Just A Bit Further

In some ways visiting Stratford, Canada isn’t that much different from being around Washington, D.C. with how the expanses of freeways curl and snake across the landscape. Instead of the concrete barriers and a multitude of shopping centers to stare at as you drive by, you are greeted by vast expanses of farmland and wilderness. The region has a comfortable sort of relaxed hum that permeates the streets, even when clogged with traffic and crowded by people.

In 2003, a blackout swept across northeast America and reached up into Ontario. When it hit, the immediate response of irritation was equal and shared, but the realization soon came that the lights would not be turning back on. Stores closed, their registers useless, restaurants shut down until further notice, and the few food cart vendors out made a killing, not having to rely on electricity to sell their fare.

Going out from the hotel in the evening the street was strangely empty of traffic, of both cars and pedestrians. We had gone out in hope of finding someplace at which to buy some food. As I walked down the sidewalk with my father though, the usually bubbling activity of the city was replaced with a feeling of abandonment. The darkness on all sides felt wrong on the well paved and normally populated road. I remember being asked if I wanted to turn back and saying, just a bit further, maybe there’s something just a little further down. I think we both knew we wouldn’t find anything, but we kept on until the distance and the hour made us turn back, night fully settling in.

A bar, its outside seating packed, was the only place we found open that night. Dark as it was those people had still come together and created the same sort of environment which, even looking in at it as an outsider, reminded me of the same welcome hum which the city usually held. They were just sitting there, in the dark, sharing drinks and laughter.

There was something comforting about those people sitting there in the growing dark that even then caught me. They were in a way rebelling against the dark, refusing to let the inconvenience of the blackout hinder their enjoyment of the summer night. As I look back on that evening I’m reminded, it is not always we who catch these moments but these moments that catch us.