Wettest on Record

I write on Saturday morning from the dry interior of the Bigador cabin where heavy rains beat a loud tattoo on the cabin`s metal roof (a million-dollar roof on a ten-cent shack, someone once quipped).

CBC meteorologist Ryan Snoddon gives us a dispatch headlined `Summer of 2023 was the wettest on record for much of the Maritimes`. Neither Bigador resident has the least inclination to debate the headline. Jan and I leave it to others to defend Cape Breton against charges that in 2023 the Island has morphed into a sodden, mosquito-plagued swamp. And no wonder: many Maritimers have seen more than double the average rainfall in June, July, and August. Our current run of weather best loved by ducks is into day 6, with Hurricane Lee about to grace us with a further deluge that will last two or three days. We only vaguely remember blue skies and sunshine.

We express frequent gratitude for that metal roof and something else. Good books. What would I do without the services of the North Sydney and Sydney Mines libraries? How would I cope without the opportunity to binge on Dennis Lehane, Daniel Silva, Michael Connelly? Kelly’s Mountain is often draped in cloud, fog and rain-squalls but as long as I have a worthy book in hand and another waiting in the wings, I can cope. In the presence of soggy air and absence of sunshine we rely on the woodstove and the woodshed’s stock of apple, birch, and maple—stored sunshine I call it—to get us through.

We will depart on Monday—if hurricanes permit—with mixed feelings about leaving. Ordinarily I quit Boularderie Island feeling unhappy to go. This year will be somewhat different. As Boularderie Islanders have enjoyed the joy of relentless rains, residents of Victoria and south Vancouver Island have had to put up with drought conditions and watched their lawns and much of the landscape turn brown. I will not gripe should we get a spell of dry weather in Victoria before the Pineapple Express returns in November.

On a single day in July an historic dump dropped as much rain in parts of Nova Scotia as normally falls in three months. That astonishing event washed out sections of our 600-metre road, leaving it inundated by as much as a foot of water. We had the road extensively repaired, and then another deluge flooded it again. Our road restorer returned; on Monday he installed a culvert and several additional loads of gravel. As we wait to see the hurricane’s response to the latest remedies I also wait to see the invoice for road repairs to date.

There is broad consensus among people having a functioning brain that climate change is real, and what we have witnessed this summer and last is just the tip of the iceberg—or should I say flood? I have no doubt the consensus is sound. If I live long enough to return for another Boularderie Island summer in my 78th year, what will Jan and I find? Will the road be washed away for good? Will heat domes and floods be worse than ever? Will wildfire smoke make Bigador’s clean air unbreathable?

Fortuitously, by relying on something other than weather to supply good times at the margin of the Great Bras d’Or, there is some happy news. Good friends Judith (sometimes known as Sakamoto, for reasons I can share some other time) and Marc did us the honour of paying us a four-day visit. It was a note-perfect time. For many years Judith has shown her affection for the old place, and Marc, well, he fell in love with it at first sight. Judith is a fan of my pesto so—what else?—we savoured pesto pasta twice, introduced them to the abundant delights of the card game Euchre, rambled to Dalem Lake twice and shared a hike that was a ‘lifer’ for all of us, Red Island a little north of the Barrachois River.

We also shared in the celebration of a milestone birthday in the life of my bride. I won’t disclose particulars of the milestone but I can provide a hint: in Mars years my Jan is a mere 37. When I disclosed that factoid early on her birthday morning you might have thought I’d just brought news of a big lottery win. The gambit wouldn’t have worked for me but Jan is still dining out on her Martian age days after the birthday. Whatever works.

I shall endeavour to post this somewhere en route to Victoria; in the meantime share my joy over the roof metal and the cabin’s well-stocked library. There are still blessings to count.

Not for Everyone

It is well established that your occasional correspondent is strongly convinced that ‘Bigador’ is the best, most beautiful place the world has to offer. Consider its frequent sublime quietude, its natural bounty of flora and fauna, its night time vistas of the Milky Way and naked-eye view of the rather more distant Andromeda galaxy, whose light has traveled 2.3 million years by the time it reaches the rods and cones of human eyes. Just for starters.

Most of the friends who visit from the west coast and see Bigador for the first time typically rhapsodize at the cabin’s view of the Great Bras d’Or and Kelly’s Mountain and demand to know, “Why would you ever leave this?’ My standard answer comprises a single word, winter.

For me part of its ineffable charm is that Bigador affords a small facsimile of a pioneer experience; it lacks almost all the amenities that make life bearable for most of my fellow North Americans. Yes, we have a good kitchen stovetop and propane-powered fridge but the facilities include no running water, no flush toilet, no reliable Internet connection, no electricity apart from the meagre allotment supplied by a single solar panel and pair of batteries.

