Serendipity!

Yesterday I felt like a maple tree with the sap running after a cold night.

At 11 o'clock it was time to head home after a long weekend at camp. Mary and I had already snuck in an extra half day and it was my plan to put in the afternoon working at my office. Everything was packed, loaded, ready for our return to town.

The sun was shining! Heat radiated! The scenery was gorgeous! Spirits soared! "Let's not go," I said, wistfully.

Within 10 minutes I had a small fort dug out of the winter snow accumulated on the deck - enough room for two chairs to perch at our rail bar.

In another 10 minutes I had a cigar lit and a glass of iced tea before me, and sat smooth and comfy as chocolate on whipped cream, daydreaming beside the lake.

It was a glorious afternoon, especially for mid-February. The temperature touched one degree above freezing - the first such moment since last fall. I'm happy that we were able to bask in the sun on such a spectacular afternoon. My face just tingles!

Hal used to view the world and pitch stale bread to the ravens out of this window.

He didn’t talk much.

A couple years ago I arrived at my office early, about 5 a.m. Already my eyes squinted from the sun, but the sight of food strewn on the driveway and scattered across the parking lot widened the lids.

“What the devil…?” I muttered as the little flock of gulls and ravens flapped themselves out of my way.

“Hello… good morning,” sang out a faint voice as I shuffled my way, delighting in the warm spring air, toward the door. It seemed to have come from the birds and I stared at them in an early morning daze of disbelief. Then I spun around, slowly, all the way, to find my greeter.

Nobody was in sight. The beautiful dawn belonged to me and the birds.

A few moments and a couple steps along the way the voice trilled again, “Up here!”

I looked at the building next door, and there, centered in the second floor window was a smiling face framed by fingers holding a cigarette on one side and a fist balancing a coffee cup on the other.

“Good morning,” I spoke back, quietly, as the morning at that hour was very gentle. “Feeding the birds?”

“Yup,” the face answered, softly.

That was the longest conversation we engaged in over the following year or so, although the scenario was repeated two or three times every week. Most often we just offered a smile, a wave, a salute, or a toast of the coffee cups to each other. I think we both enjoyed the big quiet and the birds in the peaceful mornings.

One day, during the second year, I cruised in as usual, and there sat my friend on the outdoor steps beside the driveway, smoking his cigarette and sipping his coffee. The whole person, up close, looked even younger than the face in the window.

That morning we enjoyed a short, pleasant conversation. Eventually I mentioned, “Know what? I don’t know your name.”

“Hal,” he answered.

And that was that. I was able to tack a name to my morning greetings then.

As this winter began I noticed one morning that Hal’s window was covered with plastic and snow had built up on the sill. The inside was pitch black. That was unusual, as Hal’s little apartment was hot and he kept the window open even in the bitterest of winter cold.

I had the feeling that Hal might not live there anymore, but I hoped I was wrong. One morning in mid-December I thought I saw colored Christmas lights shining through the plastic, and I imagined them draped around and around a tiny tree in Hal’s small living room, and I was happy.

Two days before Christmas I ran into Hal shopping in the grocery store. He told me he had moved in November. He’s still in town and it’s a small town, so I know we’ll see each other every now and then, but I feel a little sadness that he’s not in the little second floor apartment next door now.

We didn’t develop much of a friendship, in a traditional sense. Matter of fact, we don’t seem to have much in common, really.

On the other hand, we did develop a warm bond just through seemingly small, everyday encounters in a friendly spirit. I’m thinking that must be important.

Now, sometimes when I arrive at my office on a dark, cold morning and the stark driveway is devoid of stale bread and dancing ravens, I look up at Hal’s window, which is still covered with plastic and snow drifted halfway up, and smile to myself as I see the colored lights from a gas station two buildings down the street reflecting like a string of sparkles on a tiny tree.

On a beautiful mid-May spring day in 2002 I stood in a Manitoba farm field with Peggy Sanders, Donna Prior, and Margaret Tew, three of Sioux Lookout’s beautiful, charming ladies. We were there to admire the sunflowers.

Those who know farming, gardening, and Manitoba agricultural cycles may wonder how we happened to be viewing sunflowers on May 15.

I thought of that moment this morning as I watched the sun rise. Vincent van Gogh described his inspiration for The Starry Night, one of his most famous paintings and among my favorites, "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise…"

In years past my idea of fine art was the painting of hound dogs dressed up, sitting in chairs around a table playing poker. That became history though when I started to learn taxidermy as a teenager. The stuffed frogs dressed up, sitting on chairs, peering intently at their hands of cards quickly took over top spot.

A friend recently asked people to share their favorite paintings. I chose The Starry Night. I think it’s a wonderful compilation of colors and textures, although it doesn’t include any gambling dogs and frogs, unless, like me, you can picture those characters, in the kitchen, in the basement of the church at the center of the picture.

And the colors – the blues and yellows – remind me of the Rotary Club, and its founding principles: Is it true? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

I’m told that art should set our minds dreaming. So there… when I see dawn breaking as I await my chickadees, and a starry night vision leads me to the warm remembrance of standing in a field on a Manitoba morning 12 years ago, I like to think I’ve learned one more lesson about art appreciation.

I remember two important facts about Altona, Manitoba. It’s the home of the Friesen printing plant, the company that produced Sioux Lookout’s Tracks Beside the Water, volume 3, and it’s the showcase for the world’s tallest van Gogh painting, a two-story-tall reproduction of one of van Gogh’s sunflower paintings perched on its long-legged easel at the edge of a big field.

Peggy, Donna, Margaret and I spent a couple days in Altona sorting, compiling and editing hundreds of contributed stories and pictures, and designing the third volume of this Sioux Lookout history book. While there we enjoyed a few minutes in the field of the sunflower painting.

The three volumes of Tracks Beside the Water aren’t paintings, of course, but they are filled with stories of starry nights and sunny days, dogs and frogs, beauty, humor, joy, sorrow, dreams. They are bursting with unique art.

I hope you will think of that some morning as you admire an early rising sun, or on a clear winter night as you look skyward and imagine the stars singing your name.