Archive for September, 2015
Creak and Sway
after a while, the creak of the sailboat rigging becomes simply the sound one expects to hear. The gentle sway of the boat is with you every sleeping momeent, and then every waking moment, whether you are on land or not. I have nearly gotten used to the way grocery stores sway around me as I buy fresh fruit.
I have perrhaps never tasted a nectarine before. And perhaps never a pear. The taste of the fruit here, piicked out of their backyards and brought to market. I cannot describe it, save for imagine a pear with twice the flavour you were expecting, and not a trace of the just-about-to-rot you may have gotten used to at the Albertan grocery stores. Fruit is picked when ready here, and consumed shortly thereafter. We have yet to see a mega market in Croatia. There are Konzum stores, small one room affairs with a small selection of house type wares, fruit and yogurt. Bread is fresh every morning, and croissants usually have apples, jam, or best of all: chocolate baked right inside.
Leaving Nova Scotia
Posted by Nadia in Getting There, Musings on September 23, 2015
The cool breeze came off the bay, finding it’s way through the trees to the clearing around Mum’s house. The tide was in, and the breeze always seemed to rise with the tide. The day was chilly, not too cold really, but the breeze and the humidity seemed to conspire. My toes were cold. The grass was still wet with dew from the night before.
That was one thing about Nova Scotia. The dew is a nightly occurrence, and in far greater amounts than an Albertan might be used to. If you wanted to wash your boots, simply walk through the grass early in the morning. And on a day like this, even late in the morning.
Dew makes a good environment for slugs and mushrooms and maybe crickets too. I’m not sure about the crickets, but there are a lot of them here, and I don’t recall such bugs in such amounts in Alberta. So crickets must like moisture. Their creee-ree-ree song filled the nights during my time here. I will miss them, I think. Tonight I fly for London.
Finally the dew dried, more or less, and we were able to mow the lawn. I drove the balky ride mower around the large lawn, urging it up the small hills, and clinging to the steering wheel during the downhill plunges. About a quarter of the way through the lawn, Mum came over and showed me how to drop the mower deck to the height she wanted the grass cut at. It appeared I had not actually lowered the deck, but simply turned on the blades. I wasn’t mowing the grass, I was just scaring it.
With the deck properly lowered, the grass actually got cut, and I could see the difference much easier. Amazing how I had just gotten used to the height of the grass, as it slowly grew. Oh yeah, lawns are supposed to be shorter than fields.
Dinner was a quiet affair, both my mother and I aware of the dwindling hours. I was looking forward to the lnext step of my adventure, but was sad to leave my mumm. It has been a good month here, cleaning up the property, getting rid of the detrius of a lifetime. Once the last of the glass bottles that will sell have been sold, the major debris of my grandfather and grandmother and step grandmother gone. Only the house he built left, the house my mum grew up in. And the various knickknacks in the house, of course. But the old workshop/barn he had loved and fixed so many things in? The barn that eventually became the graveyard of so many unfinished projects, and so many poorly understood items, relegated to the racoon infested reaches of the barn….. cleaned out. We managed to fill a dumpster with the old cast offs, the mouse infested clothing, the chewed and mouldering books, the old coats and old beds and old frames…. so much of it gone.
It makes me realize how the previous generation would live, how they would gather stuff and repair things, and keeps things working. Which is all well and good, until the world moves on… or the tinkerer dies. And then all that is left is the bits and bobs, and the memories of those who loved them. That seems to be the nature of the world; nothing ever stands still.
Many of the useful things have been sold off at the garage sales we had. Hopefully they will find use again at the hands of those who still tinker, and have the inclination to use them. Hopefully they will bring delight, and become memories in a new generation.
The mower makes short work of the grass. I make short work of dinner. Now only the flight is before me. The kilometers of pavement slip by, and then I am at security. Bag off, belt off, metal not detected. One last look over my shoulder, one last wave to where Mum stands, looking for this last glimpse. We mime hugging each other, then I sweep up the stairs towards my gate.
Nothing ever stands still. The sweet, the bitter, it all passes, and I move on.
