Since last I posted...

I went to town with the gals to have a nice seafood dinner.

I went to a shed party and listened to wondrous musicians play their hearts out while sipping home-made wine out of plastic cups.

I saw a bear.

I       saw       a        bear.

The ice has all crunched up on the beach after looking like it was gone. A wind from the north gathered up all the ice and shoved it to our end of the bay. Yep.

I saw a bear.

I was in the truck and we were driving to town to get groceries, visit Ruby - just a Saturday trip and there it was.

Here it is. I always take my camera in case I SEE A BEAR! Isn't he so lovely? Not too big, maybe up to my hip and in very good condition for a spring bear says the fella. Nice coat and not too skinny. I think he has a den there at the side of the road. I am so lucky!

A lovely foggy Victoria Day

photos of the metamorphosis of spring break-up... I heard there will be a dance called the Ice to Water Dance! I cannot wait.

Along the Shore

The fella, dog and I went along the shore yesterday as far as we could. A few times we dipped onto the wooded trail if the shore was too mucky but mostly that is where we were.

We saw two goose hunters - one hidden on the shore that Bella barked her head off at and one out in a canoe painted white with a little shield of white wood on it so the guy could sneak up to the geese lounging around on ice floes. See him all dressed in white - this is hard work I understand.

 Don't think either had any luck. The fella in the boat ruining it for the fella on shore and so on... ah well. Score one for the geese.


We also came across some candle ice which I will leave a photo of but certainly can't explain. Bella found it first - it looks just like yellowing ice which there is plenty of but when you touch it it opens revealing all the crystalline forms. Amazing really.  Here is what wikipedia says

Candle ice is a form of rotten ice that develops in columns perpendicular to the surface of a lake.Candle ice makes a clinking sound when the "candles" are broken apart and floating in the water, bumping up against each other.

Here are some photos - 

We also had a lovely boil-up - I went to fetch water via the trail while the fella made a fire down on the beach.

We came home - five hours after setting out ready to lie about - this being the most exercise either have us have gotten in the two weeks of having the dreaded lurgy - which still lingers but there!

The Mystery of Spring Ice

No one knows what will happen or when. Will it break up today or in two weeks. June is not too late for it to break up though it happens earlier many years. Will it just silently slink away or will it crack into huge pieces and be pushed up on the beach by a spring wind? Nobody knows. Mostly no one is going out on it but the other night there were some fellas out to the middle on their ski-doos fishing at a hole. There is still a whack of ice - seems thick in spots out away from the shore. The other day Bella went leaping from pan to pan chasing seagulls. If she'd fallen in it might have been only a foot or two high. But was that to the ground or to the first layer of ice. No one can say.

Last night the fella said to me after dinner - let's go out on the ice, the tide's out - we'll see how it is. Yes, says I. Yes, says Bella. So out we go. And we found a hole in a hole. How does this happen? The ice freezes in layers with there being (some years) a layer of slushy sea water between two thick layers of ice. This happens more often near the shore - I think. I am uncertain of everything you see. At any rate there was a hole where the first ice had melted or cracked or shifted and in it was water and then there was another layer of ice and in that a hole. Here - I'll show you. The dog was most tentative - I was worried she'd fall through that second hole but she would just test the top of it and then not go there. Smart. The fella says she wouldn't have fallen in farther than she is tall so...all the same I'm glad she didn't chance it.

out to second beach

I cannot express properly the joy of being able to mosey down the shore. Today it was just me and the pooch as my pal Robin had something she had to attend to. I went down the beach road which is now completely sand after months and months of being completely snow.
As we walked around I could hear various noises - tinkling like glass or the odd thump or groan. It is the ice breaking up! So thrilling.

We went along the bit of shore that has houses on it, past the entrance to Tranquility Trail and all the way to Second Beach where we had our picnic. Someday I must actually take a picnic to have there. A thermos of tea, an apple and a nice sandwich. Yes. At any rate I lay down on the beach grass and looked at the trees upside down.

 Bella jumped on me and licked my ear and then jumped off the grassy verge onto the beach and then hared out onto the ice and found a spot where she could get into the water and run up a crack in the ice. Great fun!











I watched companionably and then we came back.

I didn't nab her quick enough before we got to the first house so she roused all the huskies chained up there into a thunderous lament and finally I wooed her with a stick and put her leash on.










