RESTLESS TRANCE The old bridges on East Branch Road haven't got much life left in them, decades past their last real maintenance. The first span closer to the power station has mostly collapsed, and this second one won't be long to follow. Abandoned roads have held a huge defining force for me through the years. They seems to run such dark rings around me, energy that's slow to shake loose. Sometimes it pulls at my mind like a kind of daydream – all those endless kilometres and shoes I've worn through. Step after step in a kind of restless trance. Some of the oldest ways through the woods are those most forgotten, twisting ribbons through terrible terrain, chasing after wherever they used to end up. They still do, once you push through the brush, hop the puddles, trip over the ruts. They each hide that secret middle of nowhere I'm after. April 24, 2024 Bear River, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6009 of my daily journal.

SAID AND DONE There's an old swimming hole just east of Middleton town, along the old railbed near Senator Road. Local kids passed centuries of hot summer weather, here on the shores of Morton Brook. Here lie the memories that maybe won't matter, personal histories we can't quite recall. Built up and bolted together – just trying to make sure they won't falter. Nothing defines our existence like discovering our stories are up to us to tell. Many are tempted to stick with a shared past, repeatedly engaging with what they've said and done before. But there's a beauty in being a stranger that seems to win my heart out every time. There are always new faces coming and going out here. Why not take a turn you haven't before, and see how it'd feel if you were one? Spring seems like as good a time as any to do something new. April 23, 2024 Wilmot, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6008 of my daily journal.

THE LOWEST POINT The old Rossway wharf gets drowned when the highest tide comes through. It's nothing now but bits of rotten wood, and rocks that lost their place. A slow and sure obliteration, barely enough to lift even the smallest bow from bottom. The rolling hills of Digby Neck climb up and off in the distance, away from this, the lowest point. They drift on further from the mainland, to the islands, and then nothing but the open sea. That openness belongs equally to the sky as well tonight – nothing to obscure the shimmering moon. It's the greatest kind of feeling lost I've ever known. I hope you're familiar, at home with that buzzing energy of lightness in the dark. If there comes a time that this can't lift me up, then nothing will. April 22, 2024 Rossway, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

UNBROKEN CHILL There are things you'll never feel anywhere but in the full moonlight. The dimmest brightness the night has ever known, cast across this boat graveyard. The Seawall sits still, not a ghost of wind to blow last summer's dry and reedy stalks. Those scattered stubs will soon be replaced by new and salt-swept grasses. They're coming through slow to an unbroken chill, open leaves just weeks away, but it feels like it could be months. The nightly mood of this season is shivering, cuts in as a reminder of how tight the winter holds. Eventually, warmth arrives. It's calling out to find me where the cold has taken hold – setting me loose from shore with the worst of the feelings that could find me. No worries, really. There's no holes in the hull of my hope. April 22, 2024 Rossway, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

TACITURNITY my boyhood passed in a taciturn eternity all those years waiting for the quiet man to speak knocked off my feet faithful to a fault his heart and mine locked in the same vault and it was no different when he spoke in tongues though they said back then that God would fill the gaps I started to doubt it when every time he just opened his mouth and out came the same lines um-shudda-ma-kee-de-a I still hear it in my head an exchange for all that's left unsaid I would've rather traded that Holy Spirit for the ghost of a heart that let me near it but the holes are where the hope gets through at the bottom of a bottomless well the speechless fathers speak for you ~ ~ ~ April 22, 2024 Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

WITHOUT OUR MEMORIES These clear spring nights come on so cold, all the bitterness of winter in tow. Absolute calm takes off the edge a little, and the heat in the earth from a long and sunny day. It radiates upward as the frigid moon shines down. Those reflected rays disappear through the brush and treetops, absorbed by a mass of wild roses. But timeless vinyl siding carries on the mirroring a little longer. The home itself is basically hopeless. Abandoned so many decades that the floors have caved through, slowly turned to a hollow hulk, in search of the bottom falling out. Like a beautiful soul with dementia, frame for a missing picture; who are we without our memories, anyway? The world carries off an almost unrecognizable beauty after nightfall, but few folks see it. Our eyes tuned to headlights and home, we watch the sky but miss its impact on the earth. For that, you've got to stand in the darkness and wait to see the light. April 22, 2024 Lake Midway, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6007 of my daily journal.

FOR THE SAKE OF THE STORY As far as I'm concerned, darkness always brings its own brightness – like the sun and the shadow it casts. It's all right there in the obvious honesty, like with tragic dramas or blues songs. When I was younger, I was immersed in a religious culture that couldn't resist a happy ending, obsessed with all things working together for good. It felt like such a revelation when I discovered storytelling for the sake of the story alone. One of the great philosophical questions seems to be: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" I'm more of the mindset that it's best to remove the words "why", "bad", and "good" from the equation – and you're nearly to the statement: "Things happen to people." I'm less concerned with cause and effect than I am with my reaction to it. I choose hope, because that ensures I'm aiming for something better. I choose wonder, because I'm better off chasing uncertainty. But, most of all, I choose honesty. I've got nothing invested in pretending my heart is anywhere it's not. April 21, 2024 Forest Glade, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6006 of my daily journal.

