Happy with the Near Horizon

Cape Breton supplied well-nigh-perfect weather for our final day at Big Bras d'Or. Closeup day is never the favourite of a summer season at Bigadore but whatever melancholy might be afoot is abated by a sunny day. We made our final circuit of Dalem Lake immersed in the full spectrum of autumn colours. Closeup duties complete, we were ready to roll by the time Lynn arrived in mid-afternoon to deliver us to the Sydney airport. Having appreciated Dalem at close range in the early morning, I savoured a different view of the lake, from an elevation of ten thousand feet or so, in the late afternoon. The Air Canada Dash 8 flew close enough to Boularderie that I could study the whole island, from Point Aconi to Kempt Head, and pick out neighbourhood landmarks: St. James Church, Dalem, the Seal Island bridge. I offered a silent farewell.

Weather remained generous in Toronto, affording two blithe Indian-summer days for our country-mouse ramblings in the big city. On Friday we spent a half-day at the Royal Ontario Museum with Alice and the kids gaping at 'Ultimate Dinosaurs', the ambitious ROM exhibition of big and small southern-hemisphere dinosaurs: Giganotosaurus, Austroraptor, Futalognkosaurus et al. We rubbed elbows with the Saturday-morning hordes at the St. Lawrence market and walked Michael's Christie Pits neighbourhood, mildly appalled at the signs barring kids from playing street baseball or hockey.

Our Sunday flight from Toronto to Vancouver was uneventful, just the way I like it. We spent a day and a bit with Lexi and Ben, Doug and Allison. This being the west coast in October, the sun didn't shine but that was no deterrent to walking the woods and indulging Lexi's ardour to search for salamanders in the forest duff.

Rain stopped and sunshine broke through the clouds for our ferry passage through Active Pass and the southern Gulf Islands. The passage is very familiar to me but somehow I managed to appreciate the glory as if seeing it for the first time. By the time we reached the Victoria bus depot the rain was back; we were grateful to have Marc collect us for the last leg to Ontario Street.

For the past five months there have plenty of peregrinations to report: the latest cross-country meander, the adventurous fortnight in Iceland, the 'magical history tour' through the Nova Scotia mainland. Now we're happy -- at least for the time being -- to limit ourselves to the near horizon and to wander only as far as hiking boots or bicycles allow.

Awash in Celtic Colours

Celtic Colours overwhelmed Cape Breton and turned us into music gluttons.

Colours bills itself as an international music festival. The claim is a fair one. Apart from the cast of local musical luminaries we were entertained by tunesmiths from the Shetland Islands, Denmark, Ireland, even Finland and Estonia, and by someone from our own Victoria neighbourhood, fiddler-trumpeter extraordinaire Daniel Lapp.

Apart from familiar fiddles and guitars, performers made music using bouzoukis and banjos, harps and harmonicas, pipes and penny whistles, trumpets and tambourines.

Apart from official concerts – there were 46 of those to choose from over a nine-day period – we frequented CBC Radio tapings at Knox Church in Baddeck and followed that up with another daily freebie at the Alexander Bell national historic site.

Without exception, none of the artists cheated their audience – everybody we saw seemed hell-bent on delivering their musical all. Though there wasn't an act we disliked, our top favourites were Irishman John Doyle, Newfoundland band 'The Once' and the aforementioned Daniel Lapp.

By the time the last bow was drawn over the last fiddle string we had seen thirteen events. Perhaps that strikes the gentle reader as a sufficient number but, no, we were a little sad to see the festival end. On the other hand we console ourselves with the knowledge that it is only a twelve-month wait till Celtic Colours #17 takes flight.

Meanwhile hues of another sort – the forest russets, golds and scarlets of autumn – have transformed the green hills of Cape Breton into a Jacob’s coat of intense colour. The swelter of August is but a memory and we are not tempted to revisit the old swimming hole. The woodshed is restocked – a good thing given the demands we put upon our trusty Drolet woodstove. Ice has yet to make its first appearance in the wash basin but on Saturday morning the outside thermometer registered just three degrees; I screwed up my courage to take a shower as a brief snow flurry underscored that summer is gone. We claim that in summer our screened porch is the freshest, airiest, finest bedroom the world has to offer; even so, the autumn chill drove us indoors three weeks ago.

