Chev, the horse understood what the Hermit wanted and where he was to take him when they came out to town for supplies once a month. On those nights, the horse would return home with the hermit sleeping on the cart. That fatal cold winter evening the cart path across the meadow was buried deep in snow that had fallen while they were gone, leaving the frozen pond the only access to the shack. As Chev stopped at the edge of the pond he sensed danger and began shaking and neighing. The Hermit awoke and insisted that Chev continue, only to watch Chev fall through the ice and perish in the freezing waters. The Hermit was shocked to see the look of forgiveness in Chev’s eyes as the frightened animal’s head disappeared beneath the water. Those eyes would forever forge a permanent imprint on the roughened steel of the Hermit’s soul,
It is said the Hermit would often be seen on the front stoop, where I interviewed him with my sister, gazing with tears in his eyes at the hill alongside his shack where his beloved Chev, was buried. In his remaining years, the Hermit struggled to remain strong in spirit as he never forgave himself for being the cause of Chev’s demise.
It was many years later that I discovered the Hermit lived a long life, and I regretted that I never went back to visit him before he passed. He was an amazing man, with a gentle soul. I often felt bad for only pretending and not actually writing his story and for many years I’ve had fond memories of the Hermit. It had such an impact on my life in appreciating the resilience as well as the frailty of the human spirit that today I wrote the story that the Hermit wanted me to write all those years ago.
Beverley Anne Callahan, from Riverhead, Harbour Grace, Conception Bay North, near the community where the Hermit lived, resides in Mount Pearl, NL.
SS Kyle, ship, known as `Bulldog of the North` in coastal NL, built 220’ l, 32’ w, 18’ d, 1,055 gross tonnage, launched in England in 1913, still listing slightly in the shallows off Riverhead today after shipwrecking there in 1967, her captain, crew and passengers, the Statue of Amelia Earhart, first female pilot to fly solo on May 20, 1932 from airstrip in Harbour Grace, across the Atlantic in her Lockheed Vega aircraft to Londonderry, Northern Ireland and the Hermit in this story are testament on the sea, in the air and on the land to the strength of the human spirit, as revealed in her hometown to the author.
