A Walk in Bob’s Woods

Mid-October seemed a good time for a solo walk in untraveled woods. Some years ago – eight, ten, who can say? – Jan and Bob Nagel and I invested a little effort in clearing out an old road on the eastern border of Robert’s two hundred acres. Alone this time, without the navigational talent of my better-half, I have no easy time in relocating the trailhead. I choose an acceptable-looking entry point and commence to bushwhack. Our combined effort from that time is now utterly indiscernible: I need not have it pointed out that nature harbours neither regard nor sympathy for human works.

I make my through the forest tangle thinking of my old friend. The rest of us imagined Robert had a portrait concealed in the attic: he was supposed to outlive us all. Circumstance made other arrangements: this is the second year that Herr Nagel has been absent from his woods.

In spring this forest is alive with bird song. Now in autumn warblers and thrushes are long departed to warmer climes but there is occasional evidence I do not have the forest entirely to myself. Nuthatches, chickadees, jays and kinglets initiate sporadic conversation.  A red squirrel objects loudly to my passage. A pileated woodpecker grumbles too but declines to indulge my wish for a photo op. The remains of a ruffed grouse are more accommodating: a mess of feathers disaggregated from the bones and flesh that constituted a living, breathing whole perhaps as recently as yesterday. ‘What a sin’, Lynn and Louise might observe, but goshawks need to eat too.

Robert Frost’s Mending Wall comes to mind. Along Bob’s eastern line there is an old moss-covered wall, looking intact in some sections, that divides whoever owned the land a century and a half ago from his neighbour’s holding on the opposite side. When Canada was young, I imagine, there were not woods here, but fields. I have no direct evidence for the supposition, only the notion that the heart of a forest is a strange place for a finely-made stone wall. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” the poet observes. Here on Bob’s line it is easy to see what that something could be.

Who built the wall? And when? Was it a MacKenzie or a MacLeod? Was it both? On opposite sides of the old wall were MacKenzie and MacLeod good neighbours? I like to think they may have been and fancy them building the wall together to keep their cows on the right side of the line.

Boularderie Island was farming country ten, fifteen decades ago. In mind’s eye I see the neighbour-farmers maintaining the wall, tending their fields, raising their families, living off the land. Whatever the fruits of their labour back when, there is little sign of the fruits now. When in older age did the neighbours go to their reward? How long did it take the spruce and fir to begin reclaiming their due? Are MacKenzie-MacLeod descendants anywhere in the neighbourhood? Nowadays it is clear these woods attract little human traffic. Hmm, I think, I don`t have my cell phone: if I should keel over how many years will it be before another bushwhacker stumbles upon my bones?

The woods are shot through with colour: the scarlet and gold of maple and birch, the myriad greens of the mosses underfoot. It has been a banner year for mushrooms: Would that I could identify them all but my mycology is weak. I can see that some are puffballs, some are shelf mushrooms but whether Bovista and Stereum I cannot say.

Looking and listening, I lose track of time as I slowly follow the old wall.  I stay close to the line, reach a familiar bog and choose footfalls that look drier than others. Then the reverie is over, I am at the back road to Dalem Lake, where there are houses and the clamor of the big trucks on Highway 105 grows louder.

Allah willing, I will make a point of revisiting Bob’s woods before another ten years unspool.

Is This How It Is for Hillary and Stephen?

The  Great Autumn Book Tour is now but a memory. In the interests of drawing east coast attention to Remembered in Bronze and Stone, Jan – my Sancho Panza – and I embarked on a grand tour of Maritime libraries to give PowerPoint presentations about the war memorials of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and just a few of the men, boys and women who perished in its throes. Starting in Sydney and carrying on through Baddeck, Halifax, Fredericton and Charlottetown I spoke to audiences small and smaller about the treasury of stone and bronze soldiers that grace a good number of the region’s war memorials.

Canada has in excess of 7,500 war memorials, only a few more than two hundred of them feature the life-sized figure of a soldier in stone or metal. Some of the best of these – by the most accomplished artist-sculptors working in Canada in the 1920s – are to be found in the Maritime Provinces: the Emanuel Hahn grieving soldier at Westville NS, Hahn’s Tommy in Greatcoat at Moncton NB, George Hill’s bold trio of Canadian infantrymen in front of the Island Legislature at Charlottetown.

