The Home That Wasn't I never lived on Cape Breton— just came when I could, chasing the quiet like a man chasing warmth in the smoke of another’s fire. Still, the land spoke. Not in words, but in wind through tamarack and loon-call twilight over Bras d’Or’s patient blue. Derek Hatfield, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons I’ve seen it in all her moods— spring rising shy and soft, fog lifting like a veil from the hills. Summer thick with salt and sunburn, kids leaping from docks, the echo of laughter carrying farther than it should. But it was autumn that claimed me. A blaze of fire in the trees, like the whole island had set itself alight just to say: look what you could belong to— if only you’d stay. Even winter felt less cruel there. Snow drifted slow as thought, and the cold didn’t bite so much as invite you inward— to stew pots, old tunes, the hush of a world that doesn’t beg to be conquered. Every visit, I thought—...