Early Lesson

I’m never nostalgic, but it’s fascinating the feelings brought on by places rarely returned to since childhood. We used to cut this way biking home from Bridgetown to Beaconsfield, the old railway line out back of Acadian Distillers, tracks torn up in 1983. With the land so swampy around Solomon Chute Brook, it’s the only viable shortcut between the parallel roads of Church and Inglewood. Standing on that low little trestle sure used to make me nervous, the drop seeming further back then, the gap between ties much wider. The waste land in these parts was scattered with wrecked cars, industrial waste, piles of old bricks and the like. Perfectly chaotic playground when supervision was shaken.

It was around where I’m standing that my cousin found a stashed magazine, the sort with half the pages stuck together. It’d become something of a public property in those days, hidden under bricks and secretively shared among the local boys. Like most of the preacher’s kids I knew, everything my cousin did was motivated by what he was told not to do. That made him a wild child, a charming teenager, a tedious adult, and miserably middle-aged. He was my early lesson in the consequences of not getting along with yourself. Whenever I’m back here, it makes me grateful for making internal peace a priority. If that meant isolating myself from self-destructive peers, of which there were many, I’m glad I did it then. Several are already down on their knees, with old age coming quick. I aim to still be standing.

February 23, 2026
Bridgetown, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6679 of my daily journal.