In search of Glooscap (and bears)

OhmyGod! What a long gap between blog entries.

Queenie hadn’t realised how long, so busy she was being the domestic diva.

June 18th…. A beautiful day….

It’s been raining pretty much since, apart from a couple of nice days.

So what’s been happening?

Well, Himself arrived home a few days after that Saturday. And got Himself a job within a couple of weeks, so now we’re setting out on that greatest of all journeys in life… shacking up together properly.

It’s going well so far. Very polite. Very nice.

Very nice, actually…(

And we’re going house-hunting soon, as the lease is up on this house soon and we’d like to get a place of our own.

Everyone say ‘aaahhhh’.

What else?

Work has been crazy busy. The Government herded us all back into the House for three weeks of budgets and Question Time and all kinds of complicated business when we just want to take a week off and lie in the sun.

If there was any sun to lie in.

Lotsa fog here at the moment. The Atlantic is still too cold and the air is too warm and Halifax is too near the confluence of both so we have misty mornings every day. Dreamy damp fronds drifting amongst the high rise buildings of downtown Halifax as people grumble their way to work.

I’m not too pushed while I’m in work, particularly since the warmth outside increases the blast of cold air inside my building. But I like my weekends to be a bit nice.

First weekend Himself was back we headed down to the island to catch up with folks. We had two barbeques over the course of the weekend, one at a reasonable 3pm on Sunday afternoon, and the other at a far more unreasonable 11pm on the previous Saturday due to the inability of the host to put down his beer until I turned up and dragged his drinking buddy away from him.

Men!! Tsk!!

And me after slaving over a hot Frenchie’s all day.

Frenchie’s is the chain store, with branches spread throughout Nova Scotia that sells remaindered high street and designer gear from the states. You go into a large warehouse, which is full of huge bins marked ‘Women’s pants’ or ‘Men’s shirts’ or ‘Evening Wear’ and you rummage until you faint through last year’s Gap, Ralph Lauren, Liz Clairborne, and other nice brands.

It’s two bucks for a top, three bucks for jeans, skirts and dresses, and two - three bucks for bags, belts, shoes, etc.

This is why Nova Scotians look at you like you’re insane if you buy clothes in a boutique. Particularly clothes marked ‘new arrivals’.

This is also why Nova Scotian fashion is about two years behind the rest of the modern world.

But so long as you don’t leave the province it’s okay.

So I got Himself an entire new wardrobe for less than sixty bucks.

For which he was suitably grateful when he sobered up.

Next weekend was Canada Day when Canadians go camping so being good little Canadians we went CAMPING!! With our new exciting tent and stove and toasting rack and other exciting camping stuff that I bought from Angel before she went out West.

Camping in the Bear Woods. Which are really called the Cobequid Mountains. I was very brave. But there wasn’t a bear in sight.

They are really beautiful, even though they are just big hills and not mountains at all. We did the Glooscap Trail. Glooscap is the Mik Ma’q god and he lived at the top of the Minas Basin, which is at the head of the Bay of Fundy. The Mik Ma’q believed that the fermenting waters of the Bay’s high tides and the tidal bore that runs up the Shubenacadie river were evidence of his presence in the area.

The landscape on one side of the Basin is very Irish, rolling green hills covered in a wonderful spread of wildflowers, hedgegrows and willow trees, small rivers and winding roads. Lots of cattle and horses in the fields; the only difference being that the farmhouses are all woodframed and the barns are all big red Dutch gabled wood barns.

It was the closest thing to Hobbiton I’ve ever seen.

Then we crossed through Truro, which is a big, bustling market town at the crossroads of Nova Scotia and headed west into the Cobequid side of the basin, where the landscape is more Canadian. The Cobequid Mountains are covered in Nova Scotian mixed forest, and roll gently down to wide red sand beaches that are a distinction of the Bay of Fundy.

The sky was blue blue blue, and together with the red sand and the green hills, it made for a most typical Nova Scotian landscape.

The wind was too southward (pronounced suthurd) to camp on the beach, according to the Old Man of the Sea, so we found a gentle little curve of riverbank with a nice copse of trees to camp in and a wide pebble beach to build a fire on, and set up for the weekend. We had such a lovely time hanging out and cooking steaks, making coffee and sitting by the fire drinking beer and looking at the stars and then the bloody RAIN came and ruined it so we had to go home.

But I really enjoyed our first camping trip in the Cobequid Mountains and shall definitely return.

This week it was back to work work work although it is only a four day week and Saturday is Queenie’s BIRTHDAY.