Winding along thirty-one as the moon rises from the mountains, river splashing beside the highway as it stalks us from New Denver, the town leaps into view like a postcard from the rack, white wood-slat church, quaint cottages, crafty shops, a stern wheeler moored on the lake, a three-story hotel where we book a room, more than we wanted, but why not? a king-sized bed instead of a frugal queen, and a wrap-around balcony. After we’ve unpacked and stretched our limbs, stiff from the drive in, we go down to the restaurant for dinner and a bottle of wine. We lie awake in a room where one, maybe two families lived for three years. You use the word interment, then laugh at your mistake. We listen in the dark for murmurs of buried things.
In the morning, we walk to the United Church. On the opposite corner stands the old Town Hall, cordoned off, in disrepair, a silent bell in the tower and faded Canadian flag. We use these, the church and town hall, as markers to locate the house. Its present owner has tended it well, keeping the stucco painted a fresh ochre, planting flowers in the yard and pruning the trees to a bonsai perfection. Set against the rising hill and blue morning sky, its beauty elicits an involuntary sigh. We hear now from our own lips the words we’ve heard from others before us: how bad could it be to have lived in the midst of so much beauty?
Close to the hotel, we find a pottery shop and buy a gift, a bowl, from a woman who settled here three years ago because the place is picturesque. The bowl is beautiful. We began like the bowl, or so the old stories tell us. Fashioned by the gods from a lump of clay into something beautiful, turned on the wheel and fired in the kiln. Like the bowl, we can carry both nurture and poison.
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