P.E.I.

Halifax, Nova Scotia; I like the routine I”m in, even if it is boring. I haven’t been on a scale but I’m losing weight and that wasn’t happening in Missouri. Last night I took my belt off and my pants fell down without unbuttoning the fly. I’m taking more time off to explore but gasoline here is approaching $6/gal. and I plan my travel diligently. A typical day includes two hard hours in the pool and the gym, then a nap and lunch. Afternoons slip by in the library, reading, writing, catching up. I get plenty of down time, just never know when it’s going to strike. But then I can entertain myself with a  rubber band and a clothes pin. 

Just spent three days up on Prince Edward Island, about the size of New Jersey; They farm and fish there; in summer it’s a popular vacation destination. The beaches are pristine and it looks like the 1950’s when you go out in the countryside. Small, neat & clean family farms with hills and winding, two lane roads give it a wholesome feeling. Stayed at a B&B in Summerside (big city of 15,000).

Low tide of course, I went out on a headland that juts out into the sea. Red sandstone, red sand, red beaches; looked like a bazillion clay flower pots, ground into dust. I made my way out to water’s edge, maybe a hundred yards from the beach. You watch where you put your feet as kelp and sea weed were everywhere and a slip would either break the camera or make me bleed. I was careful. 

The scenery didn't offer many good photos so I began searching between rocks and in small, shallow, land locked pools. Not much there until, “Eureka!”. Right beside my foot in about an inch of water, a starfish, about the size of a silver dollar. I was excited as a little kid; took a photo, then bent over and picked it up. It grabbed on, hung onto my finger while I checked it out, Phylum Echinodermata, radial symmetry; oh my, too many Biology classes. Then it occurred to me; if there was one starfish trapped by the low tide, there must be more. So I start looking and they were easy to find once I knew what to look for; not very colorful but you can’t miss the shape. But they move faster than you might think. In nature, little creatures hide from the big ones. While I was off collecting, they crawled up under the vegetation. As I added to my little herd, I had to keep moving them back to the middle of my seaweed corral. I thought about Gene & Roy, rounding up stray cows, with Gabby Hayes fixing beans and biscuits back at the chuck wagon. For about five minutes I forgot everything and was on the range, herding little doggies. Reality caught up with us; the tide turned, I took another photo and headed back to the beach. I loved it.

The next day I went up the other side of the island; up to where the fishing boats were working lobster and tuna. A tuna boat only gets to take one fish per day. I was hanging out with the guys who work the wharf, in their big rubber boots and yellow rubber raincoats. A boat came in with it’s one fish; weighed in at 608 lbs. They hoisted it off the boat with an electric winch; cut off the head and fins. After it was cleaned it weighed 496 lbs. They said it would be in Tokyo in 48 hours where it would bring $15/lb. at the fish market. I did the math and was impressed. It takes cleaning fish to another level and it was a learning experience but not near the fun as herding starfish.

MOST PHOTOGRAPHED LIGHTHOUSE

In all of the world, there is one, most photographed light house. It sits on a heap of granite, thrust up out of the Atlantic on Nova Scotia's eastern shore. At Peggy's Cove, tourists come by the thousands. They come to see, to take photographs of the lighthouse but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is human history cast against the timelessness of stone and sea, a story begging to be fleshed out. I am reminded of the Johnny Mercer song, “When an irresistible  force, such as you, meets an old, immovable object like me, you can bet as sure as you live, . . .” The song about lovers pairs with metaphor the irresistible sea and immovable shore, and with people who have breached that boundary for as long as there have been boats. 

I arrived at first light, before sunrise. Fishing boats were already setting lobster pots, so close you could hear their engines idling and men’s voices across the water but the parking lot was empty. The sky was low and broken so there was no first dash of morning against the white lighthouse. I took photos anyway. Fog came and went and finally, sun broke through and the shots I wanted were there. I was ready and it was a good shoot. 

In the restaurant I had fishcakes, beans and coffee. When I came out a half hour later, there were several busses and hundreds of people, climbing on the rocks around the lighthouse. In another hour, people would be swarming around the land mark like ants on a peach seed. There would be no more uncluttered photographs that day. Leaving my camera in the car, I took one last walk out on the rocks. 

Some folks are satisfied to walk the path while others need to climb up on the rocks. A few venture down into the crevices and labyrinths, to either turn around and come back or climb on, up the far reaches to the point. Not many go all the way out to the edge but there were a few when I got there. On the edge, there is no place to look but out to sea. Straight out, the next dry land is Morocco. To say it’s a dangerous place is hyperbole: it’s no more dangerous than a street corner in a busy city. You are only one step away from disaster. But the metaphor rings a little truer. It is the boundary where man’s domain meets water world. The boats and their men from the early morning were out there somewhere; with modern equipment and safety features to help guide them home. They go out but they don’t all come home. Every fishing port has a monument to men who have been lost at sea. 

The lighthouse behind us was a testament to man’s perilous relationship with the sea. It helped signal the way home and it marked dangerous headlands and rocky shores. We have radar and GPS now but nobody wants to photograph radar beacons or GPS machines. The lighthouse has history and the metaphor, like lovers, marks the attraction of earth’s immovable reality and of man’s irresistible urge to go there.