Winter wonderland

As I write this post, at 6 p.m. on a Saturday, it's still 6 degrees C outside.  I intended to work today, but there's no way to sit in front of the computer when it's spring in February.  Lately there've been winter storm warnings aplenty for the Maritimes but -- knock on wood -- the storms have missed us here.   There's almost no snow in my backyard and -- seriously! in February! -- I've started to look for patio furniture for my deck.  On a sunny day, a person could definitely wrap up in a sleeping bag, recline and read while soaking up the rays.  (Just like I used to do on the deck at my cabin in the Yukon...)

My new friend Kate, who keeps bees, says they were out and about today... a sign that this winter's cold snaps are behind us.  Cold snaps??  People here are quite clear that this has been an exceptional winter, but me, I'm waiting for winter to arrive.  And though I would miss winters if they were all like this one, I'm enjoying the novelty of no winter for a change, and sustained spring in February.

When I feel lonely, as I do sometimes having been here a mere four months, I like to hop in the car and go exploring... which is what I did today.  First, I drove about 20 minutes west down the coast, on the Shore Road to Tynemouth Creek, where a good-sized creek -- we'd call it a river in the Yukon -- meets the ocean, just around the corner behind the grey gravel bar to the upper right of this picture.

The main reason for the photo, though, is the huge squared timbers lying in the mud, the largest of which are at least two feet square, hand-hewn.  The site appears to have been a wharf at one time...  in fact, there's still a lobster boat wharf a few hundred feet or so farther inland from this spot, obvious from the lobster traps piled high.  It's a perfect spot for for a boat harbour, the creek carving out a navigable channel that's sheltered behind the gravel bar.

The white crests mid-stream on the water indicate standing waves, where the outgoing creek water meets the incoming ocean swell.  They're small waves, but they tell a story of what's going on in the water.  Just up from here was a spot along the shore where river ice and seaweed floated side by side, another sign of the waters' co-mingling.

Up the hill from this spot is an old house that appears to date from the late 1800's (I'm getting to know the architecture a little...), still occupied.  My imagination took off, visualizing catch after catch unloaded at this secluded spot.  It must have been a prosperous site in its day; many hands would have been needed to build the wharf and it would have harboured several boats.

From there, I drove across the covered bridge over Tynemouth Creek and via back roads, took the long way back to St. Martins.  There, I went to Mac's Beach, the most public of the local ones, which I haven't visited before.  There was a scallop boat out in the bay -- which I refer to as a scallop boat only because it's scallop season.  What do I know about fishing boats??  If it were lobster season, I would have called it a lobster boat.  Under today's conditions, I wished I were on it, looking in at the town instead of out at the boat... although a couple of days ago, about an hour to the southwest, a scallop boat was lost with two men aboard.  It makes you think.

Mac's Beach is a pebble beach, unlike the sand beach near my house which the tide seems to sweep clean of debris.  The pebbles seem better able to capture the ocean's artifacts.  I picked up shells and a shard of blue-and-white pottery to send to a friend in the Yukon.  Because the tides are so high here, you can literally watch the tide go in or out by observing the reach of the waves on the beach.  Here, the tide was receding... and as so often seems to be the case, I was struck by the shapes and patterns of the beach geography.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but how can a picture do justice to the sound where it was taken?  The portion of the beach in the following photo is relatively steep, so when the waves recede, the water moves fast enough to lift the pebbles and rattle them together.  No wonder every stone on the beach is rounded.  If I had closed my eyes, I might have thought I was in a concert hall; it sounded exactly like applause, building slowly at first, then resolving into a thousand clapping hands, a sustained, standing ovation, before gradually fading away.   It's one of the benefits of being alone as much as I am these days: you notice these things.  What a miraculous world we live in!