The Tao of Woodsplitting

I have begun the sweaty but satisfying task of splitting the hummock of birch firewood piled by the woodshed. Apart from delivering what Jan asserts is a more buff-looking right arm, I find that woodsplitting lends itself to useful meditation. While it is important to be mindful of where one aims the 10-pound splitting maul, headspace is left available to contemplate the book I’m currently reading or to imagine the life and times of the ovenbird singing his head off just behind me or perhaps to conceive a new item for the blog. There is also the satisfaction of replacing what is consumed when cold or damp impels us to get a fire going in the cherished Drolet woodstove. Assembling an impressive new stack of firewood for the old woodshed is one of the simple pleasures of a season in the Boularderie woods.

In itemizing all the simple pleasures afforded by summer at Big Bras d’Or one item that moves closer to the head of the list is one I culpably undervalued in my younger years: the community supper. Last week pals Shirley and Carl MacRae were kind enough to allow me to tag along to the legendary Gaelic College codfish dinner. For a lousy fifteen bucks I got to weigh into a big plate of salt cod, whole potatoes, turnip, carrots, with garnish of green tomato chow, cottage cheese and homestyle bread.  Better still, I got to converse with auld acquaintances and chat with folks previously unknown. Best of all, I got to hang out with Jessie Ross, a livewire 102-year-old still of sound mind and body, still living independently in her own home.

Many folks might argue that living to 102 is extraordinarily lucky—who knows, maybe such folks are right—but my own view is that the feat of remaining engaged, positive and upbeat well into one’s second century is a mark not merely of good fortune but of remarkable resilience, even bravery. Jessie took her first breaths at about the time Canada—according to national myth—came of age on the slopes of Vimy Ridge. What combination of circumstances would enable me to be happy at 102? I cannot imagine them. Whatever, Jessie is just such an individual. At the end of our conversation I asked my new friend if she would be willing to submit to a hug. Absolutely, she replied, I don’t get very many of those any more. I departed the event feeling benefited by much more than the plate of codfish and fixings.

Jessie brought to mind the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment who lived exuberantly well into her 123^rd year, outlasting most everyone she ever knew, everyone in her own generation, her own children and—by about a half-century—the man who had bought her Paris apartment on the agreement that she could live there for the rest of her days. From far-flung Victoria, I fell in love with Jeanne when I read something she’d said near the end of her forty-four thousand days, namely that she’d only ever had one wrinkle—and sat on it her whole life. What a grand old gal! Perhaps Jeanne was ready to go by the end but I can’t help but imagine that even after so long a life she must have felt it had all gone by so amazingly fast.

Meanwhile in the here-and-now of Bigador, I happily report that just as Air Canada was about to deliver Jan to McCurdy airport, sunshine supplanted rain. The notion that my better half is the woman for me is verified by this: not just a bringer of better weather, she willingly agreed to head straight from the airport to a certain mosquito-plagued bog near Frenchvale. There we install gumboots, bugshirts and Deep Woods Off for a squishy walkabout among the showy lady’s-slippers I know where to find nowhere else. How gratified I was to see the site unmolested, the orchids as prolific as ever. For good reason, I anoint Jan with the nickname Hawkeye. While I was entirely distracted by the flowers, she found birds too—American redstart, parula, swamp sparrow—and told me where to aim the long lens for a shot of the sparrow. It is a joy to have her at hand once again.

As for the woodpile, well, the newly split product must wait until the well-dried stack at one end of the woodshed has done its appointed duty in the Drolet. Because the stacking of firewood is just about as meditatively rewarding as the splitting of it, I look forward to benefits yet to come.

In Praise of Books and Birch

Perhaps it only seemed as though we were embarked on forty days and forty nights of rain. But with the rain barrels in constant overflow, legions of mushrooms erupting off the cabin deck, sunshine but a distant memory, the mind wandered to Noah and idle thoughts about life aboard the Ark. When not entirely invisible, Kelly’s Mountain was shrouded in mist and fog. Rain banged on the cabin’s tin roof, drowning out the barred owls of the mountain. Sodden shirts and socks hung from the drying rack over the Drolet, disassembled boots and insoles crowded at its base. I lack the vocabulary needed to describe the importance of the stored light and warmth supplied by the birch burning in the woodstove. I felt enhanced gratitude to find unread books on the cabin’s library shelves.

After a month of so-so weather I had read sixteen books, one every couple of days. I happily stumbled on undiscovered territory. Thanks to the books-for-sale rack at the treasured North Sydney library, I discovered a great Canadian novelist, Fred Stenson. I’m ashamed to say I’d never heard of Fred ‘til I found a copy of The Great Karoo available for a buck.  My eye was caught by an image on the dust jacket of mounted Boer War-era soldiers, and a blurb from David Adams Richards, a gloomily great Canadian novelist I do know. “A truly magnificent novel”, Richards asserts, “by one of Canada’s greatest living writers”. Resistance was futile. I read Karoo in a go and was—to resort to cliché—blown away. The novel tells a compelling story of Canadian soldiers—and their horses—ensnared in the South African war at the turn of the 20^th Century. That bit of serendipity led to another, then another. The Florence library branch had a copy of The Trade, a saga of the Canadian fur trade era, 1821-1850. The Trade proved equally compelling, so I asked the lovely ladies at the North Sydney branch to fetch me another Stenson, Who by Fire. It is set in more modern times and relates another gripping story, of an Alberta family ransacked by the gas-extraction industry. Instantly a literary hero of mine, it is hard to imagine after Who By Fire that Stenson, himself a loyal Albertan, is much loved by oil patch executives.