I might have hoped to sell out the remaining stock of Remembered thus compelling my publisher into undertaking a second printing. Just as well that I had trimmed my ambitions to simply this: motivating attendees to pay closer attention to their monuments and raise awareness of the enduring shadows Vimy, the Somme and Passchendaele left in the region’s communities.

Selling a few books turned out to be one of the lesser rewards of the tour. A better one was to have people tell me after a talk that they would look at cenotaphs in a different way and with raised appreciation. Better still were the stories I heard about grandfathers and great-uncles who went off to war in 1915 or 1916 and never came home again, leaving a legacy of grief and regret in families that endures to the present. Or stories about those who did come home again, altered forever by what they had experienced in the battlefields of Belgium and France.

Most of my audiences amounted to fewer than twenty. Some who attended were old friends I had not seen in years. For the most part we were billeted with friends and family – Stephen and Sheila in Halifax, Garth and Carole in Fredericton – but we turned the tour into an opportunity to visit others – George and Joan at Port Greville, Carole and Herb and Nackawic, Verna at Havelock – that delivered just the sort of personal connection that an old dog such as myself has come to cherish.

The most momentous of the six talks was the one that didn’t occur in a library at all. Pal Garth arranged to have me speak to a session of the every-Wednesday-morning Fredericton Golden Club, mostly older guys who like to get together for what Bob Nagel liked to call “good Christian fellowship” and to hear a guest speaker talk about matters likely to interest to men – there are no women in the Golden Club – above a certain age. Eighty-six attended.

Garth promised I would like the folks I met at the Golden Club. I did. Folks like Lyle, a life-long Maple Leafs fan who held no grudge when I admitted to preferring Les Canadiens. The affair opened with a rousing rendition of Oh Canada then the Master-of-Song led the boys through more song: When You’re Smiling, Molly Malone. Far as I could tell, no one held back. I certainly didn’t. We rattled the windows.

After reports from the Ways and Means, Bowling and Finance committees it was my turn. I had been warned that long-winded people get short shrift: go too long and you will get the hook. I spoke for 28 minutes. No one left. A number of the lads came up to say good things about the talk and to tell me more stories about fathers and grandfathers. I even sold books, five of them.

Writing Remembered was highly rewarding for me. Speaking about war memorials and those they are meant to remember is rewarding too. When Stephen King launches a new book I suppose he gets to entertain audiences somewhat bigger than mine at the Baddeck or Fredericton libraries. I hear the print run of Hillary Clinton’s new book What Happened is 300,000, oh, about a hundred times that of Remembered. That’s alright: I hope they have as much fun in their book tours as I’ve just had in mine.

Yellowlegs, Shaggy Manes, a Mess of Poutine Crevettes

Off we went with Garth and Carole to renew acquaintance with the Gaspesie – Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula. For Jan and I the previous encounter might have been fifteen years ago, for Garth and Carole more like fifty. Recollections were rusty.

At Carleton-sur-Mer Jan spotted a barrachois poking into the widening Bay of Chaleur: a narrow spit featuring a bird blind. We went there. Savannah sparrows and American pipits foraged in the seaside prairie; on the beach a bald eagle dismembered a carcass of indeterminate provenance as gulls stood watch, awaiting opportunity. Squadrons of black ducks and mergansers assembled nearby. Later, while the others took mid-morning comfort of cafe and croissants amandes at la Mie Veritable – I went back out alone and was rewarded by the sight of a brace of falcons – peregrine and merlin – heading purposefully to points south.

A bit further along Highway 132, in New Carlisle, another birding opportunity availed itself. At the Jean-Paul Dube sanctuary, more savannahs and pipits showed themselves while two greater yellowlegs left a lasting impression, both visual and aural, on pal Garth. In the heart of New Carlisle stands a bronze life-sized likeness of the village’s most famous native: Rene Levesque, beloved by Quebec nationalists, founder of the Parti Quebecois.

At Cap-d’Espoir we made a little waterside cabin our base camp for two nights. The cabin provided an excellent vantage for watching surf scoters and gannets and relishing the ship’s-prow cape that gives the community its name. In the evening, at the splendid Cafe du Centre, we dined regally on raclette, spaghetti fruits mer, flan caramel et al.