Bridges of Halifax
Posted by Nadia in Getting There on September 20, 2015
Appointments to keep in the city, I rose early and breakfasted with Mum. She has a habit of waking up at 6am, and sadly it is catching. Oh well, she makes breakfast pretty much every morning as well, so it is working out!
I double checked the address in Halifax. I booked an appointment to get my legs waxed before the trip to Croatia. Since we will be sailing, and hopefully it will be lovely sunning weather, I don’t really want fuzzy legs! And using the review website Yelp, I was able to find a well-regarded salon in Halifax, with quite reasonable prices. The only downside is that I have to drive into Halifax downtown, which is about an hour away from Mum’s acreage. Ah well, it is a good highway. And it looks like the downtown area is on the same side of the harbour as I currently am, so I don’t need to worry about crossing bridges which may or may not be toll bridges. Plugging the address into mum’s gps navigator, and assuring her I would treat her car with all due care and respect, I took off for the city.
Rolling along the highway, scanning the radio stations for anything that catches my ear, I found a country station playing the hits from the 90’s. Ahh, the music I grew up with. I hummed along, breaking into song every once in a while. I don’t really like to sing, as the subtle nuances of music, like being in tune, are usually lost on me. But sometimes in the car, where no one else must suffer through my warbling, I do indeed sing, making up some of the words I don’t know, and humming the rest. There is musical talent in my family tree, of that there is no doubt. Too bad it missed me!
The kms slipped by, as they are wont to do. Soon the rocky forest bordering the highway gives way to houses, getting closer and closer together. The nav advised me to take the exit coming up, and the concrete ramp soars over the highway. Saturday morning, traffic is sparse, and the sun gleamed off the water below me. The path on the map turns, I clicked over the turn signal, followed the route laid out in maroon on the little dash map. Hmm, I didn’t expect to be turning back along the direction I had been taking, but I suppose a little back and forth is typical of city driving here, with its hills and valleys. One more turn, and the road sloped gently downward. It appeared to be a fairly main road, so hopefully that would lead me into the downtown core.
Sure enough, the calm harbour of downtown Halifax appeared before me… on the other side of the water. A bridge arched over the harbour, elegant lines spanning the considerable distance. It looked firm, well designed… and expensive to build. As I came down off the hill and started up the slope of the bridge, it became apparent that the highway flyover led to the opposite side of the harbour from the downtown core, the easier to approach side. And I was on a toll bridge.
I slowly rolled up to the gates. Where was the one that said credit card? I had that trusty bit of plastic with me. Change… change… express pass….no credit card lane! I picked one next to a toll booth with a person inside, pretty much at random. The little basket clung to the pillar, demanding my exact change of one loonie, no more and no less. I dug through my change purse… two quarters and two dimes. The padded arm blocks my path, a little message displayed on a screen beside it PAY NOW. I flipped up the centre console of Mum’s car. That’s where change would live, right?!? No luck. I glanced nervously in the rear view mirror, and sure enough, a car is just pulling up behind me. No escape! No change! I looked around, feeling the pressure and completely at a loss for the correct course of action.
Just then, the toll booth operator in the next lane catches my eye. He has a resigned look to his face, a slight lift of the eyebrow and a twist of the mouth. Pushing a button on his booth dashboard, he waves me ahead. I glanced forward to see the arm raising in the air, overridden my the compassion of the toll booth operator, or perhaps just his practicality. I waved, a little abashed but very grateful, and took the course of action that had been presented to me, slipping under the arm. The road led over the sweep of the bridge, water glimmering below, boats moving slowly in the channel.
Whew, made it to the other side. And in good time for my appointment!
It is always challenging to navigate a new place, even if you actually take the time to prepare. Sometimes, it is just luck that keeps me going, and the compassion of strangers. That human touch makes travel possible, I would be so bold as to say. There are so many times when the compassion of those more familiar with the situation has been the only thing to carry the day. From the market clerk in Zagreb Croatia who showed me how to mark the fresh produce so they could be checked out, all without a word of common language, to the ticket seller at a train station in small town France who showed me how to validate my ticket, to the toll booth operator who waved me through in Halifax. It is the compassion of our fellow humans that makes it all possible.
