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We tend to go back to places we loved as a child, be it a particular house, town, or even a country. The place calls to us like a bull moose to a female in mating season; and we run to it, back to our original roost, back to home.

Barrachois Harbour, Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia ( in Canada, for those of you who are not familiar with Canadian Maritime locations) is a sleepy, yet robust village forty miles away from the hometown where I grew up. As children, we would be taken for an occasional day trip to Tatamagouche, usually for an ice cream cone, or just for the drive. There was nothing more delicious than a chilly ice cream cone, made from dairy milk from a creamery right in town.

When I grew older and could drive, I and my friends would make the trip to Tatamagouche, always frequenting the much famous bakery where we would walk out with cookies, fresh loves of bread, or tea biscuits. Everything was wonderful, but as teenagers, we could only afford to buy one item, but we walked off and returned home like we had tasted the delicacies from the kitchens of the Queen of Sheba.

In retirement, we found the perfect piece of property, brought from a gentleman who had purchased it thirty years ago. Hoping to retire to that property, he was much disappointed by his wife's attitude that it was too isolated, and being a city girl, could never conceive of moving to such a rural setting. Being a city girl myself, I too wondered how I would fare being in the country. A year and half later, I will not leave the premise unless I have to go into town, or drive to Truro, where the rest of my family lives.

Living here, on the outskirts of Tatamagouche is like a rustic resort where the peace and tranquility makes it no longer a necessity for us to travel. We have all the quiet we want, right here. When we first moved in, it was so quiet that every snap, pop, and crackle, I thought some burglar was trying to break in. Now I take the solitude for granted, and if an oil truck happens to drive up to fill my neighbors oil tank or one of the cottagers drive past, I take it as a personal intrusion unto my world of quiet.

Our days are judged by the passing of tides; when it comes in, when it goes out, how high it is, and how low. Mornings, we watch as the sun comes up, sometimes yellow, sometimes a bright orange. As the sun sets, we watch it go down on the horizon and look forward to it rising again the next morning. Full moons are something to behold, so bright and white that I want to

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