Late September proved a good time to mount our assault on Perce and the great rock that attracts hordes of tourists in high season. Many of the tourist shops were closed; we were spared the nine-dollar public sparking fee those who arrive in July and August are privileged to pay. Rocher Perce, the big rock that is the town’s main tourist draw was just as striking, just as memorable as it was 15 and 50 years ago.

At Gaspe town I completed a grail quest of sorts: seeing the only Emanuel Hahn war memorial figure in Canada that had previously eluded me. It occupies a prominent place right at the water’s edge as one approaches Gaspe from the south. Alas, the Hahn is a little the worse for the attentions paid it over the years: a piece of the grieving soldier’s nose knocked off, the thumb and forefinger of his left hand similarly abused. Do not assume that everyone regards a war memorial in an attitude of respect or reverence.

The very nice lady at the visitor centre across Highway 132 from Hahn’s granite soldier offered options on where to take mid-day sustenance. We chose the Restaurant Brise-Bise because, the nice lady said, that is where we would find the original poutine crevettes – the category of poutine featuring fresh shrimp. All four of us took our friend’s advice and, though shrimp poutine might not be an indulgence one should enjoy on a daily basis, on this occasion we were unanimously happy with the recommendation.

We erased some of the Brise-Bise calorie intake with a walk about town, then went to Forillon National Park to burn more in a walk to Grand-Grave toward the Cap de Gaspe. We stepped around very fresh bear scat but had to make do without a close encounter with the beast that deposited it.

Near the Gaspe Hahn I had spotted a fresh crop of shaggy manes, one of the choicest of wild mushrooms. We harvested these; chef Jan made the most of them back at the Cap d’Espoir cabin.

North of Forillon Highway 132 takes on a very different look. The low-lying, cheek-by-jowl communities of the Gaspesie south shore suddenly give way to hills and forest that are a Jacob’s-coat of colour in the early weeks of autumn. At Pointe-a-la-Renommee, the hills a blaze of colour, we stopped at the reconstruction of the first maritime radio station established in 1904 by the resourceful G. Marconi.

Culinary rewards continued: at the Restaurant L-‘Etoile du Nord in Pointe-a-la-Fregate some of us opted for the table d’hote. I felt particularly well rewarded for my selection of palourdes croustillantes and gros petoncles -- a medley of clams and scallops for those suffering as I do from chronic unilingualism. At La Martre we paused to gawk at the handsome red phair, a wooden lighthouse in operation since 1906.

From La Martre to Sainte-Anne-des Monts Highway 132 hugs the coastline at the base of the Chic-Choc Mountains, a dramatic road that must have cost millions per kilometre to build. As we cruised the north shore Garth happily seized the role of musical director. Robert Charlebois not being included among Garth’s onboard selection of CDs, we listened instead to his treasury of country music classics – Porter Waggoner, Patsy Cline, George ‘No-Show’ Jones, Eddie Arnold and the immortal Conway Twitty. Those who cherish country music above all other genres would have trembled in euphoria.

Sainte-Ann-des Monts availed one last culinary delight. At the Restaurant du Quai I opted for chaudree de palourde and bourgots a l’ail – clam chowder and winkles in garlic, if you prefer the bill-of-fare in English. After four days in the Gaspesie I decided that – aside from the birding ops, the scenery, the wild mushrooms, the happy conclusion of my Hahn grail quest – the regional cuisine all by itself is reason enough every fifteen years or so to pile into a comfortable car with bosom pals and revisit the Gaspesie. D’accord.

A Sandaled Man for All Seasons

Intent on a Saturday morning bike ride in the Baddeck Valley we stopped at Bob Nagel’s spring to charge our water bottles. Just then friends Jim Troke and Cindy crossed our path. Dressed for a significant occasion they told us they were headed to the Sydney Memorial Chapel to join the folks wishing to bid farewell to Dave Ervin. I had heart set on the bike ride but Jan exerted good influence: this is an event I should not miss, she said. We had time to alter the day plan; we did.

I knew Dave Ervin more than a half century ago when we were both inmates at Riverview Rural High School in Coxheath, keen like other Riverview lads to avoid running afoul of Principal H. H. Wetmore, motivated perhaps to conduct ourselves such as to be included among the small band of RRHS scholars regarded as worthy by Bernadette Francis, vice-principal and English teacher extraordinaire.

