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| Cobequid Bay Farm, by Carol L. Douglas |
Alas, there were no Digby
Chicks to be had at the fish market. We consoled ourselves with an omelet
of Digby scallops and locally-sourced bacon, with Poppy Balser’s own fresh-baked bread.
Poppy—who’s also a licensed pharmacist—went in to the
shop, and Bobbi and I walked down to the docks. The Bay of Fundy has the
highest tides in the world. They mean the dock ramp has steps, for it’s just
too steep to climb at low tide. It’s treaded like a cheese grater and is four
flights of stairs in height. Likewise, the marine railway seems to slope down forever.
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| You wouldn't forget your keys very often if faced with that climb to go back to the car. |
We met back up with Poppy at Point
Prim lighthouse. Our intention was to paint with genuine Bay of Fundy salt
water, but at low tide that meant a perilous scramble down the rocks. Poppy found
a tidal pool halfway down the slope, and we settled in to watch our paints
precipitate in the salt water.
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| The long, long marine railway at Digby. |
When I was growing up, we would occasionally see a ghost
image of Toronto dancing over the open water of Lake Ontario, seemingly
just a few miles off shore. Fata Morgana mirages
appear over open water just as in the desert. One rose above St. John’s as we
painted. It only lasted a few minutes before it vanished in the haze of the
horizon.
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| Mirage over the Bay of Fundy. |
Bobbi is studying French. Our comfort stop in the woods, she
told us, is called le Pipi
Rustique. It’s a necessity of life and it’s frankly more difficult for
women than men. “There’s an app for that,” Poppy
said, and then dissolved in laughter. To me, the solution seems worse than the problem,
since you then have to clean and carry it.
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| Point Prim, by Carol L. Douglas |
We said au revoir to
Poppy and headed north along the Evangeline Trail. This
traverses some peculiar geology. The Annapolis
Basin itself is separated from the Bay of Fundy by a volcanic ridge that
trails off into the ocean as Digby
Neck. The predominant rocks are basalt. Inland, there are bright red siltstones
and soils, and gypsum outcroppings.
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| Point Prim, by Carol L. Douglas. I do everything I'm told, including value studies. |
There’s even gold. Famous Canadian prospector Edmund Horne learned
his trade here, in the now-ghost town of Renfrew, Nova Scotia.
When I painted
here in mid-October, I’d noticed the peculiar pink of the water, but
figured it was a seasonal disturbance. It is the same color now; a lovely rose
pink from sediment.
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| Pink waters off Parrsboro, NS. |
In my hometown of Buffalo, NY, Tim Hortons coffee shops
are as thick on the ground as they are in Ontario. Bobbi hadn’t had the experience,
so we stopped for dinner—a chocolate-glazed doughnut for her, an apple fritter
for me.
Meanwhile, Bobbi was perusing her phone. “Our hotel is 100
miles behind us, in Grand-Pré,”
she said. Evidently, our booking website couldn’t distinguish between 17 miles
over land and the same distance over water. But we landed in clover. The Gillespie House Inn in Parrsboro had
an unexpected vacancy. It’s far more genteel than my usual road haunts, and I
enjoyed every tiny luxury, including the en
suite clawfoot tub.
