“Escape to PEI”
At the end of school, around the end of June, we’d pack up the old blue Chevy Impala and drive to the ferry dock. On clear days, I could see a thin red line across the Strait, as I heard the ferry’s blaring honk when it parked at the jetty, hoping that it would be the boat with the PacMan machines.
On deck, there was an air of excitement and eager anticipation about leaving behind the school, secure in the knowledge that the next two months would be free of daily routines, demands, and schedules. The deep blue water usually had whitecaps on windy days, which was the norm, but rarely did anyone get seasick.
When we arrived on Prince Edward Island, the landscape was different from the mainland. There were very few think forests, but rather expansive farm fields with potatoes growing in straight rows, gentle hilly highways, and fishing boats either in the waters around us or displayed in some fisherman’s front yard, prior to being launched for the lobster season. The rusty red clay roads were the most obvious landscape particularity.
Once we’d arrived at the cottage on the mouth of the river, we’d walk through the woods across the Cape to the cliff’s edge where a secluded beach awaited us that had at least three sandbars at low tide. The first dive into the warm salty water was a memorable sign that summer had arrived, and the crashing waves was a constant source of calm and contentment.
After that first swim, we’d feast on lobsters, clams, cod, and potato salad, all caught or grown locally. Over the summer, family would congregate and we’d build a bonfire just as the red sun set over the red sand.
Looking around, we were surrounded by a cascade of vivid colors: deep green eel grass cast against the wine dark ocean, white caps dancing in the waves, yellow hayfields, and always, always those red country roads that lead to our summer home. I’d escaped to PEI, winter a distant memory in the flame of the fire.