I was a paper boy to the Ervin household and knew the whole family: Dave, his twin sisters Gail and Linda, their mum and dad. My least favourite member of the family was the family dog, a big German shepherd with big teeth and a scary snarl. In my reckoning the dog was always overly keen to tear my leg off. After high school I went off to university, grateful to be free of the dog, wondering from time to time how the fates were treating my old Cape Breton Post customers.

Years afterward – perhaps three and a half decades’ worth of them – someone organized a gathering of old Riverview people in Halifax. Somehow I made it to the invitation list. I was happy to see folks I hadn’t laid eyes on in half a lifetime. One of them was Dave Ervin. I might not have recognized him had I passed him on the street: he was trim the last time I’d seen him and had a headful of red hair.  The passage of time had eliminated both the hair and the old stringbean look. The high-school Dave had always been friendly and outgoing but his latter-day edition struck me as someone who could give Jim Carrey a run for his effusively gregarious money.

We exchanged email addresses and promised to stay in touch. It was not an empty promise. Once or twice a year, sometimes oftener, Dave would write to let me know of another passage from the Coxheath neighbourhood. Whenever a former friend or neighbour departed this vale of tears Dave would write to tell me about it. I appreciated the service and always told him so.

Now, on Saturday, it was Dave Ervin himself whose turn it was to be lamented and celebrated. The memorial chapel was filled to overflowing. A clergyman was on hand to offer suitable Christian sentiment on behalf of the dearly departed but it was the tributes from those who’d loved and lost a dear friend or beloved ‘Uncle Buck’ who carried the day. Those gathered at the chapel heard from Dave’s good friend Bernie Larusic and three members of the next generation of Ervins – two nephews and a niece. They were all evocative and affecting.

In high school we all spend countless hours with schoolmates sharing enthusiasm for algebra, chemistry and Elizabethan poetry but how well do we get to know most of the fellow sufferers who share those days, months and years?

I learned much about Dave Ervin I’d known nothing about. That he was a prominent unionist and environmentalist -- president of Local 1064, United Steelworkers and a principal in the Atlantic Coastal Action Program. That he loved books, history and music, especially if it was rooted in Cape Breton. That he wore only sandals, in January as faithfully as in July. That despite the best efforts of Gail, Linda and everyone else who tried converting him to gospel according to the Canada Food Guide, he lived pretty much on pizza and cheeseburgers.

The celebrants made no effort to paint Dave as someone having no warts but even his warts, many of them rooted in legendary stubbornness, were celebrated. I cannot think of any memorial event I have ever attended that was so charged with pure warmth, affection, love and high regard. Following the formal part of the festivities Jan and I stayed to share memories. As late as Grade 11 I was the smallest kid in my RRHS class, girls included, so I was amazed that Linda and Gail somehow recognized their long-ago paper boy. I sought and got more memories of their brother.

There was a bonus too: a small reunion, Riverview Class of ’64. I reconnected with Eileen B. And Sheila M. We exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch. Given the benefits accruing from similar promises exchanged with Dave two decades ago I intend to make good on these too.

Saturday’s events made it clear that Dave Ervin lived life richly and well. I am glad to have known him and perhaps a little sad I hadn’t known him a whole lot better.

Blueberry Meditations

I dispute the poorly examined assertion that none of us ever changes. It is a claim I find easy to prove incorrect. When I was a kid bell peppers made me gag, soup was a snore, no Christmas gift was worse than a pair a great-aunt`s hand-made socks and berry-picking was perhaps the most boring conceivable human activity. None of these biases dwells in me now. Bell peppers are an excellent component in any salad. I could live on soup alone. Hand-made socks at Christmas are a joy. Above all, berry-picking is nowadays a rhapsody.

The blueberries on the slopes below Bob Nagel`s old place on MacKenzie Hill are at their peak. These days Jan and I are apt to include a few containers in the little pack we take on our morning rambles to Dalem Lake. On the way to Dalem or on the way back we stop to reap some of the blueberry bounty. The reward for doing so goes well beyond the full containers we take away with an hour`s effort. As a 14-year-old I neither knew nor cared that berry-picking can be wonderfully meditative. I pick attentively, careful to eliminate those that are too stunted, too green or too mushed. I take pains to disqualify interlopers – bugs, caterpillars, juvenile snails – from what goes into the containers. 

