A post-pandemic travel wish list

I have owned precisely six automobiles in my life, every one of them second or even third hand, so I'm not one of those people whose pulse quickens when I climb into something shiny, sleek and new, that can go very fast.

I do, however, like where cars can take me. I love hitting the road — caffeinated beverage in the cup holder, tunes carefully calibrated to suit weather and mood — stopping where and when I want, heading somewhere that maybe only appeals to me.

Something is askew with my natural sense of direction. Yet I don't really need a map to find the places I dream of driving to when the COVID-19 restrictions are loosened, because I've visited them so often.

I want to return to those old haunts because I miss them, and because they give me a sense of comfort, as if they are welcoming me home — which, I think, is important in these strange days.

So I want to once again cross the Canso Causeway onto Cape Breton, and head down Route 19, through the places with the old highland names.

I will time it so that I arrive in Mabou late in the afternoon, which is when a pint tastes best at The Red Shoe Pub, which I dearly hope, postpandemic, will be as I remember it: summer sun streaming through the windows, a fiddler playing some old thing by Dan R. Macdonald, a little kid up dancing in the Inverness County-way, like his parents and grandparents before him.

If I continue north I will ensure that it's early in the morning as I follow the Cabot Trail in a clockwise direction, until mountains are on one side and nothing but ocean, all the way to the Magdalen Islands, on the other.

I will probably get out and walk around up there, at the Buddhist retreat Gampo Abbey, or Meat Cove where the campground seems about to fall off the end of the Earth. But I won't linger long because, when we're all free to drive where we want, we'll all have places to go, while we still can.

I want, once more, to make the long drive out along Digby Neck until a ferry finally takes me to Brier Island, the craggy, westernmost tip of this province. There, in my deluded mind, it is always foggy and wind-and-rain lashed and Joshua Slocum is forever out there, on the Bay of Fundy, learning the seaman's craft.

I want to drive away from Halifax and not stop until I reach one of those historic towns like Yarmouth, Shelburne, Annapolis Royal, and Lunenburg, where the past still haunts the old buildings, and the wooden piers along the waterfront have seen so much.

I want to hug the coastline, not so much in the areas that were well-travelled in the PRE-COVID days, but up where I might be the only car on the road, say around Parrsboro, Advocate Harbour and Joggins, where the dramatic land makes me, rightfully, feel inconsequential.

When the lockdown lifts, I'll want to drive where I must to see gentle sights too, like the Acadian dykelands, only an hour from Halifax, through which I like to walk. But, because I'm drawn to such things, I'll also want to see some of the harder places, the coal and steel towns, where my people have history.

Since I'm drawn to the seashore, and because gas is cheap, I'll drive as far as is necessary to find a new beach to comb.

Sometimes, because it is good to travel with some vague purpose in mind, I may just get in the car and go in search of some odd thing, like the cairn for the Battle of Culloden up in the woods in Antigonish County, or a lighthouse at the other end of the province in Yarmouth County.

But I'll be a changed person, we all will be, at the end of this thing.

So, I vow to be a little more spontaneous, to take the occasional drive when I have no true destination in mind. To just head down the highway like the denizen of that Springsteen song who was born to run.

Because, it has been my experience, memorable things can happen when you travel along the blacktop in this province if you eyes are open. It is that kind of a place.

RYAN TAPLIN • THE CHRONICLE HERALD The Red Shoe Pub in Mabou will be on John Demont's post-pandemic list when he hits the road.