There is no mall across the road, no recreation centre, no swimming pool. We do have a fine swimmin’ hole down at the shore, but one has to scramble down a steep bank to get there and swimmers must sometimes share the water with a jellyfish or two, or the crabs that have made the bottom their home long before we ever showed up. Apart from a refreshing dip, the shore provides other attractions. Numerous Carboniferous fossils for an observer who needn’t work hard to see them. Kingfishers, the occasional sandpiper, gannet, and all the gulls and cormorants one could ever want to see.

To get groceries we must rely on the truck to take us to the Sobey’s in North Sydney, but there are opportunities in the woods and fields for foragers such as ourselves—chanterelle and bolete mushrooms, rhubarb, blueberries, blackberries, all in their season. There was once a thriving apple orchard on the old place. Their feral descendants abound, some are good eating as-is, others provide the base ingredients for apple sauce, apple jelly, apple whatever-you-like.

Most folks who come to see us during the summer seem to like what is on offer—or not—over the course of a several-day visit. A good number are repeat visitors. They have come after time, charmed by the same features that have lured me for half a century. But of course a stay of a few days is not the same as one of three months.

Recent events remind me that some folks are entirely unimpressed by my shangri-la—not for a week, or a day, or even an hour. No, I have to concede on inquiry, the cabin has not a single bedroom with a closable door affording privacy to someone ardent to have it. Instead, there is an array of ‘Murphy’ beds that can provide a restful, restorative night as long as one is not overly troubled by the occasional snore or the passage of a fellow guest headed for either of the two important out-buildings, one of which features the same composting toilet as graces the summer place of our highly regarded former governor-general, Adrienne Clarkson. If it is good enough for Adrienne shouldn’t it be fine for all the rest of us too?

Several years ago I built a workshop that has afforded me many hours of woodworking delight. In recent years the workshop has taken on a second duty. It is now serves also as the ‘Tom Sawyer Bunkhouse’. In its bunkhouse role the building’s centrepiece is a queen-sized inflatable mattress no one has ever grumbled about. And yes, it has a closing door that provides all the privacy a person could want, as long as one discounts the squirrels that run about on roof or deck, and walls festooned not with restful photos but a wide array of tools—clamps, saws, jars filled with screws and nails, et al.

Yes, there are spiders outside—and sometimes in—as well as snakes, toads, sow bugs, and other creatures not everyone embraces. Visitors who live their lives in cities are sometimes horrified to discover that they have to share the place with mosquitoes, black flies, no-see-um, deer flies, horse flies, and other biting delights that are, as Bob Nagel liked to observe, simply doing what they’re supposed to.

I admit to some regret that a few—just a few—of my fellow travelers see none of the charms that have seduced me all these years, but I still insist that Bigador is the best, most beautiful place I have ever experienced. Don’t bother trying to change my mind.

Nobody Does Anything About It

It was the late American weather forecaster Willard Scott who famously observed that “Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody ever seems to do anything about it.” Mr Scott’s observation seems more apt than ever—nobody does anything about it. UN chief Antonio Guterres now informs us all that we have progressed from mere ‘global warming” to something the UN labels “global boiling”. The announcement gathers headlines for a day or two, then much of humanity shrugs and carries on with the important things in their lives.

Once upon a time the planet Venus had liquid water oceans, like Earth’s. Today the Venus surface temperature averages about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt lead. Humans cannot be blamed for the fate of Venus, but all serious scientists agree that humanity is to blame for what is happening here on Earth: record temperatures, relentless heat waves, catastrophic wildfires, unprecedented floods et al. We focus on the vital business of arranging our affairs to suit immediate, short-term interests, like firing up the barbie, buying a shiny new toy, or flying across the continent for a Cape Breton vacation. Are we collectively hell-bent on turning Earth into a Venus lookalike?

More than half way through our 2023 Boularderie Island summer we see plenty of anecdotal evidence that Mr Guterres and his scientists know what they are talking about. Jan and I have been here seven weeks already. We enjoyed a few fine, tolerable days at the outset and another few just lately. Between the two interludes we had forty days of weather that fell into just two categories—extreme rain, or extreme heat and humidity. Take your pick. Temperatures on our shaded, screened porch routinely reached 90 Fahrenheit (32-plus Celsius). Activity as unstressful as reading a book became burdensome. The enduring heat is not unprecedented: last summer a long-lasting “heat dome” left life in the cabin similarly sticky and sweaty. Now in 2023 I begin to conclude that this is the new normal.

Back in June, Nova Scotia took to emulating the dry British Columbia interior by hosting out-of- control wildfires that incinerated more than two hundred homes. A spate of catastrophic wildfires is not at all a NS norm. Not before now.

Then, two weeks ago, three months-worth of rain fell in some NS locations in a single day. Heavy rains the like of which I had never seen in my 52 years here become routine. In the wake of the rains much of our private road lay underwater, some of it as deep as our gumboots are tall. Some water persists even now and the road is so ransacked that we have to call upon our local road saviour to rebuild it for us. In the meantime we restrict vehicle traffic in the hope of not further wrecking the road.

