Memories in a Box: Sisterhood of the Traveling Blog Week 3 featuring L.S. Broomfield

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you L.S. Broomfield. She is an amazingly talented author who I share the pleasure of making a duet short story with. Her current work that is under review is a book about her dear warlocks, The Cruentus - Rise to Power and it's an excellent read. I can't wait for the publisher to accept it. She's my first Canadian friend and I just adore her. I hope you enjoy her blog.

The Wonders Around me.

Do you want to know what I hear around me as I sit in my bedroom? Nothing. Mind you that is an amazing feat all on its own in a house of seven on the best of days but I’m not talking about the normal sounds of a home being lived in. I’m talking about the world past my window. My little piece of Labrador.

Well, in my neck of the woods right now, old man winter is making his appearance. So sporadically, I’ll hear a snowmobile or, “ski-doo”, as it makes its way through one of the trails and then serenity and quiet once more. I don’t hear the clamoring of traffic through my window and I can sit on my bed and look out my window at the stars in the night sky. And on a clear night I may even see the wondrous Northern Lights. Lucky right?

But don’t confuse the quiet of this great land with the image most people have that everyone living in Labrador rests their heads at night in a igloo; or that it’s winter year round. On the contrary, Labrador is glorious no matter the season—and yes we have four of those. Mother Nature has richly blessed this land and its people. We are an amazingly knit together culturally diverse gathering of people that each lead our separate lives. This thought makes me smile and causes me to beam with Labrador pride; though all different and separate, in the midst of turmoil and tragedy everyone somehow manages to work together to help. Such giving and kind hearted people.

Don’t get me wrong; there are things that I would change but there are also things I wouldn’t change for anything. Each person has a differing opinion about Labrador; some good, some bad. But there is always something they just love. Breath-taking scenery, wondrous things that readily show the fingerprint of God; from man-made to shaped at creation. There is always something to pull at the heart strings and maybe even make you fall in love with this place to keep coming back.

Harry Martin said it best in the song that he wrote, A Land Called Labrador:

There's a land of boundless beauty,
Where the untamed rivers run,
And majestic snow-capped mountains,
Rise to meet the morning sun.

There are silent sunlit valleys,
Undiscovered, unexplored;
It's a home for free of spirit,
It's a land called Labrador.

Legends of our people spoken,
In the language of the land,
Tell of hard times and injuries,
Strangers would not understand.

As they trapped across the tundra,
From the highlands to the shore,
From us all the land is broken,
And our people suffered more.

Let her mountains shine in glory,
Let her unspoiled waters flow;
Let her children live in freedom,
In the valleys of the snow.

Lift your voices, sons and daughters,
Like you've never done before;
Let your song rise through the darkness,
In this land called Labrador.”

I am a Newfoundlander, born and raised. Nothing will ever change that. But, I’ll interject and end with this: I may not have been born in Labrador, my first cries were on the rock but I fully consider myself a “Newfoundlander and Labradorian” to the core, through and through.