Buddy, Can You Spare Some Eiderdown?

The eleventh of June at Big Bras d’Or is a different entity from its Victoria counterpart. I arose this morning a few minutes before six, greeted by a morning sublime in every way but one. Though it is early-mid June in these parts just as it is in south Vancouver Island, my outside thermometer informed me that the temperature had dropped below zero. The inside thermometer related the same story. Environment Canada issues frost warnings, farmers worry about the consequences for apple and blueberry crops. As for me, I refuse to make concessions to the unseasonably cold weather. I insist on sleeping in the outside porch, albeit with adjustments: I take to bed wearing my Red Dragon hoodie and merino socks, cower under the duvet, two blankets and a quilt. Once ensconced abed I try not to move for fear of admitting cold air or blundering into a cold spot.

There are compensations. Victoria in June is no place for those putting a premium on peace and quiet. Half the streets in our neighbourhood are under construction; cruise ships—sometimes three at a time—disgorge thousands of visitors, streets are choked with traffic; it seems impossible to get out of our James Bay neighbourhood—or back in—except on foot. By contrast, most of the noise I now hear is the kind I prefer: bird song. The quietude is such that in last night’s wee smalls I heard a barred owl, from the top of Kelly’s Mountain, three miles away. Clear as a bell.

Cousin Lynn retrieved me from Sydney’s McCurdy airport Friday, more than a little debilitated from sleep deprivation and barely contained airplane claustrophobia. Given a 12:45 a.m. departure from Vancouver I had decided to rely on a crutch: I took a sleeping pill. It didn’t work. Somewhere over southern Saskatchewan I took a second. That didn’t work either. With a three and a half hour wait in Toronto, I got myself prone along the wall of a mostly empty waiting area. I managed a wink, maybe even three.

At Sydney I staggered off the plane into Lynn’s warm embrace. For three weeks I will be alone at the cabin: Jan is supervising the Ontario Street basement reno and will join me as June draws to a close. Well aware of the starvation hazards I might face without my better half insisting on feeding and watering protocols, Lynn had come with a grocery list. We filled it at the North Sydney Superstore.

At Big Bras d’Or I was elated to find the cabin just as I’d left it last October. Still in a drug-induced haze but with assistance from Lynn and Louise, I made good progress at opening the cabin. A hitch arose: I couldn’t find the keys to my outbuildings, where tools are stored and propane stockpiled. After an hour of intensive searching I resorted to an alternative: Kevin Squires’ bolt cutter. After breaking into two buildings, with two to go, I found the key ring—in my pocket. Once upon a time, as a boy, I might have felt slighted at being called a halfwit by my dear old dad; now I understand he was overly generous.

It is early days at Bigador but I have already counted close to three dozen bird species in the surrounding woods and on the waters of the Great Bras d’Or. We do not have that many in the Victoria backyard. The mostly frequently seen is the biggest: bald eagle. Smelt are spawning in Billy Lee’s brook and the eagles—many of them—are taking advantage. All day long they fly back and forth, young ones and adults both; occasionally one pauses at the top of the tall spruce at the edge of my bank. Warblers establish territories, announcing their claims by robust song: parula, magnolia, myrtle, black-throated green, Blackburnian and the irrepressible ovenbird.

It may be a tad on the cool side but the wildflowers seem not to care. Bluebead lily, bunchberry, strawberry, lily-of-the-valley—the ‘false’ variety—all bloom in their legions. I am commanded by Lynn and Louise not to deploy the lawn mower. Not just yet. What passes for a lawn here is festooned with purple and white violets—a broad expanse of them—and I am ordered on pain of punishment undisclosed to let them be.

It is my custom on arriving for another season at Boularderie to inquire about passages—who among the Boularderie Islanders I have known all these years have gone to their reward. This year the bell tolls not for my own kind, but for a dog. I am more than a little chagrined to report that Riley barks no more. Riley was one of my two favourite dogs in the whole world, both denizens of the same Boularderie hill. Riley, a diminutive border collie, was a model of congeniality and good nature. I have no difficulty in imagining the substantial grief that Cindy and Jim have endured in having to say farewell to the friend who delivered them abundant joy for fourteen years.

Apart from Riley’s departure I have no sad news to report. Bigador makes good on the promises that led me to abandon balmy Victoria in June. Well, okay, I do admit that with another frost warning from Environment Canada I do wish I’d brought an eiderdown parka to usher in the summer of ’18.