Back to Boularderie

Pandemics and peregrinations make poor bedfellows. At long last, after a Covid-induced hiatus of more than 22 months, Jan and I are back on Boularderie Island. We arrived August 16 to find five-foot high poplars growing in the middle of the road, and the facsimile of a tall grass prairie flourishing where the cabin ‘lawn’ used to be. The walking trails are choked with the proceeds of the windstorms that have come and gone since early October 2019. Otherwise the old place looks pretty much as it did before safe distancing, hand sanitizer and mandatory masks changed our everyday world. True, when we arrived neither the propane-powered fridge nor the stove were in working order, and the solar batteries no longer yielded the same reliable voltage they did before. It took a whole week but eventually the infrastructure issues were sorted out and we are once again enjoying the usual gamut of cabin amenities.

Jan and I were amazed to see how much has grown in two years. Maples and birches are the starfish of the woods: cut one down and a dozen shoots spring from the stump to take their turn in the sunlight. In the past I have occasionally missed a year in Cape Breton but never two, not until now. Left alone for two growing seasons, some of the maple shoots have grown to five feet. To restore my fields to something like the state the birds and I wish them to be in, I am kept busy with brush cutter and chainsaw. I need never complain there is nothing to do.

It is a significant anniversary at ‘Bigador’: fifty years have elapsed since I framed the original cabin way back in 1971. After half a century the cedar shingles are wrinkled and weathered, and there is peeling paint wherever I look but the roof is straight and the building seems as plumb as ever. As the years sailed past I have come to be more and more like my dear, departed mother in one telling way: I value peace and quiet enormously, and there is plenty of it on offer here on the margin of the Great Bras d’Or.

The sleeping porch remains sublime. Tucked in our bed after dark, often the only sound to be heard is the conversation of barred owls from the top of Kelly’s Mountain, two miles across the strait. On a moonless night the stars in our corner of the galaxy are still familiar. From my vantage point on the starboard side of the porch bed I can admire the red giant, Arcturus, splendid in the northwest. Familiar though Arcturus may be, I still marvel that, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, it has taken 37 years for the beams of Arcturus to reach my rods and cones. I need no reminding that the cosmos is very large and our nickel-and-dime galaxy just an insignificant fragment of it.

In Victoria my habit is to get up about 5 a.m. and forage through the virtual pages of the Guardian, Washington Post, and CBC for the latest installment of world gloom and grief. Here, change is forced upon me: the firs and birches surrounding the cabin do not provide Internet connectivity. If something of consequence is left unreported by the producers at CBC Radio news, I will know nothing about it. I am compelled to do without.

It is doubtful our return left our fellow inhabitants of the land shouting for joy. One evening a big white-tailed doe fled at our approach. From the droppings they leave behind, we know that we share the old place with coyotes, foxes, even a bear. The bear appreciates what we do: a bumper crop of blackberries and blueberries. In the fringes of the old orchard, branches heavy with apples hang low to the ground.

I am ordinarily here by the first of June or thereabouts when there is a richness of birds and wildflowers to appreciate. Late August is a doldrums time for both; I make do with what is on offer: a few migrant songbirds, and the less than entirely charming flowers that dominate at this time of year. We make the best of what we have, learning to identify the abundant goldenrods and asters. Now we can differentiate the rough-stemmed goldenrods from their grass-leaved cousins, the calico aster from the tansy ragwort.

There is always adventure to be had in our morning walk to Dalem Lake: a close encounter with wood frog or hairy woodpecker, the call-of-the wild yodel of a loon, terns enjoying the heck out of tormenting a bald eagle.

It is already five years since Bob Nagel established that he was not in fact a latter-day Dorian Gray. Bob’s successor as lord of the manor I took to calling Wuthering Heights is a lady, lovely young Dinao. I would have given favourable odds that the purchaser of Bob’s old house would raze it. But far from consigning it to ashes, Dinao has decided to save it. She is investing time and resources to make it livable the year round. In all the years I have know it, the ancient building has never looked so good. It gladdens the heart.