But the berries get only a share of my attention, not the whole of it. I keep an eye and an ear open to what is going on around me: the sound of the wind in Bob`s pines, crickets locked in conversation in the bush just beside me, a song sparrow delivering his morning vespers. Somehow berry-picking on a sunny morning lulls me into a notion that the world is alright after all; without deliberate effort I manage to forget for a while about Donald Trump, climate change and the parlous state of affairs with North Korea. I am almost sorry when the containers are full and it is time for us to be on our way.

In case you care to know, blueberries are members of the Vaccinium genus: from the cabin library`s copy of Roland`s two-volume Flora of Nova Scotia we learn that ten different Vaccinium species grow in Nova Scotia. Blueberries, cranberries and whortleberries – they are all Vaccinium. Included in the clan are highbush blueberry, lowbush blueberry, dwarf blueberry, Alaska blueberry. Nova Scotians are blessed with blueberries.

I wonder whether Bob`s hill features two or more species: some of the ones we gather are as blue as we expect blueberries to be, others are nearly black. It is more likely they are different varieties of lowbush cranberry, `the dominant blueberry of our fields and barrens`. Regardless, the ones we glean from MacKenzie Hill are all delicious. Occasionally we see lists of the most nutritious foods; blueberries are typically included in the top ten. In contrast to chips and cheesies, we can eat as many as we like – guilt-free.

After the morning constitutional to Dalem we breakfast royally back at the cabin. These days the standard combination of cheerios and chia seeds is enhanced by Ontario peaches and blueberries from Bob`s hill. Or, combined with yoghurt, they may sustain us at lunch. And there is more. As I write this, Jan is in the midst of another blueberry-focused operation: she is making her second batch of blueberry jam. The Bernardin jars are at the ready.

At night – not my favourite time of day – I am frequently deprived of sleep, beset with what I call `busy brain`. I think too much, about too many subjects. I cope with insomnia by reading with the aid of my trusty booklight – or by thinking about blueberry-picking on Bob`s hill. Sometimes that does the trick: I manage through night-time blueberry meditation to get back to sleep.

Soon the blueberries of Bob`s hill will be done for the season. There is consolation on the horizon. This year`s blackberry crop looks to be just as bountiful as the blueberry legions and judged by early returns, just about as delicious. It seems certain we`re going to have to make a trip to town for another case of Bernardin jars.

A Thing of Beauty and a Joy for a Good Long Time

As I creep into ever deeper senescence I ordinarily find myself drawn more to disposal than acquisition of material belongings but an exception has arisen gloriously this past while at the old cabin at Big Bras d’Or. Jan says I am like a kid at Christmas but that description hardly does justice to the euphoric state in which I behold the edifice I began building nearly a half century ago. Long an admirer of other people’s metal roofs, I decided that I wanted to have one installed on the little cabin that is our home for up to a third of a typical year.

Not necessarily opposed to this notion, Jan was not entirely on board either. Four weeks ago I delivered her to Sydney’s McCurdy airport for the trip back to Victoria and her musical week at UVic. No sooner was her back turned that I visited Benny Niesten of Timberlake Construction, a local specialist in metal roof installation, to inquire what a shiny new steel roof might cost me. Benny came down to ‘Bigador’ with tape measure in hand, made his calculations. When he told me what the bill would be I said ‘When can we start?’

I had to wait a couple of weeks for materiel to be assembled and for an opening in Benny’s schedule and by the time everything was ready to roll, Jan had returned from the west coast and was on hand to witness what unfolded. A couple of young bucks, Johnny and Greg, arrived shortly after 7 on Thursday morning with a trailer loaded with wooden strapping and steel sheets. They got right to work. The old asbestos shingle roof stayed where it was, the strapping installed directly on top of it.

What with the two additions I have made to the original cabin over the years – the sleeping porch and sun room – there were five roof pitches for Johnny and Greg to deal with, two skylights, a steel chimney and its supports. Benny had said it was likely a two-day job, the lads felt it might be closer to four. Benny turned out to know exactly what he was talking about. For someone of my tastes in spectator sport the job proved to be hugely entertaining. I watched, tried to stay out of the way. By Friday afternoon the job was done. I floated well above Cloud Nine. I still do.

The first person to lay eyes on the new roof other than ourselves was Bob Nagel’s nephew Dennis. He put the matter succinctly: ‘they under-promised and over-delivered’. I couldn’t say it better. I now declare, with only a little exaggeration, that I have a ‘million-dollar roof on a ten-cent building’.

