In the middle of a lake, in the middle of Nova Scotia stands an Island, and you know what? She is our Island! Yep, my husband and I own an island and I have to say she is spectacular. Majestic, beautiful, soft, light, gentle, and innocent. She sits there, day in and day out, all year and forever. She has never been hurt by human hands, she offers refuge to loons, and a bald eagle sits atop one of her trees watching over all the lake and all of us in his powerful glory.
To walk on our island is to experience something almost undescribable for it is unlike anything else I know of. The floor is moss-covered and so soft and spongy, underfoot, the trees are serene, the water all around sparkles creating diamonds in the sunlight. We walk until we come to a little clearing, right in the middle of the island, and from that spot, we see all of her sweetness and in that spot lies the ashes of our son and from that spot seems to lie something else and I don’t know what that is.
Something like love and truth and something sacred like being in the arms of Mother Earth.
And we walk to the little peninsula on our island where the loons hang out and mate and take care of their baby loons and make their loon sounds and make us proud and feel like loon grandparents.
And we hear the chatter of little animals who mostly have the island to themselves, wondering it seems why we are intruding on their space and they chirp goodbye when the canoe pushes off… or it could be they don’t quite know what Ruffus our dog is….. and by the way, Ruffus walks around the Island in a similar state of wonder as if he too is experiencing her magic.
And when I am not on our Island which is most of the time, she waits for us and she lives in my heart, and I know that she is always there, into eternity she will stand, in the middle of Nova Scotia, in the middle of the lake.