WORKING WITH DISORDER I stumbled upon some natural industry, construction in progress. Signs of gnawing here and there, half a dozen trees felled, and a half-dozen others on their way. The old lesson from beavers is working hard, or at least, it's the moral of their story that we're taught growing up. But there's a second lesson overlooked that always meant more to me – working with disorder. We tend to think that there's a set way to do things, ticking off a list of bullet points until we reach a pre-planned conclusion. When I was young, I tried to do that, but the process made me anxious. My unfocused mind was better at bouncing from place to place; a little of this, a little of that, eventually getting finished. It's why I don't follow outlines when writing my books, and when I speak on TV, radio, or in person – I don't have a list of points to make. Winging it has the freedom I needed, and it's more natural, anyhow. That's how it happens every day in beaver country, just working in any random order till it's done. April 20, 2024 Plympton, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6005 of my daily journal.

THE VACANCIES With the inaccuracy of old maps, it can be real tough to tell just who lived where in a crowded area. But at the westernmost end of the seabound village of Culloden, this was most likely the Post homestead. The roots they removed to dig their root cellar have long since returned, of course, taking back the ground they cleared two centuries or so ago. All that effort to keep out the winter and the cold spring rain – the kinds of weather that I never know when to come in out of. There's something inescapably primal about poking through the remnants of lives that never expected to be remembered. Only enough effort expended to make life outlast us, pushing death aside long enough so their bellies were full and their children survived to have children of their own. The vacancies they left were never meant to matter. But somehow, that makes them matter to me the most. April 20, 2024 Culloden, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6005 of my daily journal.

HEARTWOOD This tree was hollowed out by a lightning strike a few years back, burned out all the heartwood and left an outer trunk – still giving life to the upper branches. The charring makes this space look like a kind of black hole, swallowing all the light that tries to get inside her. It's a long way up the hollow to get here, hop the brook a few times, duck under brush and give a few furtive glances to the disturbed birds and squirrels. There's a chill to these sunny days that I find so strangely off-putting. Can't quite find the middle ground between sweating and shivering, as a tracking shade slowly slips into something more unbroken. It'll be evening soon, and the porcupine whose droppings form a carpet on this shelter will surely return. I'll be far away when those most restless shadows fall. April 19, 2024 Phinney's Cove, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6004 of my daily journal.

OLD DURLAND LAND The original homestead is long and lost from this land, first cleared by William Durland in the 1800s. Just down the trail, I spotted his stone cellar walls, but any sign of the house he built upon them is a dead and distant memory. His barn, however, still stands – if only just barely. It housed the hay and equipment for several generations after Mr. Durland, but the last of those folks have gone and left the past to its own devices. Rusty remnants linger inside, including a Massey-Ferguson square baler that I'd date to the late 1960s or so. His field isn't far from turning back to forest, a slow reclamation of nature turning back the clock. But no one will be reversing the downward spiral of the one remaining structure. It seems almost more hardworn in the blinding spring sunlight, a hundred years of taking everything the weather could give it. Hurricanes, blizzards, gale force winds and snowload enough to crush a lesser building. It'll all go soon like a pile of twigs, rotting back to the place it was raised. April 18, 2024 West Dalhousie, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6003 of my daily journal.

DEVOID OF MODERNITY This barn is a true time capsule. Not a hint of anything from the last fifty years can be found here. Everything from the roofing to the shingles – even the rusty door hinges – stands shuddering, devoid of modernity. I don't often stumble over buildings that survive so much neglect, but when I do, they're always barns. You see, they were designed from the ground up to be mostly ignored. If the rain got in a little, then the draft would dry it out. No abandoned structure ever crumbles overnight. It's a long and dusty drift down, and you never know when the story ends. Could be months from now, could be years – but a decade is unlikely. I love dereliction for its lack of reason, an epilogue beyond purpose, hanging on at the hospice. Any way you want to be remembered is eventually up to you. Any why just doesn't matter at all. Reasons, like rust, exist to run us around. April 18, 2024 West Dalhousie, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6003 of my daily journal.

NO TELLING JUST YET Old public buildings so often end up in a kind of limbo. When the former one-room schoolhouses got decommissioned, most spent some decades as community halls, but eventually entered into indeterminate life support. Who decides what comes next? If no one, then nothing. You can only spend so much time propping up the past without some permanent purpose. Even more than the most crumbling and derelict structures I encounter, ones like these seem the most haunted. They are like mausoleums to memories locked inside. Lawn mowed, decent shingles, vinyl siding – but the power is off, curtains hang ragged, and paint peels around the windows. The weather works a steady wearing, year by aching year. Comealong future to a long and languid history. No telling just yet if this is the start of the end or an intermission. April 17, 2024 Torbrook Mines, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6002 of my daily journal.

