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August 18 - Day 103

Woke at 6, as usual. I read my latest used book (a charming mystery that takes place at a science fiction convention) until 8, when Mr. Bradbury knocked on the gate.

He gave me 20 bucks for my journey, insisting I take it. Wow! I love nice people!

11:30

Signal Hill

This is the symbolic end of my journey. Sure it's not the farthest east I can go (that's Cape Spear), but look at this place and tell me if you can think of a better place to end and reflect.

I took the hard way up. Quite literally. Only after struggling up several hundred feet of rock did I see the main road everyone else takes. But so what? This is quite appropriate. A last climb. A last hike. I did the same in Victoria, going for a ways down to the shore where by bike could not follow.

I only wish I was alone. It's tourist season, and I don't have my DEET with me.

Sitting atop the Lookout, the view is great. A couple ships come in through the narrow harbor, the fog is only a few miles off shore, and whisps of it roll through now and again. It's beautiful, spoiled only by the parking lot and tourist buses nearby.

So this is it. I'm done. And what have I accomplished? In a way, nothing. In a way, everything. Like at the end of Halifax, I feel like I've earned the right to dress the way I do (with the gear on my belt and whatnot), at least for a little while. I've done what I've dreamt of doing for many years. Yet it is no great feat. Anyone could have done it, with enough time and money. It just depends on how much time you're willing to take, an how much comfort you're willing to do without.

The fog rolls in. Closer now, I can hear the tourists but they grow dim in the mist. I wish I could have this place to myself for five minutes. That's all.

My back is to the city. From here, there is no city, only a dull background noise to faint to be distinct. I am almost alone. Almost.

My God, this fog is beautiful.

The tourist here make me ill. I must get farther away.

At the gift shop there is an album playing, at first I ignore it, then I suddenly find it familiar, but I couldn't place it.

"...some sing low, some sing high..."

Then it its me. This was one of the songs sung at the last day the group was together in B.C.

All God's creatures have a place in the choir Some sing low, some sing high Some sing up on the telephone wire Some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they got now...

It's kinda sung like gospel meets folk. I thought it was very cute back then, and now I'm flooded with memories of Ilan, Shannon, Erin, Linda, Glen, Steph, and Charles. I wonder how they all fared? I sent them an email back in P.E.I., perhaps some have responded by now...

There is a long way around Signal Hill, which takes you to the edge of the sea. Here I write. It's at least a hundred feet down. The waves pound against the rocks, the wind blows softly. The rocks are covered with green growth. I look out onto the sea, the unending ocean, the tiny gulls below passing by. Here, I walk and read a poem I had been saving for this moment. Not for myself, but for myself fifty years from now...

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife,
I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel:
I will drink Life to the lees:
All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone.
He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas.
My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tennyson Though I've always despised the Roman name. He is, and always shall be, Odysseus. You see, I've been thinking. What happens now? I'm here, I've accomplished what I've set out to do, and yet it will take only a couple of years for me to feel like I'm reliving the ancient past when I tell of this journey, just as I did after Halifax. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up tomorrow and be seventy seven, and realize I haven't left my house in twenty years. This, I hope, is insurance against that. I'll be looking over my old journals and I'll come across this message from myself.

Only time will tell if it works.

There is only one thing I wanted to buy in St. John's, and I've done that now. A simple red shield shaped patch with a moose and NFLD. on it. It will be partially overlaid on the B.C. patch I already have. It's funny to think that, in the end, that's all I really came here to do. To get a patch. I had plenty more reasons to make the TRIP, mind you. But only one to be in St. John's.

I ran into the Harley couple I met in Nova Scotia today, we chatted up a bit. I also heard that the Swede who's also riding a recumbent was only 30 miles from here as of 3pm, so he might be in today. Hopefully I'll meet him, but I doubt it.

Unfortunately I only had one interview today, but it was an archaeologist, so that was pretty cool. They were digging up an old site that had been turned into a parking lot, and it was quite interesting to watch. Hopefully the trip home will provide a few more.

Tonight there are fireworks, I may shoot off a flare during them as a final celebration. Tomorrow I leave for Argentia. The journey begins in fast reverse. In a couple days I'll be in Toronto. In a couple weeks, I'll be home in Victoria. And in a couple months, I'll start writing the novel that I've been planning on and off for nearly two years.

But, as far as the rest of you are concerned, the journey ends here.

So let me ask you something...

What's keeping YOU from having an adventure?

Victoria - St. John's

May 8 - August 18

103 Days



Onto Day 104...