There are very few artificial colors in this world that match those that can only be conceived in nature. How blue paint can take on such an array of gold, bronzes, black, browns, greens... how a color that did not originally incorporate such shades to the naked eye could simply explode into yellow ochre, and become what it was not meant to be. How something that was once assembled by man has been left to desecrate into its true mortality; how a story rests behind anything and everything and how perhaps the most decrepit, lonesome object had once been taken care of, used, and ultimately had been left to become part of nature... even if it wasn't natural to begin with.
How something like a twisted steering wheel becomes a plant in its own right, with stems and leaves entwining into rusted-out cracks and covering it entirely as it withers away. How seats rot, doors collapse and sink into the dirt and bit by bit, something as blatantly artificial as an automobile becomes part of the earth. It's as if vehicles, too, leave to become one with God.
I never considered these things when I was a child, for at those times in my youth when I had been faced with numerous discarded vehicles -- all in various states of disrepair and/or decay --- I had seen them as simply that: vehicles. While at the same time, the resting place for these dead machines had proven to be a sanctuary time and time again. That was over ten years ago, these cars were either whole or nearly there.... they were cars, simply put, and they were forgotten. I played in and around them, I traversed by them, I practically lived near them; it had been a graveyard for old cars, deep within one of many humid, well-traveled forests in Cape Breton. Explored either by myself, or with friends, this strange haven was the getaway from the tribulations of adult life that we could only watch, yet not partake in. It was a graveyard without the sorrow and perhaps without true death, and with every snake caught beneath pieces of tin and every reclining moment in the sunlight next to a dilapidated Buick... it was even happiness. But it was simple, then, in a world where at the such a tender time, the greatest role model could be a G.I Joe or something on television.
In July of 2005, I had revisited this graveyard a little over a decade later, and I had envisioned it upon a new level. Not only in the obvious fact that cars that were once there were now battered beyond recognition by the elements, but how the forest as a whole remained omniscient. Walking that same dusty pathway upon which I had fled as a child to reach my sanctuary of cars; thinking of how many times I had flipped my bike upon that same pothole in the ground as I walked over it, now an adult. Trees were larger, foliage was just as untamed and those God forsaken black flies were STILL voracious, but I couldn't help but watch. Between well-measured swats at those Red Barons of the insect world known as horseflies, I gazed upon the Old Cars as myself and my present company --- a slew of cousins --- made our way through. One cousin --- about the same age as me --- was perhaps just as reflective at that time, I could only guess. For he was a frequent presence with whom I often accompanied -- or was accompanied by -- during the childhood snake catching missions in yesteryears.
We continued through the graveyard and into the 'mud bog', as the area had once been coined so long ago. A truly hateful area that was especially daunting to those with small bicycles and equally small legs; many a time in my youth I got stuck in what I thought were grueling, muddy conditions on a bike that threatened to topple over. But at that moment, again, I was astounded by what a decade can do and how it makes the world just that bit easier to acknowledge. How age makes something that was difficult to manage as a child seem like a simple endeavor; how things that were daunting become smaller. Much more surefooted in my age, I thought about it all as I treaded the dry, cracked and mottled ground that had once been those much-despised 'mud bogs'. Yet, I couldn't help but feel disappointed; I wasn't supposed to win this way!
Our journey would continue as the group of us went out into the 'summit', as it was often called. Alas, it was the direct opposite of what a 'summit' was, per say... for the flat lands we approached had no elevation whatsoever. Again, I would be surprised; for this place that was once barren and devoid of trees, with the remnants of foundations of what had once been mining structures... had also changed, when I never thought it would. As I passed by the brooks and stagnant lakes that peppered the land, I noticed their orange and russet hue, due to the amounts of copper they became saturated with over the years. With the railroad tracks lying adjacent to these bodies of water, and the multitudes of trains that had once passed through these flat lands, it was to be expected that the water would become contaminated. Once upon a time, the 'summit' had been a coal mine, afterall... and that mine had been dead for a long, long time.
In the glow of an evening sun, the land looked redder than ever... but as I observed a place that had, once upon a time, scared me senseless with its barren nature, alongside the childhood rumors of 'quicksand' therein, things felt different. I no longer felt frightened; trees filled the once pale hills, and the rotting husks of dead stumps were overshadowed by the rustling leaves of saplings that clearly grew up in a span of over ten years. Made gold and yellow by the setting sun, with trees and greenery, not to mention the shiny tendrils of the railroad tracks that stretched --- albeit unused --- across the land like a silver ribbon... for the first time ever, the 'summit' was beautiful to me. Truly beautiful. Part of me wished that the train would pass by once more, even though the words DEVCO were no longer emblazoned upon the cars...
Together, with my cousins, we walked through lands that were no longer scary and for old time's sake; lands that my cousin Adam and I knew off by heart from our own time, while the younger ones who were with us were perhaps just beginning to know what it was all about. None of us had caught snakes that day, needless to say. Throughout duration of three hours, in the light of that same beautiful Cape Breton sunset that I was raised by, I recaptured my childhood instead, and I didn't intend to let it get away. On the way back, taking similar pathways, we passed by the disembodied flatbed of what was once a pickup truck. Nothing remained; no wheels, no cab, nothing... just the flatbed. It had been there when I was ten, and it was there when I was twenty-one. Nothing had changed, other than the blue paint dissolving into coagulated shades of brown, green, ochre and russet, with many more rust spots here and there, not to mention the heavier presence of foliage around it.
Then, at that point in time, I sat in that old flatbed; I placed my hands onto the warm, rough surface and laughed merrily into the sunset. I was home again, and I concurred that ochre came to be a favorite color of mine.
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(The summit --- to be mentioned in this story --- back in 1994.)----------------------