The Gaspe

I’m in a small town on the Gaspe peninsula, St. Simon. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do the Gaspe, but I didn’t want to go back to the U.S. yet, and I thought I’d do the very beginning of it. It’s very pretty – ocean and fields. Yet, still, my favorite place is St. Cuthbert. The topography spoke to me like none other I’ve ever been to.

Left Victoriaville today, and was a bit sad, but not really, to do so. I ended up liking my little B&B there. The woman owner warmed up to me, after a few funny exchanges between us. She gave me the name of a couple of places to stop at here in the Gaspe.

The ride was pretty, and I realized I’m also very close to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and am considering driving through one or the other of these. A girl who works here is from Halifax, and this made me realize the proximity of here to there. She’s cute, maybe about 20, with a nose ring like mine, and was very friendly. She’s doing an ‘immersion’ here, to learn French. When I arrived, I began to speak to her in French, and she began responding in a way that was very familiar – sorta flustered, stumbling, and then finally saying she didn’t really understand what I was saying, and then I heard her accent – English speaking. ‘Oh, you speak English!’ I said. We laughed a bit after about being able to speak English fluently, and how that felt after speaking French for so long. She told me about a waterfall nearby, which, because of my newfound love for waterfalls, I may try to go to tomorrow. Can’t decide if I like the place where I’m staying or not. I’m actually staying in a mobile-home thingy parked in the back of a B&B, a sort of extra room they have. It’s in a lovely field, and this sort of thing is exactly the quirky kind of experience I love. But, I actually met the woman who lives here – who’s a masseuse for the Cirque de Soleil in the winter – and she divides her time here and at another place like this right on the ocean. And suddenly I felt weird about staying in someone else’s ‘room,’ essentially. Anyway, I may leave tomorrow for either New Brunswick, or further up on the Gaspe.

Been thinking more about how I can’t believe that I grew up just hours from all this, and that I’ve never before seen it. The American dollar was very much in our favor for the years I was growing up – it was about $150 Canadian dollars per American dollar…and yet, not even once did my parents take me here. I don’t get it…truly don’t. I think it’s a matter of education, and of what is valued in life. I realized that I grew up just hours from the goddess herself, Sarah McLauchlan, who grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I’m not sure why, but I can’t shake myself of the habit of ‘what it.’ What if I’d known of all these places, what if I’d known quebec was such an amazing place, and that I could realize my dream of living in a culture of full French immersion that was so close to home. Would I have made different choices? Not waited until now to truly see moving to such a culture as a possiblity? Would I have gotten this out of my system, so to speak, earlier, and now, be back living a different life? A better one? That is, one in which I feel like I’d done more of what I’d wanted to do, earlier in my life? Not sure.

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