My Heart Place

JENN McKINLAY: The summers of my childhood were magical. There were no cell phones or Internet, and video games were mostly still found in arcades. My parents kicked us out the door after breakfast and we were not to be seen again until we heard my dad’s piercing whistle sound off the back porch at supper time. My brother and I ran wild, eating blueberries and raspberries from wherever we found them, jumping feet first into swimming holes, making daisy chains, trying to ride the neighbor's horses bareback and, yes, starting some illicit fires on the banks of the river with a lighter we found who knows where. We were dirty and sweaty, covered in scabs and bug bites, and spent our evenings sucking on popsicles which melted down our hands and arms while we caught fireflies in old pickle jars before taking our baths and passing out.  

The Hooligans 4: aka my sons and nephews

Summer was our time for mischief and shenanigans, you know, like climbing hand over hand on the underbelly of the steel bridge that spans the third largest river in Connecticut. Yeah, that story still makes my mom’s hair turn gray. You can watch it happening while telling the story. Heh heh. Or the time we threw all of the squash blossoms in my dad’s garden into the river because we were so over the deluge of zucchini from the year before. Turns out Dad had planted melon the next year. Oops!

We got into loads of trouble, sure, but we also learned how to get ourselves out of it -- because having Mom find out we were climbing under the bridge was way scarier than falling to our deaths!

The Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia

Because I loved my childhood summers so much, I always wanted my hooligans to have the same. One problem, we live in Arizona. It’s 115 at the peak of summer so the free range thing, throwing them out the door and I’ll see you at supper is mostly a winter thing here and, yes, I did do that and, oh, the stories I could tell of their mischief but that's another post. Luckily, my family has a small cabin on the shore of the Bay of Fundy in Canada with a trout stream running through the property and a beach just beyond the cabin door that goes as far as the eye can see. It's so rural you can’t even get a cell phone signal. This place has been my mother's sanctuary for thirty-two years and this is where the hooligans learned how to summer properly.

Wowa and her boys!

When we're there, our time is spent hiking, fishing, reading, building bonfires, experimenting by making rockets out of toilet paper tubes, vinegar, and baking soda, or baking chocolate cakes cooked in orange rinds on the grill (really, really good)!   

At the cabin, the entire world falls away and I get to watch the hooligans and their cousins run free, causing mayhem and shenanigans just like my brother and I did. It’s still pretty magical!

I love everything about this place from the red clay of the ground to the overgrown bushes of pink summer roses to the bald eagles who live in the surrounding pines. When I am in this space, I find the better version of myself, as if I arrive a jagged piece of glass to be rolled over and over by the waves, polished against the sand, and spit out onto the shore with smoother edges. It heals me, which I suppose is the whole point of heart places, isn't it?

As you read this, I am likely walking that beach right now. So, I send you warm greetings from Canada!

So, tell me, Reds and Readers, what is your heart place?

Cape Split, N.S.