When the heat and rain relent long enough, I slowly undo the damage perpetrated by another extreme weather event, Hurricane Fiona last September. Fiona toppled trees all over the land, choked trails, knocked down a tall red spruce that came close to striking the workshop deck. Clearing the East Trail was relatively straightforward; clearing the West Trail has been anything but. I can no longer operate a chainsaw all day, but I can manage a few hours, and hope that will be enough to complete the task at hand.

A leisurely walk to Dalem Lake is still a draw. In 2023, it is often too hot to contemplate a slog to the lake; this year, when opportunity arises, I take my time, pausing frequently to study damselflies, take pictures of flowers or butterflies, relish the debut of this year’s crop of blueberries. Either because I’m deafer than I used to be or because bird populations have actually declined—or both—I hear far fewer birds. But I rejoice at what I do hear—the strains of a singing hermit thrush, white-throated sparrow, or increasingly scarce common nighthawk.

Despite the heat and rain, I cherish what ‘Bigador’ reliably still offers: sublime silence, an inexhaustible supply of projects to keep me happily occupied, a night sky unpolluted by human-made light. The galaxy is as resplendent as ever on a cloud-free night.

Will August bring us cooler, dryer conditions? Perhaps. In the meantime we enjoy regular visits from twin cousins Lynn and Louise. Lynn never loses at Bananagrams; I typically finish dead last. Next time I will suggest we switch to the card game Euchre, which is far less vulnerable to domination by a single player. I wish me luck.

Three Hundred Million and Change

With Lynn and Louise we undertook a peregrination of 300 million years—give or take—to the gypsum bluffs of Big Harbour. That is how long ago the bluffs began taking shape in the departed Windsor Sea. Nova Scotia produces more gypsum for manufacturers of drywall and other products than the other provinces combined. Big Harbour’s gypsum formations are spectacular enough in their own right but our principal lure was one of gypsum’s living beneficiaries—Cypripedium parviflorum, better known by its common name, yellow ladyslipper. The latter half of June is prime blooming time for this gorgeous orchid. My old departed friend Dave Stirling liked to go on about spectacles of nature. He never got to see it but I have no doubt that Dave would agree that the June ladyslipper show at Big Harbour is just that—a spectacle of nature.

Our timing was fortuitous. We arrived in time to see not several blooms, not dozens, but many hundreds, perhaps a thousand or so all together on a finger of land we speculate is the remnant of a man-made jetty once used to ship gypsum from Big Harbour to whatever industrial plants were keen to have it. On a sunny morning, in a fresh breeze, we were spared the tribulation of blackflies and mosquitoes. Conditions were such that, had I ability to declare it on my own authority, the little land finger and its surroundings might be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But that of course would draw unwanted legions of people. As usual at Big Harbour we had the place entirely to ourselves over the six hours of our stay.

Ladyslippers were not the only attraction. En route to the orchids, the Old Big Harbour Road crosses a wetland, where we savoured a close encounter with leopard frog and a gang of “avid mud-puddlers” jostling for position in the same puddle, swallowtail butterflies—Canadian Tiger Swallowtails to be precise, Papilo canadensis, perhaps the best known of our butterflies due to its size and distinctive multi-coloured pattern.

Sharing the same ground as the ladyslippers, it was hard to resist contemplating the span of time that has elapsed since the gypsum cliffs were formed. Three hundred million years is enough to swallow four million human lifetimes, a fact that for someone of my bent leads to conclusions about the significance of a person’s lifespan in the great scheme of things. But let’s set that aside for now.

Whenever a fellow delivers himself into wildflower country, he is very likely to encounter birds too. I am now immersed in one of the vicissitudes of advancing senescence. Once upon a time Jan dubbed me the world’s laziest birder because I did most of my birding by ear. The libel no longer applies. My high-end hearing is much eroded. I no longer hear warblers, kinglets and other high-register species. Jan has a solution—Merlin, the magical ‘app’ that identifies bird vocalizations for me. Merlin works well enough as long as I hear enough of a snippet to know a bird is present. Birds are less accommodating than flowers: as the photographer readies his camera to take a shot, the bird decides to fly away. It is easy to imagine that the behaviour is intentional. I did manage a decent shot of a single bird, yellow-bellied flycatcher, and counted myself lucky.

With our collective eyes and ears and a little help from Merlin, we managed to list 33 bird species for the day. The best of them was the last. I was able to hear and ID it without Merlin’s help. It was a Cape Breton rarity, Sora, a kind of rail. It conveniently vocalized just as we returned to the car. In the most recent Maritime breeding bird atlas there was only one place in all of Cape Breton where soras were known to have bred—Big Harbour.

Days later I still savour the Big Harbour afterglow. Among the cabin’s considerable natural history volumes there are a few dedicated to the region’s geology. I peruse them to enhance my appreciation of Big Harbour’s ancient history, and in the hope of finding another.