On my way back home, I picked up a guy hitchhiking in the city. It is notoriously difficult to get a ride in a city, but he had been left by his buddies after a night of partying. I dropped him off 20 km down the road, at the bus station in his hometown.
A little act of compassion can make the next step possible on a strangers journey.
Bounty of the Land
Burrow into the green tunnel, pushing vines aside gently. Crouch and scuttle along the ground. Stop, kneeling, and there is another cluster of ripe red globes, hanging among the green leaves. These ones are like tigers, faint green stripes marking their dusky red surface. I grasp the tomato and it parts from the vine with a whisper of leaves. A bee drones by above me, and then he leaves the plastic shelter of the greenhouse tunnel. I drop the tomato into the pouch I made at the bottom of my shirt. As long as I stay crouched, the shirt stays pouched. Reaching again, I snag a half seen tomato screened by lush green leaves. This one is so ripe it has split. Well, can’t have that in the pouch, so I bite into it. Juice flows into my mouth, sun warmed and ripe as only fruit on the verge of spoiling just before your hand plucked it can be. Delicious. I can almost feel the sunlight sustaining my flesh, the dirt nurturing my body.
The next plant over is a different variety of tomato. This one glows with a deep red. Hmm, slightly different taste, a subtle difference of texture. Supermarket tomatoes taste all the same; in the garden, every plant has its own character, every variety its own nuances. I might as well never have eaten a tomato before, save to establish a proper frame for appreciating these, sun ripened, picked at the peak of their fruiting, straight into my mouth. There is basil growing nearby, planted along the base of the tomatoes, as complimentary in growing as they are in eating. I pluck a crisp leaf and pop it into my mouth with the next tomato, a little orange globe perfect for one bite eating. Divine.
The city seems very far away right now. What am I supposed to be doing? Oh right, filling the bag my mum is holding, not my belly!
I unload my makeshift shirt-pouch into the bag, and pick some bunches of basil to join them. The tomato plants fairly groan with the weight of the tomatoes growing on their vines bending them earthward again. The fine red soil dusts those hanging lowest. I rub my hands together. My fingertips are sticky with a yellow dust. Pollen? Residue from the vines themselves, as I gripped them to gently remove the fruit without breaking the vine? I don’t know, I don’t know so very much about the food I take for granted will appear in my grocery store, grainy of flesh and bland of flavour.
We are at a coffee house, a small farm, and education centre, a place to learn what food is and how it must live. This place is all these things. Just off the main highway 101 running from the Bay of Fundy across the peninsula of Nova Scotia to the port city of Halifax facing the great Atlantic ocean, this ambitious place exists. Just Us Coffee, serving fair trade coffee, making chocolate, offering a few foods made from local produce, including the bounty of this garden.
We are in the greenhouse of the woman who runs the garden, educates those seeking organic food information, and engages the curious through their taste buds. The Tasting Garden is nearby, orderly rows of plants identified by neat placards. A small wooden sign is pushed into the earth near some small tomatoes, inviting the walkers of the garden to Try Me! in cheerful hand painted letters. It was at this row, as i was dusting off tiny delicious tomatoes that we met Sandy, the woman of the garden. Sandy invited us to pick freely in her greenhouse, as she said she couldn’t possibly get to all the tomatoes that had grown this year. So I found myself tunnelling thru the green rows, plucking the red tomatoes. When we finally emerged, Sandy refused any payment for the bounty, nor any tomatoes picked by us for her own self. No, she was happy to see the delight we took in the tomatoes, and insisted we take all we wanted.
I have found this to be the case in Nova Scotia. The people here are so friendly, so helpful. Sure, they gossip, but what small town doesn’t? And that is really what Novoa Scotia seems to be; a series of small towns along a few major highways, the fresh ocean breeze everywhere. People here reuse their stuff, sometimes to a degree that seems ludicrous to my Albertan ways of consumership. During the garage sale my mother and I had, I was amazed several times by the resourceful people buying the items for sale, and explaining how they would turn what I perceived to be scarcely better than junk into useful items. Reuse was everywhere, and the old stuff was especially prized for its old fashioned standards of workmanship.
