Gordon Lightfoot - Whispers of the North

Seven weeks between the old job and the new one. Seven weeks to my own; time to unwind, to relax, to renew, and to take a deep breath. For reasons I wouldn’t know how to put into words Canada always was a land I wanted to visit and finally there was my chance. 

My memory of the first day heading into Canada is fuzzy thanks to an uninvited travel companion: a severe cold no doubt caught on the flight over to Seattle. Surely, my nose then was as big and red as that of Rudolph the Reindeer, dripping remnants of the brain that was being pounded to mush by a headache without equals – ‘nough said … Although the recollection of that first day is spotty at best, two things stand out bright and clear.

Firstly, there was the border control upon entry. The stern faced officer who leisurely leafed through my passport, turning page by page, with his eyes going back and forth between my face and the passport, taking his sweet time, then starting all over again.

“I see that you’ve been to Peru. What was the purpose of your travels there?” His voice was as stern as his face – much too stern for my liking. I cleared my scratchy throat and croaked my lengthy explanation that I had accompanied my then boyfriend on a business trip. He looked at me sternly for a long while then turned back to the passport.

“I see that you’ve been to Indonesia. What was the purpose of your travels there?” The same tone of voice, the same granite expression. I wiped my nose and repeated my lengthy explanation that I had accompanied my then boyfriend on a business trip expounding on said boyfriend’s vocation. He merely looked at me sternly again, then turned back to the passport.

He proceeded to name each of the countries I had visited in the previous years that had left a stamp in the passport –there must have been at least 12- with me reiterating the explanation while my nose kept running like a spigot, my head kept pounding and my throat got scratchier by the word. At long last, having run out of countries, he graced me with another of those stern near to accusing looks and said:

“There’s something wrong with this passport! Please park your car over there and present the passport to the officer in that building over there.”

 WHOT? My passport is no good? I used it only three weeks ago and it worked perfectly fine! The tissue that was headed to my poor dripping nose almost fell victim to gravity and I could only stare back clueless. I wrapped the last vestiges of composure I had tightly around me and meekly inquired what was wrong.

“The passport has no stamp of Canada. It is high time to rectify that!”

And finally –finally!- he grinned broadly, obviously happy that he’d gotten me totally unraveled. I’m sure I made his day. And later, finally back on the road and finally in Canada, I couldn’t help but smile through my sniffles and coughles. He certainly had brightened my day as well.

The second thing to stand out on that day is listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s Whispers of the North which prominently featured in the music mix I listened to while driving through the Rockies.

 

Whispers of the north Soon I will go forth

To that wild and barren land Where nature takes it's course
Whispers of the wind Soon I will be there again
Bound with a wild and restless drive That pulls me from within

And we can ride away We can glide all day
And we can fly away

Whispers of the north Soon I will return again
To those endless afternoons In sunshine and in rain
Whispers of my love Days and weeks on end
I will share my thoughts of her In prayers that I will send

And we can ride away We can glide all day
And we can fly away

Whispers of the north The river and the shore
In the land that tested eskimos Ten thousand years before
Whispers of my heart In the tracks of animals
I will leave my footprints there To lie beneath the snow

And we can ride away We can glide all day
And we can fly away

Whispers of the wind I will feel it sting
I will see it rise and fall I will hear it sing
The sound is like a song to me It takes away the pain
The river is the melody And sky is the refrain

And we can ride away We can glide all day
And we can fly away And we can ride away
We can glide all day And we can fly away

Whispers of the north Soon I will go forth
Whispers of the north Soon I will go forth

Songwriters LIGHTFOOT, GORDON 
Published by Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. MetroLyrics