Our 2012 Cape Breton days are numbered and the number is small – three to be precise. On Thursday we fly to Toronto for a three-day visit with nephew Michael and family, then to Vancouver for a day with Lexi, Ben and company. It is nearly five months since we departed Victoria; on or about October 23 we’re eager to pick up where we left off back in May.

Periods of Rain, Sometimes Heavy

August of 2012 in Cape Breton was just about the hottest, sunniest and driest August on record. Relentlessly hot, rainless weather left the rain barrels arid, the roadside spring reduced to a trickle. In sweltering August we exploited the swimmin’ hole almost every day, sometimes twice. Now in late September Mother Nature exacts retribution. If it’s a refreshing dip we’re after we need only step outside; the rain barrels are in constant overflow, Bigadore’s trails negotiable only in gumboots. ‘Periods of rain, sometimes heavy’ is the new weather mantra.

One of the matters Jan and I see completely eye-to-eye about is that the screened porch is the best bedroom in the entire world, availing the freshest air, the brightest starry skies, the fairest night-time soundscapes we ever encounter. Since arriving in June, three months ago, we had slept nowhere else in the building – until last night when a storm blew complacency away. In normal circumstances we have time to install contingent polyethylene storm windows but last night’s guerilla ambush was so sudden that everything in the porch – bed, bedding, bedmates – was drenched almost before we knew what’d hit us. We sought refuge in the drier but not-so-airy sunroom and managed to resume snoring. But here’s the thing: never before has nature allowed us such a long, unbroken stretch in the porch. In a typical year wind, rain or cold would have driven us indoors long before the end of September.

Our store of firewood demonstrates that this year has been one for the books. The woodshed is almost as well-stocked as when we arrived, the woodstove seldom called upon to raise the indoor ambient temperature. But, yes, the Drolet is blazing this morning and I am freshly mindful that it is time I got going on building next year’s fuel supply.

The altered weather offers rewards. The woods deliver a mother lode for amateur mycologists. Never have we seen mushrooms in such abundance and variety as currently arrayed under the neighbouring spruce and fir. Some we know are safe and choice to eat, others are unfamiliar, strangers we dare not ingest without careful consultation of the field guides in the cabin library.

Meanwhile, out on the Great Bras d’Or growing flocks of surf scoters confirm that summer is past, their wing-whistles a benchmark of early fall. Yesterday the first red-throated loon went about its fishy business below the cabin. Bald eagles are backyard birds again, returned from their summer sojourn out around the Bird Islands. The woods are mostly silent now, bereft of the singing warblers and sparrows of early summer, but chattery, roving bands of chickadees entertain us in the birches and mountain-ash out front, blue jays sound the alarums when one finds something new and choice in the compost bins, ravens share thoughtful commentary on the state of their world.

Jan’s little raised garden yields its harvest: tomatoes, beans and all-important basil, essential to the high-voltage pesto much prized in these parts, particularly by me. Batches of green tomato chow and crabapple-rosehip jelly already behind her, Canner Jan has now moved on to her second round of spiced beet-and-onion pickle. We feel wealthy.

Summer was hectic, social and boozy – all very well in season – but we have no complaint that we now have plenty of sober time – especially in the rain – to attend to other priorities. We dedicate hours to improving our bananagrams skills for the next word-war with Lynn and Louise, or to reading, or listening to CBC Radio. We appreciate The Current after breakfast, As It Happens after supper, Ideas later in the evening, and chastise ourselves for allowing opposite-coast distractions to stop us from doing likewise in winter and spring.

Sometimes the CBC payoff is not just ideas but something material. This morning Jan was quick-fingered enough to be the first in line for a pair of tickets to a big literary event at the North River community hall this Saturday. We’re keen about that and also about what’s nest on the order paper: Celtic Colours, the annual music festival celebrated far and wide.

But wait a minute . . . it’s stopped raining, ducks are swimming, gulls are sailing. It’s time to get going.