This valley where my mother currently has a house is lush. Farms take up most of the landscape, and small farm stands are frequently seen along the roadways. Drive up, and a small stand crouches at the base of the family’s lands, stocked with the latest harvest. More often than not, no one is around, only the food and a small metal container requesting exact change. The prices are marked; choose your food and pay appropriately. The difference in taste is pretty hard to miss, once you get home. Some of the beets are scraped, some of the apples bruised. This is the food that doesn’t make it to the supermarket with it’s expectations of perfection. This is the food for eating, not looking at. What matter if the beet needs a little dirt in a scrape cut out of it before cooking? What matter of an apple grown lopsided due to being pushed up against a nearby tree branch? Or a little dirt on a basil leaf?
This food bears the marks of the land it grew in, the marks of the hands that harvested it. This food is real, it is local, and our dollars support our neighbours, not the companies that would make a fertile seed an illegal thing. This food is alive in a way I hardly appreciated a decade ago. In this valley, such food is commonplace, and the natural way to do things. The humid air enables such tremendous growth, the soil sustains such thriving plants. The farmers still live here, you can still meet them. You can still pick your own tomatoes, and for free when your neighbour has too many.
Harvest time in Nova Scotia is a lovely time to be here.
Willmore 4
Eyes cracking open, still looks dim out there. Back to sleep, must be early. Wake again, surely it must be time to move, tho it is still quite dim out.
When we finally crawled out of the dewy tent, it became clear that the mountains and the overcast day had conspired to make it feel earlier than it actually was. We turned on Justin’s cell phone briefly, and discovered it was actually 10am already! Oh man, there goes our early start. But now that the sun was finally peaking above the gentle mountains around us, the tent could dry. It was quite humid here, and the lightweight tent I had just gotten had a rather airtight fly, so the little venting that happened under the edge of the fly hadn’t been enough to combat the condensation. The inside of the fly was dripping with it. We hung our gear on the rails of the roundpen, and got to heating water for breakfast. Justin had some vitamins and protein shakes he had brought for breakfast as well. The vitamins promised energy and focus, and with the vitamin B content in them, I didn’t doubt it! Sure enough, as we were cramming all our gear back into our bags, I could feel the buzz, like I’d just had a really strong coffee. Or three. We “saddled” up, and left the picturesque cabin, walking deeper into the mountains.
It was around this time that we discovered Justin’s phone hadn’t been all too great at saving the map we had hoped to use. It could find our location, but on a screen of white, that did little good. We still had the topo map I had bought, showing the hiking trail we were on in bold dashed lines. Of course, it showed the path we had taken off the main path in a similar dashed line, and the start of that path had been no more than a couple reflectors on some trees. And that was in the park, where they take care to mark such things. We were still in the park, but our proposed trail led us back out of Jasper park, and back into the Willmore Wilderness Area.
We climbed out of the little valley we had overnighted in, passing an established camp announced on the signs as Wolf Pass Camp. The rusty firepit ring was overgrown with grass. A sign pointed to the toilet, which I wanted to use, but I lost the trail to it in a thick stand of bush. Ah well, those bushes looked like they needed some watering. We swung our packs back on, and pressed on. The map indicated our path went over a relatively low pass, not quite breaking out of the treeline, with a small lake nestled in the top, and then down a gentle slope on the other side. there was a couple mountain ranges there, creating another bowl of a valley. Following the valley to the north would have us meet up with another dotted line, Moosehorn Trail, with a lake half a km east of that junction. That was the intended lunch spot. Then it should be an easy hike down the valley to the gravel road we came in on. We would camp somewhere in that valley, and then carry on the last handful of km to the gravel access road, and hopefully hitch a ride back to the car. All told, it looked like about a 40 km loop, give or take. We were looking forward to lunching at this lake.