Back to the house and now to this.
After I'm finished my posts I will start on my next poem for this series I'm doing. Want to have twelve done before we go so need to get onto it.

this is where I sit at Second Beach and have my 'air' picnic.

the ultimate in mothers

Yes, on this Mother's Day I miss my mum. Of course I do. And my kids and my grand-kids. The essential mother is present though. The fella and I took the dog - did we take the dog? - no, she badgered us until we let her take us - out along the shore. The shore! At last! The fella and Bella had gone yesterday while I was still feeling the dreaded lurgy and the fella told me it was hike worthy. So we set off this morning, after breakfast and after bread was started.

Oh my, how I've missed the shore. I love the woods. I even love the old gravel roads that turn into nothingness up the hill. But the shore! The shore is what heals me. And I realized I've been rather terrified. Of what you may ask? Of the shore not being magic like it was in the last five months. The solidity was getting to me. October, November and even December brought changes every day. After that it was thrilling to be able to get places because the water was frozen deep and I could go along an area of the shore that normally I'd have to take the wood trail to get to. To make it simpler to understand - the shore of the 'bight' curves around from where we live to a point (the one we walked to and beyond on Nov. 11th). Part of the shore is beach but most of it is heavily treed and impassable. One goes through the woods on the tranquility trail and dips down from time to time to various little beaches or brooks that spill into the larger body of water. That takes a long long time. And you can't do that in the summer and accordingly you can't walk on the trail easily in the winter. Not without snowshoes and a lot of slogging. And for one indeterminable period of time you can't do it at all. When the snow is still deep but softening you break through and it takes too long on the shore. The woods are a real mess at that time. Thus walking down the almost abandoned ski-doo trail (ski-doos still out on the bay but not enough snow on the trail) or town roads.

So today the snow is gone enough on the beach and there is still enough ice out on the bay so we could get down the shore as far as a place I call Second Beach - where Bella and I have had many imaginary picnics up on the grassy verge.

And on the way I noticed that the formations that had enthralled me in the fall and early winter were appearing in reverse. The ice was melting and leaving serpentine etchings, fractals, paisley and circles. I am restored.

Here are some photos of what we saw...

Spring is a long time coming...

The locals tell me that this has been an unusually cold and long winter. I have developed the habit of believing them as they are all inclined to be honest and also, excellent observers of their environment. Spring is, as I understand it, always a bit of a mysterious maneuver here in the North. As my dear guy is wont to tell me, over and over again, spring here beats the hell out of Nova Scotia's relentless season of disappointment. The other morning I was awake at 4:11 and sitting on the chesterfield looking out the bay. Yes, I could see out there because it was dawn. The sun wasn't quite over the Mealy Mountains but enough so that I could have easily driven or gone for a walk without worry about being able to see my way.

And it doesn't rain here much at any time, or so I'm told. We certainly have had little of it while I've been here. So there are some signs of spring - long days, more and some different birds, and the constant whine of ski-doos as many of the young men (and some old, and some women) take to the ice in the last days of spearing a seal. Or at least feeling the freedom that they all love to skim across the surface of Lake Melville before the break-up happens. One of the fellas down on the beach told my fella that there was a good four feet of ice yet and it would be another month before it broke up. He was happy. My heart sank.

No one that is local likes the in-between time. In between using the ski-do and the motor-boat. In between getting to the cabin in the winter on snow and ice, or the summer on a boat. They are happiest when the ice is fully in it seems to me.

As to me and the dog and the fella, we'll be here until near the end of June and then we'll be back in the fall. We've decided that much. For this adventure to work out we need a good run at it - a few years of going back and forth before we settle in Prospect Village, Nova Scotia for good. I'm up for it. I'm gung-ho as my mother might have said. I won't be living this contemplative quiet life on the beach though. I shall have to put my own shoulder to the wheel and make an honest day's living. I'm good with that too. I like working and it is hard work to have been idle so long. So, another 40 days here, then home for two months, then back.

I've quit fbook as some of you might know and plan to post here more often. You can see some of my reasons over on my writing site  so I won't go into it here. No big dramatic reason - just a slow dawning of realization. I may put some poems here or there though probably not so much as I did. I am putting that energy into poems for future publication and so don't wish to dilute my energy in that regard. At some point one must stop sketching and make a finished thing.

And here is a photo for all who have come by...taken by my fella of Bella. It is, indeed, a dog's life!