7:25am Monday 30th September 2024

With my window down the wind whipped my hair playfully as we drove into the car park of my high school, Camden Falls High. The school year had only started a few weeks before and I was already feeling like I was in need of another vacation.

I sighed and looked across at Mom, who was humming along to the music on the radio and tapping out a beat on the steering wheel with her hands as she did so.

Mom had offered to drop me off because I’d been running late and had missed the bus…again. My mind and body were still on holiday time and I was having trouble adjusting back into ‘school mode’.

A gentle breeze blew into the car, causing the hairs on my arms to raise as the air brushed past my neck. It had been unusually warm for autumn and the sky had a strange pinkish tinge to it like that of a late summer dusky sunset. I noticed it because autumn was usually my favourite time of year. I loved the cool clear blue days that the season brought with it, but the weather had been neither cool nor clear. Some aspects of it remained though, for example, a few of the trees had begun to shed their leaves and everything looked beautiful with golden and red hues. I enjoyed watching the colours of the leaves change and add a vibrancy to the landscape around the town of Camden Falls where we lived.

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Although I was extremely biassed since I’d spent my whole life there, I considered Camden Falls itself to be a beautiful place, even without the autumnal glow. It always had so much life to it, so much richness and diversity with its amalgamation of people and cultures. Founded in 1683 by a group of early settlers from England, the town enjoyed rich traditions and cultural practices from that side of the world, many of which had survived through the hundreds of years since its establishment.

Being a small coastal town with around 5,000 inhabitants, most people knew each other or knew of each other in some form. We had the usual trimmings that a town like ours would possess, things such as a local supermarket, movie theatre, primary school and high school, and so on. Most of my friends and I had been together from kindergarten right through to high school. Usually, the only time that people moved away was when their kids left for college or they went to work in the bigger cities further inland and usually the only time that people moved in was when they were employed by the Schooner Mills paper factory in the town’s warehouse district.

The Schooner Mills paper factory employed a large percentage of the town’s population and boasted the fact that there were many ‘lifers’ there too, people who had given their entire lives to their jobs at the factory. Basically, they lived and died by the mill and its culture.

I shuddered as I thought about having to work in the same job for my entire life. I could see the attraction but I didn’t think it was for me. Although, I was only a junior in high school so I hadn’t really given much thought about what I’d like to do as a career.

Time would tell I guess.