Month: September 2022

Nova Scotia (or some subset of Nova Scotians the makeup of which I cannot really imagine) have designated a certain route around the southern coast as the “Lighthouse Route”. There are signs from Yarmouth south and around to Halifax. Being us, we were totally stoked about seeing parts of Nova Scotia that the weather and lack of charts had made difficult, especially the plethora of lighthouses. Also being us, we were surprised to find that the lighthouses had no “scenic overview” not even a pull-off or a car-park from which to see them. Being us, we made due where we could. The first one we could figure out how to get close to, meaning driving down residential roads and parking at a traffic barrier, was the Pubnico Harbour Lighthouse. We ended up thrilled because, across the way, a wind farm flashed in the on-and-off sunlight. We clambered over tide-tumbled rock to get closer to the prize, and found prizes along the way. Also found, assorted evidences of human carelessness, especially lobster bands (what they put around the claws). On the other hand, there was that lighthouse… The natural, the civilized, and the human…all in one incursion of the Atlantic Ocean. Heading south from Yarmouth, we were driving toward Cape Sable. The bounds of the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine are all so much less precise than those land-lines that separate countries, so it’s a little hard to say exactly what bodies of water we were looking at. We were in broken, rocky groups of islands and islets and ledges. Those hazards have always been safer navigated if marked, visually, by lights, and the people who settled here, from the French Acadians to the British battle-hardened to the American Loyalists to the mixed heritage[…]

The shadows were getting long like it was autumn but it felt all too soon. The anchorage in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, is beautiful looking west to Doctors Island. It’s one of those places that looks exactly like it would’ve about hundred years ago. The sun sets over the island and the green rolling hills beyond are a reminder of so many things we’ve lost looking East. East of our anchorage was a seafood processing plant with three resident purse-seining vessels that go out every night. Every morning they would return to the docks after a night of scooping the life out of the ocean and they would unload their bellies into the plant for processing. One giant vacuum would suck the fish out of the holds and another would suck the bloody by-catch into a giant Dr. Seuss machine that would in turn bletch bloody gruel into a giant vat that opened at the bottom with massive jaws. An eighteen-wheeler would back in under the vat and the jaws would puke the guts of the sea into its spill-proof aluminum catchment. Every day, every single day, this happened right in front of us. We were impressed that they shipped away the effluvium, enjoying the thought that nothing went to waste. It would become some kind of nutrient in some kind of product, and that seemed better than the alternative. And then they cleaned the vat. The waters around us turned dark with blood, sudsy highlights only making the horrible truth clearer. The bloody feast attracted the swarms of sea birds that had been circling the boats and the large harbor seals that never seemed to hang out together. I can’t imagine what the (presumably biodegradable?) soap did to them, but they were more than happy to chance it. The waterfront[…]

Oh Canada, oh man, we love Canada. The (almost cool) app-and-phone-call clear-in from the Canadian Border Patrol was an unfamiliar and somewhat unsettling experience (who expects that kind of thing to go smoothly?) so we had to put our feet on some Canadian soil. We still had to get charts for Canada and there was a hardware store about seven miles up the road that advertised having the electronic charts we needed. Also we were getting very low on the provisions we couldn’t get in Downeast Maine, which was quite a bit, and there was a big grocery store just a few miles up the road from the hardware store. So we went for a walk, a long walk, a very long walk…on Labour Day. Kind of a big deal in Canada as it turns out. I (James) didn’t shoot a single picture of that walk. It’s not that it wasn’t breathtaking, it totally was that, but we were just thrilled to be on a hike with each other in that beautiful place, moving at the pace of us, and seeing it all for the first time was all I really needed for my memories. We chattered quite a bit, usually enthusiastically agreeing with each other, often pointing out neat natural features or odd constructions. We also talked about our MIPs (manuscripts in progress) because I (Dena) was struggling with keeping Monty’s story in focus. The cloud-filtered light was easy on our eyes and the greens had a special richness against the grey sky. We were decked out in the exact right clothing for what felt like a refreshingly cool day. The fucking hardware store was closed. It was a national holiday celebrating working folks and I guess that what they did there, they worked. And on Labour Day they[…]