Given the roof’s immediate surrounds – mountain-ashes and maples, tamaracks and pines, spruces and firs – I decided on a green roof, green in its myriad hues being the colour of choice in the close vicinity.

Apart from the obvious advantage of being a thing of beauty and a joy for a good long time the new roof offers other rewards: even if I live to 105 I need never fret about having to replace it ever again. It is cleaner than a shingle roof which means that the water we gather in the rain barrels is crystal clear. I admit to one very small disappointment: I had been told by many that we would learn that a heavy rain on a metal roof would deliver considerably more noise. This may have been a deterrent for some folks but not for me: I looked forward to a big jump in the decibel count. Yesterday we had a big rain. Was there a difference in noise level? Not much.

Oh well, the slight disappointment that conversation won’t be overwhelmed by mighty rains at Bigador weighs little against the delight of having the prettiest, tightest roof of any shack in all of Boularderie Island.

Outhouse Adventure of a Different Kind

Important though it doubtless is for those who get to enjoy the myriad delights of Bigador for more than a day or two, the little building at the end of the short northbound trail from the cabin attracts very little fanfare. The floor, only 4’10” square, is too small to accommodate a party or dance or indeed a gathering of any size at all but that is no problem since it never need host an assemblage of more than one person at a time. Call it what you will – privy, backhouse, outhouse, poop palace – the little building is the one to which we travel whenever nature demands.  It has stood loyal almost as long as the cabin itself – close to 46 years and counting – and though we don’t say it often enough, yes, the little building is much appreciated.

The little building – let’s call it LB hereinafter – has undergone alterations over the years – a new roof a few years back, a ‘picture window’ installed more recently when pal Garth demanded a view, a bright yellow-painted floor more recently still – but its principal purpose remains entirely unaltered from the very first days. Before the picture window was installed the only way to admit a little sunshine into the LB and to enjoy any view at all was to leave the door open.  Once in a while a curious bird – a junco perhaps, a rubythroat or maybe a yellow-rumped warbler – stopped by to see what was afoot, but that was rare; most of the flying creatures who came inside while LB was occupied were mosquitoes, and their visits were always purposeful, never idle. I ought to have installed the picture window years ago: with the door closed mosquitoes are hardly a problem at all.

One needn’t be bored during a visit to the LB. The building holds reading material: a year-old issue of Vanity Fair magazine, a back issue of National Geographic, a fairly new picture book featuring images of fabulous toilets from all over the world. There is even an attendant of sorts – an old cardboard Mountie, only four feet tall, urging visitors to ‘Have a good one!

Given what goes on in the LB it should come as no surprise that a certain kind of regular maintenance is obligatory: to put no fine point on it, LB needs to be shoveled out from time to time. It is typically an olfactory signal that lets one know the time is nigh. Strangely, despite the birding and wildlife-viewing distractions reliably availed during a shoveling operation, no one seems drawn to the task. Truth be told, I am customarily the only person who carries out this important role.

Yesterday, in anticipation of Jan’s return from her week-long adventure at the University of Victoria guitar academy, I thought it suitable that my better half should be greeted by a freshly shoveled-out LB.

Without going into excessive detail about the task before me I need point out that a first step is to excavate a reception area for LB’s periodic proceeds. It was during that preliminary excavation that something extraordinary happened. Something hardly slower than a speeding bullet shot between my feet. It happened so fast I had no idea what I’d glimpsed or even whether I’d actually seen anything at all. I extracted another shovelful and at that there was instantly an eruption of small creatures. Beautiful creatures. I didn’t know it immediately but afterward I learned I’d unearthed a den of the extraordinary woodland jumping mouse – Napaeozapus insignis, if you care to know its scientific handle..

Much smaller than the familiar deer mouse we often see outdoors – and occasionally indoors too – the body of a woodland jumping mouse might be only half the size of its relative. Its coloration, a warm olive brown back flanked by golden orange sides, makes it, in the words of Banfield’s The Mammals of Canada “one of the most attractive of the small denizens of our eastern woods.” This was a ‘lifer’ sighting for me: I had never before laid eyes on a jumping mouse, let alone the five or six that scattered at the prospect of what my shovel might do next.

In addition to its extraordinary athletic ability, my new friends displayed a remarkably long tail – easily twice the length of the mouse’s body. I learned this from Banfield: though not at all rare the woodland jumping mouse is mostly nocturnal – the reason I’d never seen it. It has a diverse diet: from various subterranean fungi, an array of seeds and fruit, butterfly larvae, grasshoppers, dragonflies and beetles.