Having journeyed to 1900-era South Africa and the time of the fur trade, I next traveled to the crazed days of the Klondike gold rush. Drifting Home and Klondike were two of the not-yet-read books on the cabin shelves, by irrepressible Pierre Berton. Drifting Home describes two pilgrimages, one the account of Berton’s 1972 expedition down the Yukon River with his family; the other a journey in time to Berton’s boyhood in Dawson City with recollections of his remarkable father. Klondike delivers a cast of hundreds of cheechakos and sourdoughs caught up in the 1898 gold frenzy, a cast reflecting the full spectrum of human triumph and folly.

I sometime walk out of the North Sydney library with twenty pounds of books that may have cost me all of five or ten dollars. At some point in recent years I had found a stash of books by Ronald Wright I had not got round to reading. The silver lining of rainy days at Bigador is that the omission is now remedied. Henderson’s Spear is a terrific read, about a daughter’s search for a father, a Korean War fighter pilot who disappeared in the South Seas in 1953. That led to A Scientific Romance, a novel that delivers the astonished reader on a journey five hundred years into the future to a world devastated by human-induced climate change. Finally I moved on to Wright’s A Short History of Progress, a survey of ancient civilizations brought to ruin by their own blunders, a cautionary account of what needs doing if modern civilization is to avoid the greatest of calamities.

Of course not every hour can be spent reading in front of the warming Drolet. To limber decrepit knees and sore back, I install raingear and head out in the drizzle for Dalem Lake, keeping a lookout for a bird or rain-dappled flower to photograph. Walking my potholed road I needn’t strain my neck to check for birds overhead—I can see what’s there in the mirrors availed by the still puddles along the way. The forecast calls for several more rainy days. What happens when a fella runs out of books?

[This post written July 3.]

Big Day at Big Harbour

Saturday looked to be a guaranteed red-letter day. When Alan MacNeil called to suggest we meet up at the Englishtown Mussel Festival to ingest buckets of choice locally-produced bivalves I said, great, I’m in. Apart from the happy prospect of overindulging in one of my favourite fruits-de-mer, I thought, jee, while I’m at it I’ll head out early for a reconnoitre with another favourite of mine, the gypsum-rich wild lands at some distance from Big Harbour where, long ago, the little car ferry plied back and forth between there and Ross Ferry on Boularderie Island. In 1960 or thereabouts a new highway, the 105, put the ferry out of commission, instantly turning Big Harbour into a backwater. I drove Leo, the trusty Ram pickup, to the end of the traveled section of a gravel road, applied a heavy layer of Deep Woods fly dope, got into the gumboots and headed off with two cameras strapped on board.

Some folks cherish a day with the one-arm bandits at the casino or a meander among the madding crowd at the local mall. For me there is nothing better than a slow ramble in natural surroundings, either in the company of a carefully chosen companion or, as was the case Saturday, all by lonesome. All-by-lonesome is just fine if the weather is blithe, quietude abundant, and Mother Nature generous in her offerings. I set out early enough that I could be guaranteed at least two hours before it was time to head off to the appointed mussel feast with Alan.

In my eyes the Big Harbour back country is beautiful. At the head of the harbour the passerby comes upon a grassy saltwater marsh ringed by eye-catching gypsum bluffs. At a decrepit old bridge now signed “Bridge Closed”—safe for passage on foot if not in heavy pickup—my arrival aroused loud objections from red-winged blackbird, song sparrow and belted kingfisher, all fretting about my proximity to their nests. They couldn’t know it of course, because the hazards posed by H. sapiens are well established, but the gumbooted old fellow passing through posed no threat whatsoever.

On my first visit to Big Harbour, a few years ago, I was pleased to find a fair abundance of the spectacular yellow lady’s-slipper. On Saturday I hoped I might be in time for the peak of the 2019 season. After a while I turned on a trail, likely the bed of an old spur road, and found a mother lode: literally hundreds crowding both sides of the old trail. I could not have been better pleased had it been gold coins rather than yellow orchids I’d stumbled upon.

About an hour into the ramble a cricket sounded in my pocket, my chosen ring tone for the hand-me-down cell phone by which I stay in touch with the world at large. It was Alan, calling with bad news: ‘turns out our musselfest was a cruel hoax. There was no bivalve bonanza last year, nor would there be one this year either. Well, sure, it was disappointing to learn that mussels dripping with melted butter were not on my near horizon after all but there was consolation: I needn’t rush the interlude at Big Harbour, I could hang out as long as I pleased. Terrific.

I walked a piece of the old road to MacAulays Hill and Plaister Mines, sharing the route with frogs—both leopard and wood—big swallowtail butterflies, mating blue damselflies, wolf spiders et al. There were birds too: ovenbird, mourning warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet, hairy woodpecker and yellow-bellied sapsucker. I heard an unfamiliar call, looked up to find a hawk, voicing anxiety about my presence. The bird allowed enough of a look to get me thinking it might be broad-winged, an uncommon breeder in Cape Breton.

The old road passes by several pothole ponds that have the look of Karst holes, watery sinkholes found in limestone regions such as Big Harbour. In one of them, less than a hundred yards across, I was pleased to find both ring-necked and wood duck, apparently willing to share the advantage of raising families in surroundings suited to their needs.  

After four hours or so the hunger pangs that would have been eased at Englishtown were growing clamorous, so I decided it might be time to bid farewell to Big Harbour, generous as it had been in supplying entertainment and edification.

Among all the living things encountered in four hours at Big Harbour I saw no others of my own kind. I had the lady’s-slippers and all the rest entirely to myself. It was not a disappointment.