. . . And then we took a hike of an entirely different
stripe from the trails of Garrotxa. Maestras of untraveled and unknown Cape
Breton highlands, Lynn and Louise led us on a route where the only discernible
track is the occasional overgrown remnant of old pioneer roads abandoned since
the national park was created in the 1930s. Never once in our recent Garrotxa
tramp did we have to bushwhack; on Saturday with L & L at the head of the
column we did nothing but.
In the early going we followed the Ruis des Plees Ferrees,
crossing and recrossing it repeatedly wherever traversing seemed easiest. The
forest cover here is almost entirely hardwood – yellow and white birch, red and
sugar maple. In June these woods would be vibrant with birdsong; in
mid-October, among the many-hued glories of autumn leaves, the forest was
almost entirely silent. An occasional chickadee here, a hairy woodpecker there.
We came upon two waterfalls, a little one of just 5 feet
in a short canyon, then a towering cataract of close to 50 feet, the
second-highest I have seen in Nova Scotia. How many people know of it? The waterfall
has no name on the large-scale map the twins use to discern new highland hiking
possibilities. To get above the fall we scrambled up a steep, rocky embankment
and were rewarded with a bird’s eye view through the Plees Ferrees valley all
the way to Cheticamp and the Atlantic.
The mountain ridge we were targeting this day also goes nameless
on the twins’ map but they call its western end ‘Teardrop Hill’ because of
shape it is given by map contours. Where the river valley is deeply shaded by
ancient hardwoods, the slopes above the big waterfall gradually open, until at
the ridge top you find yourself in a wide open barren, most of the trees
branchless and long dead but still standing. Here Louise spotted a moose; it
fled as soon as it noticed us. The moose was no surprise: we saw moose sign
everywhere, the occasional discarded rack and plenty – oh yes plenty – of moose-turd.
Lots of bear-scat was available for inspection too. Judging from preliminary
analysis beech nuts are currently a much preferred menu choice. We tried some
ourselves – the nuts that is – and decided the bears show good taste.
What we didn’t
see at any point on the twins’ away-from-it-all route was any other human or
indeed any evidence that we weren’t the first people to have traveled here in a
long, long time. Approaching the high plateau – 433 m above our start point
according to the GPS – Louise mentioned that on high ground at this time of
year they often see palm warbler, perhaps the most inappropriately named of all
North American birds. Look for them not in palms but in scrub spruce of the
boreal forest. Within moments we had two in a tree, flipping their tails as
palm warblers are wont to do. Then after a pair of pine grosbeaks graced us
with a close fly-past, a big bird flew low toward us until, spotting humans in
this most anomalous context, veered off away from the ridge. A golden eagle.
Jan asserts that my HQ – happiness quotient to the uninformed – can always be measured in
direct proportion to the number of pictures I take. The greater the number, the
cheerier the old guy is almost certain to be. On Saturday there were plenty of
reasons to count one’s blessings . The golden eagle was just the capper. The
picture count? Oh, about 130, just a few of which in the Flickr photostream will
paint you a picture.
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