Somehow I managed to capture one of the little fellows so that I might take its portrait before setting it free. Two are exhibited here for my reader’s gratification.

Who knows how many fellow creatures – never heard or seen without a shovel in hand – share the property around us not through land registry title but by decree issued under the authority of Mother Nature. I do not expect that reacquaintance with jumping mice will be an assured reward of my next LB duty but I feel well enough rewarded by yesterday’s events that I will have no reluctance to look after the chore again.

Dalem Delivers Something Special

The customary start to a day at Bigador is an early morning walk of about seven kilometres from the cabin to and around Dalem Lake. Though Jan has been away these past ten days, burnishing her musical skills at a UVic guitar academy, I am as faithful a Dalem devotee without her as I am when she is part of the alluring Dalem package. I admit to missing my better half but I am not lonesome: the neighbourhood affords abundant company to assure me I am not alone in the world.

It is still breeding season here on Boularderie Island: I know this because the songbirds declare it it daily: they will continue to do so for another fortnight or so then the migrational instructions encoded in their DNA will compel them to think about moving on to parts well south of our degree of latitude. Every day at Dalem I hear warblers: parula, black-throated green, black-and-white; thrushes: hermit, Swainson’s, robin; woodpeckers: hairy, flicker, pileated; nuthatches; chickadees; loons and spotted sandpipers. Wild things are accustomed to H. sapiens being a sometimes dangerous species. They cannot recognize that I am harmless: birds scatter at my approach. So do creatures that cannot fly: hares, garter snakes and frogs, both pickerel and wood, flee before me.

Mostly what I hear and see at Dalem is familiar but this morning I was treated to something completely special. A hollow, ghostly ku-ku-ku, ku-ku-ku, ku-ku-ku stopped me in my tracks. Owl? Dove? Jan claims, fairly, that I have become a lazy birder. Most of the time I bird by ear: I know what I hear, and don’t bother to look. But upon hearing a strange ku-ku-ku I revert to something like the hardcore birder I was four decades ago. I searched the birches along Dalem’s south shore for the source of the ku-ku-ku; I impersonated the call as best I could which had the desired effect: the bird flushed and showed itself – a black-billed cuckoo – a bird strange to see in Cape Breton at any time but especially now in breeding season.

I stayed in the cuckoo neighbourhood for forty minutes, had several more glimpses, even managed a photo or two but nothing worth showing at the county fair. What is a black-billed cuckoo doing at Dalem Lake in late July, singing as if asserting a territorial imperative? The species is not known to breed on Cape Breton Island so I am intrigued. I will revert to what I was long ago: for the next several days I will listen and look for the cuckoo and hope to encounter it again. It didn’t feel like cooperating today but, who knows, perhaps I’ll get lucky tomorrow and get a decent photo. If I do you will hear about it.

There is other news to report. Before departing us a year ago Bob Nagel set aside sufficient shekels to fund an event often affectionately called a pissup in these parts, an array of food and drink sufficient to sustain and inspire the assembly of bereaved adorers who gathered Saturday at his old place on MacKenzie Hill to share memories of their late, lamented friend.  No one regretted that the weatherman turned out to be wrong: instead of the clouds and intermittent showers mooted by Environment Canada conditions were mostly clear and sunny.

A diverse array of friends and cousins gathered in the sunshine to share Bob sagas. The congregation ranged in age from 5 to 85 or thereabouts; it featured an outlaw or two, a smattering of good faithful Presbyterians, and a wide spectrum in between, all united in the view that a Boularderie summer without Robert can never be as raucous as all the blithe seasons that preceded it. In honour of Bob’s musical tastes the boom-box laid out show tunes and arias, my personal favourite being the Jeff Beck rendition of Nessun Dorma that produced in me just the sort of emotional response that Mr. Beck likely intended.

I dare to imagine that Bob would have approved of what unfolded on Saturday. Old friends expressed regret that their friend is gone but they laughed too. Some even danced. Last summer the aged house had a forlorn look about it but on Saturday it came back to life. The view out to the Bird Islands was as splendid as ever; there is another bumper crop of blueberries on the bank below the old house. Perhaps for a moment it even felt as though these were the good old days.

