrupted him. Since moving to the country, animal encounters on the way to work or church or to the grocery store are pretty commonplace. Animals beautiful, strong and ridiculous are always just a few feet away. You still get that feeling that there are more of them than there are of you. I love it. In a city or suburb, any encounter with wildlife feels like an animal intruding in your territory. In the country, the roles are soundly reversed. I am totally on their turf; they are not on mine. In the country, they are the longtime occupants and I am the unexpected guest. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Poet Space Silent cedars Sumac rich red against the grey blacks And deep greens Of the snowfilled paradise – An utterly gorgeous delight – POETSPACE I stand and stand in deep snow arms loose, and lift my eyes and arms and ears UPWARDS past the brown ferns and silent cedars that surround me in God’s own shrine outstretched to the dying tops of the once strong elm trees shivering slightly from a sky-breeze heard but hardly felt in the gracious communal solitude of these perfect artistic pieces – this perfect poet place – This space, Where God and poet meet. I stand and shiver yet seem held to this space and upheld in this space as I think: Grace Yes, grace... With God’s grace I could die easily here and be reborn.
By Jerry Ackerman, 5th Depot Lake
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