The first springtime hike was uphill - finally!

We went on the best hike today. We go most Sundays, but this one I researched properly and it was a winner - it actually had an UP bit.

That's one of the things I miss most about Ireland - walking in the Wicklow mountains, or in the Kerry mountains, or the Mayo mountains. There are no mountains in Nova Scotia. Nothing you have to climb for forty heart bursting minutes until you get up onto a bit of a ridge and see a view and have a breather before the next leg-destroying six miles. In the rain.

Here, it's all flat marked trail.

B-o-r-i-n-g...

But I searched and searched and searched and found the Salmon River trail.

One of the things I love about Nova Scotia is that this trail is four miles outside Preston, the African Nova Scotian community on the edge of Dartmouth. So it is less than forty minutes from the house and still it is pure back country.

The first part of the hike is a scramble over dead trees littering the lakeside and a haul across an old bridge that's been pretty much destroyed by the winter. The lake is still frozen but all around the sound of the ice cracking and splitting and LEAVING could be heard. Then it was straight up for twenty minutes, up an old Mi'k Maw trail onto the top of a barren.

A barren is a burren with moss, by the way.

This was like a mini-Ayers Rock. When we got to the top, we had a spectacular view of the valley. Bald eagles are really common here apparently, but it was still a little early for them to be fishing. Next time, hopefully.


The sun was really warm at this stage, so we sat for a while and enjoyed the view and had some water - first time I needed water on a hike since I got here - and then we made our way down to the river.

It is unbelieveably peaceful to be making your way along a river bank trail that exists because people have been making their way along it for various reasons, mostly involving food, for ten thousand years at least, safe in the knowledge that this bit of the earth hasn't changed all that much in the meantime.

As we were walking along the riverbank, Himself started to notice a plethora of gnawed sticks.

Beavers, he said.

I love beavers. They're really industrious for absolutely no reason in the world. They spend all their time cutting down trees to dam rivers that don't need to be dammed because trees are going to fall into them eventually anyway.

No wonder they're the Canadian national emblem...

Then we rounded the corner and there it was, a bit scruffy after the winter, but a big dam all the same (picture down a bit further on the blog). Looks like the guys have a lot of gnawing to do this summer.

Then we saw a pair of wild ducks poncing around in the river, so Himself went to scare them into flight, so I could catch them on the exciting new action zoom lens. Despite his best efforts, they ignored him and sailed past in a stately manner.

Not being used to humans and all that.

It wasn't until we were halfway up the river bank that we met three other people. One of whom was our neighbour Lyse. We always bump into Lyse on these hikes. She of course had hiked about fifteen miles already, but we like to stop and take photos and potter and collect gnawed stuff etc., so we are a bit slower. She was with Gear Guys, who had their GPS locaters attached to matching shoulder straps on their hi-tech Mountain Equipment Co-op rucksacks. They were spotting fly-fishing spots for next week, when the season opens.

Then we stopped for lunch, which was great today because Leonard had organised it.

Walking is a fun time for Leonard and as he is from India originally (although he has been Canadian since he was a teenager) fun involves interesting food and drinks. Hooray! We had to stop him bringing nice bottles of white wine on the walks as I was getting too sloshed to walk properly and starting to fall over a lot. Which I don't like as it is supposed to be the time of the week when I am healthy.

Today he brought samosas and other interesting Indian foods and oranges and (heavy) bottles of Orangina for our lunch .

Because his daughter makes Christmas candles from the bottles.

I work for Leonard as a researcher and he is my favourite politician on the planet ever and I love Leonard (but don't tell him) even when he's annoying me to death, by making me do work I don't want to do because I am lazy...

But I particularly love him when he's walking.

Pinstriped trousers tucked into Dr. Martin boots. A completely inappropriate (for walking) sports bag full of food slung across his back. And a half-gnawed beaver branch for a walking stick this time.

I wonder what Gear Guys made of him?

By the time we finished eating and chatting and drinking Orangina and coffee and having some almond and cranberry granola bars and chilling out the sun was starting to go down behind the old growth pines on the riverbank so we set out for home. I stopped to take a photograph of some nice lichen on the limestone with some icicles hanging off it and Himself sat on a rock with his beaver branch that he'd found too and said, I don't want to go home.

I know how he felt.

So it's Sunday night now and Himself is in bed because he has to get up at 5.30 and Kitty is puddling round in the bathroom and I should sign off and go get ready for another week of mayhem.

But hopefully amidst all the beaver activity that is the Estimates debate next week, I will hold today in my heart.

For a few days at least.