Jonathan Wexler - The New Weather: The Truth Edition

Jonathan Wexler

Jonathan Wexler

Gatineau, Qubec

March 18, 2022.

I

This is how I remember it. A weekend away from a stressful job as a technical writer at a cutting edge special effects software company. A three hour drive south of my home, Montreal, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

I had been there before the last time because I had spotted Mount Washington on the Internet as the tallest mountain in the North East and sped strait-away. Many people are unaware of the majestic nature around them, and I had been unaware of the beauty of New Hampshire with its craggy rock strewn ridges, lush forests and spiking Presidential Range.

What a contrast to the computer code and sharp UI designs I see everyday.

This was going to be just a relaxing weekend away, until it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was going to just spend the night at this hostel-like place called the Appalachian Mountain Club I had heard about the last time I was in New Hampshire in my attempt to hike Mount Washington. I just wanted a bunk room, and perhaps some casual socializing. I like to meet people, to get out of the somewhat conventional milieu I am apart of in the medium-sized city of Montreal.

Mostly I wouldnt get close to anyone I would meet, just talk about casual things, no commitments, but a chance to communicate, often across national, ethnic, or whatever else kind of divisions.

I never got close with anyone, that is, until 4 am one morning.

She burst through the door that November and proclaimed: Theres a fox by my car!

She thought I was a staff member at the Appalachian Mountain Club since I was wandering around so early in the morning and so asked for my help.

Ironically, even earlier that morning I had wandered into the library at the lodge and among the myriad of nature books admiring flowers and fauna, I had perused an album of photos taken around the lodge. Lots of wandering souls, temporary refugees from the urban landscapes of Boston, New York, and countless American suburbs around New England and beyond. But among those pictures, I had seen the fox and so it seems, he had been a regular visitor to the lodge and so I told this girl, I dont think its dangerous.

Needless to say me and this girl, who looked somehow exotic and a bit out of place here in New Hampshire, had made acquaintance. We had breakfast later that morning and hiked nearby Mount Jackson. It was both of our first winter hikes and we were both awed at the beauty even the wildlife was out in droves on that sunny matin; we had the grey jays eating from our hands.

I followed around this laughing, bouncing, beautiful girl with wild curiosity through the trails, over icy cliffs and past half-frozen rivers, to a modest four-thousand-and-some odd-foot cliff over-hanging the White Mountains.

It was an auspicious moment to start a love affair.

So our love affair had begun although we had not even kissed that night by the fire at the AMC. She would come to visit me in Montreal, and I to Connecticut. We would make love and get to know each other quick.

All this as a prelude to Cuba.

We liked music and candles and staying home and leftovers and talking, and being quiet and shy and being physical often.

It was uncomplicated then.

It was laughter and innocence and the way it is supposed to be with no complications: family ties or job obligations, taxes, political affiliations, or religious ceremonies.

It was wholly divorced from modern civilization, and yet it beat to 50 Cent and eventually, Reggaetn and Harry Bellefonte singing Hava Nagillah. Well, you could already predict that it was going to get complicated.

We were going to Havana. Since she was Spanish, though American, she had to come to Canada first, and in a sense, been smuggled into Cuba though the border personnel in both Montreal and Cuba knew full well that she was American, as that was the passport she was carrying. Perhaps because her passport indicated that she was born in South America made it easier to crossover into Cuba she was in the know.