All That and Nouveaux Amis Too

My friend Peter Goodale offered a feast of many parts: let’s meander our way to Lighthouse Point, he suggested, and partake of the menu on offer along the Cape Breton headlands from Lighthouse Cove to Gun Landing Cove, Hammer Head and Lorraine Head. The current lighthouse here is not the original; that, Canada’s first ever, was built in 1734 but the current edition, hardly a century old, is a beauty in its own right; it sits on the same site and commands the same view over Louisbourg Harbour to the west and Green Island to the south that General Wolfe beheld as he undertook closing arrangements for the final capture and demolition of Fortress Louisbourg in 1758.

For those inclined to believe in ghosts who are keen to commune with them the five- to six-kilometre hike to Lorraine Head offers séance possibilities I imagine must be second to none in Cape Breton. If perchance the opportunity to walk with ghosts is an insufficient draw there are many other attractions to lure the rambler to the headlands east of Louisbourg: history, inspiring landscape, fetching flora and fauna and possibly – if one is lucky – even a cross-cultural experience to prize.

I typically occupy the driver’s seat when I am in a horseless carriage but on the way to the Louisbourg light I was in the right-hand seat. Lucky me. Peter took me into unfamiliar territory, a right-by-the-water approach from Mira Gut, through Catalone Gut, Bateston, Main-à-Dieu and Little Lorraine. Photo opportunities abound along this part of the rugged Cape Breton coast. We made a few stops, savoured the vistas, felt fresh gratitude for the invention of the digital camera. Main-à-Dieu offers history and viewpoints galore. People have fished and lived there for four centuries, perhaps more. By the current look of lobstermen’s houses times are good at Main-à-Dieu.

By the side of the road at the snug harbour in Little Lorraine we made a new friend: Marius is from Gaspe by way of Quebec City. We struck up friendly, animated, wide-ranging conversation. I briefed Marius on my enduring admiration for the sculptural works of the great Emanuel Hahn and reported that I will be headed to Gaspe later this year to see the only Hahn masterwork that has to date eluded me: the granite soldier gracing the Gaspe war memorial. Marius promised to beat me to the punch: to send me a picture at his first opportunity. You know how it is to meet a person and to like him or her instantly and without qualification. Marius is just such a person. If an actor were called upon to play him in a movie it would have to be Gérard Depardieu.

We carried on to Lighthouse Point and set out for our ramble in that rarest of Louisbourg circumstances: a perfectly sunny, windless day. We saw no ghosts but it was easy to imagine the scene near 260 years ago as Wolfe’s artillerymen wrestled with their heavy firepower at Gun Landing Cove.

The last week of July turned out to be a fine time to see some of the more spectacular coastal wildflowers of summer; orchids – ragged fringed white, grass pink – pitcher plants; twinflower; blue-eyed grass; shinleaf et al. Among the things I am grateful for: the old knees are still bendable enough that I can I get nose to stamens with wildflowers and take worthy images of their smallest, most private parts.

I do not get bored these days with what is on view at ground level but if I did at this place there is much to see and appreciate at eye-level and higher. The rugged headlands are irresistible to a man with a camera even if he never feels his camera work measures up to what his eye sees. Birds offer themselves for inspection: a bulleting merlin here, marauding herring and black-backed gull there, even a close-to-shore northern gannet, a fisher every bit the equal of the men of Main-à-Dieu.

On a day such as yesterday we did not and could not have the world to ourselves but the numbers of fellow ramblers thinned out as we put the kilometres behind us. We met a cadre of friends from Glace Bay and learned who we might know in common. As I am wont to do, I explained what the Gaelic name MacLeod means in English – Son of Ugly – and thereby felt confident that they would never need be told again.

Best of all we crossed paths again with Marius, this time accompanied by his just-as-gregarious mate Celine. Chapter Two proved just as entertaining as the first installment – another round of lively conversation, laughter, gusto, shared enthusiasm. I regularly feel ashamed of my miserably eroded high school French but not enough on this occasion to deter me from trying out a little of what is left of it.

On a day filled with much to celebrate I put the encounter with Marius and Celine at the head of the list. I hope my instructions were clear enough that they will find their image in my Flickr photostream and I hope I might be lucky enough to cross their paths again when I am in their back yard admiring their Emanuel Hahn at Gaspe. Au revoir, mes amis.  Until we meet again.