We crested Wolf Pass, and the small lake nestled in its saddle turned out to be a marshy spot. We watched insects skim across the surface, and I was glad for the water purification pump I had. I know algae is nature’s water filter, but I didn’t fancy bug eggs in my drinking water. The path kept almost disappearing in the long grass overhanging it, as we skirted the edges of the pond and headed down the other side. Shortly after the crest, we passed back into Willmore. Judging from the tracks, the moose and the sheep were the only ones keeping this trail from fading away. We yelled to let the moose and bear both know that we were in their valley, and snaked down the other side. A small creek ran along, sometimes disappearing into the earth, sometimes spreading out into a shoe trapping mossy swamp. Although the day was warm, we both wore our long pants, fending off the ever hungry mosquitoes and the skin stinging branches.
Sooner than expected, we came to a well established path meeting the rough trail we had been following. In the dead and gnarled tree right before us, a weathered moose antler had been jammed into the branches. Well! That was quick, but we had evidently reached the Moosehorn. We turned left or east onto it, intending to go down valley. Justin said perhaps we ought to at least look at the lake, since it was our lunch spot, even tho it was half a km down the right turn of the trail, to the west. Might as well, we were so close! So we turned around, and went along the new well established trail, to the lake.
Or so we thought.
Willmore 3
We waded across the grassy meadow, eventually finding the faint shade of a path. Walking gamely toward the reflective triangle, the path became more pronounced, eventually becoming a respectable path, if little used. Winding thru the trees, we marvelled at the variety of trees, and the lush underbrush. A small stream chuckled off to our right, the bushes greener in that direction.
I looked down, and saw a rather sizeable pile of bear crap. Sure enough, there was some moss dug up a short way further, evidence of the bear digging for bug dinner. We started looking around rather nervously, and called repeatedly, yelling “YO BEAR!” in a carrying voice. The general theory being that a bear will do its best to avoid you if it kows you are about. Although we continued to see bear sign, we didn’t see any bears. We would pass a pile of poop on the trail, then half a km further on or less, we would see another. I became convinced that this was the bears way of defining its territory. I as always a little disheartened to find another pile of bear poop soon after, leading me to conclude we had passed into another bears territory.
After another climb up a steep hill, leving me panting and Justin waiting patiently for me to catch up (even tho he had the heavier bag, dammit) we wound our way down the flank of a hill and confronted a split rail fence. It was the first human thing we had seen in about 3 hours, so I was surprised. We crawled under it, and shortly thereafter found an alpine cabin couched in the high end of a valley,commanding a beautiful view. The cabin looked snug and dry, and very welcoming in the lowering sun. We could just see the stovepipe twinkling in the last rays of the sun. Such a welcoming sight to the traveller at the end of a 20km hike. Sadly, we had not made any arrangements to rent the cabin from the alpine club, so had no keys, and the cabin was destined to remain locked to us. We did set up camp in the round pen nearby, where they must keep their horses. It appeared no one had used the pen in a couple of years, the grass and weed mix being lush. It looked quite inviting, tho we did discover the greenery hid the slowly softening churned earth. No matter, we were in the pen, and Justin said we could put up the rails across the gate. I’m pretty sure he was humoring me, and my nerves, but I must say that it set my mind at ease to be behind a fence that night.
The mosquitoes were quite bad at dusk, as we were heating water for our dinner. We ended up putting on all our pants, our rain gear, toques, and face wraps. This discouraged the bugs, but Justin managed to clap mosquitoes out of the air while the water was on. By the time we ate, he had a significant pile of small bodies at his feet.
Justin dug a little circle of sod up, and we scavenged some deadfall (and soon-to-fall) wood to make a tidy little blaze. We roasted some bannock I had prepared, not really being sure if it would work. It did, rather well! We mixed a very small amount of water into the flour mixture I had packed, and managed to get it to wrap on green preheated sticks. Then we smeared some ghee on it. About the time we got the hang of it, we were out of dough. That was fine, as we were exhausted by this point, and dropped into bed with hardly a goodnight hug. The bugs had relented sometime during our fire, tho we did have to put a few out of our misery in the tent. Fire out, moquitoes executed, sleeping bags zipped tight, we fell asleep pretty darn quickly. There’s your remedy for tossing and turning: walk 20km in fear of bears with a 30 to 40 pound bag on your back,then fight mosquitoes for your dinner. I slept quite well.
