Local Color

Yesterday was one of those days that God gives us to make all the other crap in life bearable. Crisp autumn air, a blameless blue sky with a mischievous cloud or two to relieve the monotony of beauty, and nature itself turning biblical and putting on its coat of many colors.

I leave Ottawa early for the 400-mile drive back down to Providence. Behind me, to the north, on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, rise the Gatineau Hills. They are aflame, their sumac forests a startling scarlet beneath the vault of the blue.

After a half-hour on the Ottawa-Montreal expressway, I turn right, south, onto a secondary road that leads straight to the St. Lawrence River and the border. It runs through the rich dairy farms of the Ottawa Valley, crests a scruffy ridge of yellow foliage, then descends into the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Red silos and silver church steeples pointing at the sky, the stubble of harvested cornfields, spinneys of poplars the color of clementines – I stop at a honor-system roadside farmstand, slip a couple of loonies into the box and grab a small plastic bag. It contains white cheddar cheese curds, the chewy snack food of the region and, in nearby Quebec, one of the three ingredients, along with french fries and brown gravy, of poutine, French Canada’s stupendously weird contribution to sloppy cuisine.

The border at Cornwall, Ontario, is peculiar, too. Two bridges span the St. Lawrence here, one from the town of Cornwall on the Canadian mainland to Cornwall Island; the other from that island to the American side. Canada used to have its multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art border station on the island, but when it decided recently to arm its border guards, the proprietors of Cornwall Island protested. And they are not just any landlords – they are Mohawks, jealous of their independence (there’s more Mohawk land on the New York side). They tolerated the border post, but they would not stand for government men carrying guns on their land. Neither side blinked. The result? The Canada border station was moved: It is now on the mainland and is little more than a couple of makeshift shacks with their rear ends sticking into a riverside traffic circle at the foot of the bridge, an embarrassment unsuccessfully embellished by a flowing clothesline of red maple leaf flags.

As if in retaliation, the first of the two grand bridges – the Canadian one – has been left in ridiculous disrepair by the authorities. It doesn’t seem to have been resurfaced since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in the 1950s. The cars crawl up and over it, juddering and jolting – and, no doubt, spilling the steaming contents of countless Tim Horton’s coffee cups every day.

As I wipe the hot coffee from my jeans, the traffic picks up and we pass the deserted, grandiose Canadian border station on the island. Then up and up the American span, an aquamarine suspension bridge, rising gracefully over the dark waters of the southern arm of the St. Lawrence. There is construction at the midway point of the bridge; a traffic light controls our impatience. The wait is long, but we are high, so very high above the earth and water. My fellow drivers start to look around. To the north, forty or fifty miles’ distant, the red slash of the Gatineau. To the south, at about the same distance, the looming orange outline of the Adirondacks. Beneath us, far below, two mammoth container ships, one red, the other grey, plow smartly eastward, pursued by playful seagulls, white against the deep blue water. The ships are the heralds of many others to come, in the annual race to get out of the Seaway – past the locks near Montreal then beyond Quebec City to the open sea – before winter closes in and shuts the waterway down.

And then, at eye level about two hundred yards to our left, comes a great, noisy chevron of Canada geese, racing south, to escape the winter, too. Power windows slide down to hear their honking.

The wait at the American border crossing stretches on. The Americans’ spanking new techno-up-the-wazoo facility, cleverly not built on Mohawk land, has seven lanes open, all of them crammed with cars, SUVs, pick-up trucks and motorcycles. It is the start of the Canadian Thanksgiving/Columbus Day weekend.

The minutes, then the quarter-hours, pass… we are barely moving. Three lanes away, a woman gets out of her purple sportscar. Her companion does the same. They are in their thirties, Hollywood blondes in tight jeans, clinging sweaters and pricey sunglasses. The first yells, to the border-guard booth some twenty car-lengths away, something to the effect, “Why is this taking so damn long?!” Her Paris Hilton friend, from outside the convertible, reaches over and leans on the horn with one hand and then gestures with her free arm for all the rest of us to follow suit. There are no takers. The music from the car radios continues to mix in a low, incomprehensible symphony. The women shake their straw manes, laughing, and get back in their car.

Once past the border, I turn left, eastward, and am immediately in the Akwesasne Reserve. I make my usual stop at the Bear’s Den, a trading post that just happens to have cheap gasoline and tax-free ciggies. The lot is filled with Mohawk teenagers, jumping up and down, waving signs, offering to wash cars to benefit their high school. Some are in full Iroquois regalia. Three braves set to work on my car, and when I leave the Bear’s Den, my green Passat gleams in the yellowing light of mid-day.

The moment is so lovely that I decide to take the most scenic of all the scenic routes leading home. At an Indian mega-lodge complex surrounded by a sea of parked cars – Akwesasne’s casino – I turn left and head south, through the narrow strip of the fertile Lowlands on the New York side. The reservation is left behind, giving way to tiny towns, a few ramshackle farms and lonely stands of trees tawny and gold in the sunlight. At a crossroads in a small town, there are two horsedrawn buggies parked on the shoulder, a trestle table set up between them. Bearded Amish men are selling their produce.

Their customers are south Asians, two women in brilliant, multicolored saris. Their laughing husbands click their digital cameras as the young women pose with the bemused Amish elders. I glance at the plates of their expensive sedans: Ontario. My guess, given the affluence, irony and ease: Toronto. But how could these big-city types have found their way here, my secret way south, far off the beaten track? Then I remember the name of the small town: Bombay. Clearly, these Torontonians possess a GPS and a sense of humor.

The land grows poorer as the mountains approach. Boulders crop up in the green grassy fields, which in turn cede to a tough barenness resembling the moors of England. Then comes my favorite stretch of this familiar detour – the road describes an elongated S-shaped curve down into a gentle valley, past a well-kept red farmhouse at the bottom and then up to a rocky pasture where a herd of bison grazes, magnificent and iconic. Today I slow to take in the sight – just as two minivans with Connecticut plates come to a halt on the opposite shoulder and slide open their side doors. I brake and let two Muslim families, the women in headscarves shepherding a brace of children, cross the road to snap pictures. They wave enthusiastically to thank me.

The farmland gives out. Small towns, St. Regis Falls being the most beautiful, huddle in the forests of the foothills, built around rushing streams. Then, through a long, uninhabited straightaway, perhaps twenty miles in length, up and up, bordered on both sides by impenetrable pines. I slip an incongruous Scottish novel into the tapedeck.

A few unkempt clusters of houses now appear in the trees every once in a while, their front yards covered in used car tires and rusting trailers. Human geography does not always match its surroundings.

Then a few miles north of Saranac Lake comes another cherished stretch of the journey. I break out of the forest and enter a long and broad alpine meadow, a Sound of Music expanse perhaps a couple of square miles in size. On all sides, in the middle distance, standing in rumpled grandeur, rise several different ranges of the Adirondacks, now all a brilliant bouquet of every color in the autumnal palette. In the center of the meadow, a tiny graveyard, old, unfenced and well-tended.

I hit the eject button on the tapedeck then slow to look around me. To my left I hear a roar. Passing me leisurely are a middle-aged couple on a Harley, all black leather and fringes and badges. The husband, a Jack Sprat of a fellow wearing a Old Glory bandanna and an expression of pure delight, turns and says something to his voluminous partner. She laughs, hugs him closer… they’re livin’ the dream.

He guns it, and as the mountains and the sky watch, the woman on the back gives me a thumbs-up and a smile.