Soaring like an eagle

I took flight on Monday. I spread my arms and soared in slow motion; laughing all the way to the ground at the sudden joy of being freed from gravity. It was an immediate and strangely welcoming escape from earthly bounds, but gravity won in the end and exacted its usual price.

Let me explain. Between April and November, I spend as much time as possible at our 120-year-old farm house near Kejimkujik National Park. My father-in-law mapped a two-hour radius around Halifax back in the early seventies and he and his partner spent several years searching for the perfect get-away.

What they found was a 20-acre piece of woodland with a long stretch of lakefront on Pretty Mary Lake, complete with an aging farmhouse surrounded on two sides by a long verandah. Over the years he, and eventually we, upgraded the wiring and installed plumbing, new roofing and worked away at shoring up crumbling foundation sills. There is no insulation and only a kitchen wood stove, so when the freeze sets in we mournfully shut it up for the winter, cross our fingers and walk away for four months.

Two years ago, the contractor who was re-shingling the main roof advised us that he had forbidden his workers from standing on the verandah roof--it was too rotten to be safe. We did what country folk do…we called our neighbour.

Our neighbour was eight years old when he met my father-in-law. His own young parents had given him up as an infant and he had been taken in by the widow down the road. RJ, who had three daughters, immediately took him under his wing, and Dave has been the country cousin ever since. He is also one of the most meticulous carpenters we have ever met.

A few years ago, at the height of fears about West Nile Disease, I spent two weekends screening in the old verandah. It turned out to be the most popular space in the house. The only problem was that it was a screened space of about 12 metres long by just over a metre wide. A contract was struck two years ago, and Dave took on the destruction of the old verandah and the building of the new, including a three by 12 metre screened room.

Life moves at its own pace in the country. A year later and the structure--unroofed--was mostly complete. By July 1 weekend, the roof was on and then everything stalled. Being the old guy with time, I began the task of cladding the posts and headers, painting the trim and tightening up the screening. It was this that took me two metres up a step ladder Monday morning, and this that saw me do a perfect swan dive when the ladder collapsed.

You read about life flashing before your eyes at these moments. I instinctively knew there was nothing in that brief time period that would prevent a perfect belly-flop to the ground. Still, part of my mind slowed my perception of time enough that I actually enjoyed the freed feeling that enveloped me.

The landing, however, was directly across the ladder but, as the nice ER doctor told me, luck was on my side…I missed the rib bones and merely bruised the cartilage around my heart. A largely immobilized left arm and a significant--although largely unavoidable--fear of coughing, sneezing or hiccuping for the next couple weeks will be the price exacted for the day I soared like an eagle.