Trash or Treasure in Nova Scotia
Posted by Nadia in Trash/Treasure on September 3, 2015
Never fear, the adventure of the Willmore backpacking trip will continue. In the meantime, I have made my way to Avonport, Nova Scotia. Here, I will be assisting my mum in cleaning out the little house she grew up in, the barn that is falling down, the little barn she put up because everything else was full of stuff, and the garage, which is not too bad at all.
She did agree that a dumpster was likely a wise expense, as the little barn in the picture is stuffed dangerously sunken floor to mouldering roof from “treasures” that someone else thought was worth keeping. And that the racoons have just loved.
My mother and I have wildly different views on what is worth keeping, and what is simply old trash. I practiced the phrase “Just because it’s old doesn’t mean its worth keeping or valuable” countless times the last time I helped her clean up a house. Surprisingly, I have only used it twice so far. Of course, its only the second day as well.
So! For your entertainment, may I present the Trash or Treasure game!
One of these items is trash, and one of these is treasures, at least fit for the garage sale. Can you determine which?
Thermometer
Dolly
Get Well Creepaziod
Armrests and Airplanes
Posted by Nadia in Getting There on September 3, 2015
Check in online 24 hour before my flight? Don’t mind if I do! I like using the Westjet app to check in, and to get a scan code for a ticket, right on my phone. I’m not gonna lose my phone, so that way I won’t lose my ticket.
At that time, I can choose my seat for no extra charge. Choose before, and it seems like you have to pay. I keep hearing that there is more leg room in the exit row, and it looks like a window seat in such a row is free, so I choose it. One last dinner, picked straight from Lindsey’s garden, and we are off to the airport. I have a craving for chocolate or some such dessert, so we stop at the Purple Perk on the way out. Suitably trendy, and they even have wraps. We get one to go, and a piece of pie to share, and that’s about the time I start getting stressed about my departure time. I decided to carry on my luggage, and have already checked in, so all I have to do is security and make my way to my gate. Plane boards at 10 pm. We are downtown Calgary. It is 9:20. I may have made a mistake, despite Lindsey asking if I was sure about going for dessert. She lets me drive her car, and doesn’t even stress about me going 10 over the limit on the deerfoot, which appears to be at least the norm. I bail out of the car, last minute hugs, and hustle into security. No prob, I am a pro at this. Yeah, I forgot to take off my belt. Whoops, there is my phone left in the tray after I grab the rest of my stuff. Good thing there is a guard there to call my attention to it, as I am walking away. Ok, stride towards my gate. Wait, counting down? Turn around, skirt a construction zone, walk thru a door advising US travellers to have their passports ready, and I make it to my gate. Phew, just enough time for a bathroom break and a water bottle fill, then they are boarding exit row people first. Another perk! I should choose exit row more often!
I assure the stewardess that I feel capable of opening the exit door after she instructs me on how to do so, should the need arise. I am pretty sure chances are slim I will have to make such a choice, as airplanes are one of the safest ways to travel, and in the case of a crash, death is almost certain anyways. Ahh, there is more leg room here! Neat! And the seat beside me remains empty, as we taxi and takeoff. Great, time to stretch out…. what’s this? The armrests in the exit row don’t lift?!? Noooo! What have I done? Exit row is terrible!
After some fitful tossing in the seat, trying to find some sleep, I finally remember why the seat back table. I have tried to sleep on those before,, but usually am co close to the seat ahead that I can hardly get my head down to the table, let alone stretch my back out. But wait, this iis exit row! Just maybe…
Sure enough, in this row it works. I enjoy a fitful nap on the seatback tray. Once we begin to descend, I eat my wrap, and blink some bleary semblance of wakefulness in to my eyes. Deplane, and there is my mum, waiting to meet me. In respect to the early hour, and my complete lack of being a morning person, no matter the time zone, Mum is reserved in her greeting.
Hello Nova Scotia!
Wherever you are, Be There 