BRIGHTNESS BRINGS ME I'll always walk a streambed when I can, rather than follow the banks. There's something about rock-hopping that I find deeply appealing – a challenge for my sense of balance, and a way to make the hike more interesting. That's been easy lately with the dropping levels and lack of rain, in what seems to be signs of another dry spring. Spinney Brook takes a roundabout route, back and forth in multiple bends, crossed by four different bridges in barely two kilometres. The middle two are this small and sleepy sort, spanning narrow gaps where the trickle rises to something raging now and then. I often visit on sunny days like these, when the excessive brightness brings me down, and all I want is a brief escape. When the skies are wide open, there's nothing I crave like the shade. April 17, 2024 Torbrook Mines, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6002 of my daily journal.

Here's a poem I wrote about the constant conflict between staying where you're born and leaving for good. It's in my latest poetry book, released last fall. I'd love to send you a signed copy of "The Detourist". It's available, like all my books are, here: www.etsy.com/shop/SteveSkafte

A FINE REMINDER Most of you don't know this, but for six years, I ran an art gallery in my hometown. From the birth of 2012 till the dying days of 2017, five days a week were spent in the confines of my little Low Tide Gallery (Queen Street, Bridgetown). It was a tiny place, about the size of an average bedroom, every inch of wall and shelf space filled with artwork. I never refused an artist in all my time there. At one point, I represented thirty individuals, with as many as two hundred separate pieces on display. It was by far the most social period of my life, but not without struggles. It took the first eight months to make a single sale, and a year into the experience, inactivity started catching up with me. I've always had lower back issues, but a desk job made them nearly-constant, and sciatica led to the most physically unpleasant period of my life. It never fully faded until a year after closing. Also, with free time confined to evenings and weekends, my daily journal became a less adventurous affair than I would've liked. What was the greatest upside of all? Well, you're looking at one of them. Linda White Holloway, with her wonderful artwork in paper, painted and glued together on a stretched canvas, composing some wonderfully whimsical and imaginative scene. There were storybook animals and colourful streetscapes, and one particular piece I loved of a 1920s flapper with a bird perched on her finger – and a birdcage earring on her ear. That was the only piece of art I purchased in all years at Low Tide. Linda also did the cover art for my third poetry book in 2015: "Scarecrows Are Growing". The woman behind all that was just as much a pleasure to be around. She'd come through my door with a light in her eyes that every artist recognizes, a spark of inspiration with the joy to share it. I showed some lovely paintings through the years, but Linda White Holloway was the great discovery. No one had a creative vision quite like hers. I went to see her today for the first time since closing my shop. Six years might seem a long stretch, and it is – but as you know, I'm a very introverted person. We talked for nearly four hours about all things that passed since we last spoke. All those big changes, upheavals and downturns inherent to life. I hadn't forgotten, but it was a fine reminder of the joys in keeping nothing to yourself. Just because I prefer my own company doesn't mean I don't value others, both endlessly and incessantly. There is a need that runs deeper in me than most, I'd wager. Artists are lost without audiences, and talkative people need good listeners, but they also require folks who know how to talk back. I hope you have that in your life. I'll never get over how much it's meant to have that in mine. April 16, 2024 Greenwood, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6001 of my daily journal.

SIX THOUSAND DAYDREAMS There are few sights more welcome than a fallen tree that perfectly bridges a stream. I've shimmied across a fair share through the years, closing gaps from side to side, and I get to walk home with dry feet. There are few metaphors more sharply pointed to what my daily journal does for me – connecting everything otherwise trapped in my mind and memories to you. It's been the focus of my existence for all of my adult life. I was twenty years old when I started out in November 2007, and now I'm thirty-six. Today marks six thousand days down the line, and I've never missed a single one. Never will, until the day I die. The intersection of every significant experience means everything. From my wedding day in October 2011, to the death of my grandfather in April 2014, or the date of my first nationwide book release in March 2023. Nothing gets passed by on the adventure. Most writers and artists of all kinds create in ebbs and flows. That's also true for me from day to day, sure enough. I could make a six hour hike in the afternoon, and write several pages of text in the evening – or take a ten minute walk and scribble a single short poem. But big breaks in creativity were never for me, and leaving weeks to marinate or meditate just ran the risk of giving up all together. I needed my daily journal to keep me focused – which is something I'm rarely able to manage for very long at a time. My mind is always multitasking a multitude of thoughts and emotional states, and I get exhausted battling it too long at once. I like the imagery in that ancient Genesis story, six straight days of creation followed by one of rest. But I chose instead to take my rest at night, and make it straight seven. If you're like me, even the cost of a book runs the risk of leaving you broke. Times are tough, incomes low, and bills are higher than ever. But if my journal – which I share for free and always will – holds any value for you, I hope you'll consider a thank you as a monthly patron. Your pocket change can make a difference. Never doubt it. www.patreon.com/SteveSkafte April 15, 2024 St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia Year 17, Day 6000 of my daily journal.