Judy P's Tickle Trunk

…or where am I today?

I may have given you this advice before: never make plans you can’t change. “And where are you today?” you might well ask. I at my mother’s house. Tis humid and cool; warm enough to be without socks in my shoes but cool enough to be comfortable in long sleeves. It feels like fall. There is a rustle in the drying apse tress. They were little larger than cat-tails when we moved into this house in the sixties. There are heavy grey clouds moving slow enough to let you know that they won’t be going anywhere soon. The dogberry trees are loaded with berries – a sign of a coming bad winter with a lot of snow.  Bad for whom, I now wonder. Bad for the elderly and for foraging caribou  but not for the snowmobilers and the trail groomers. Newfoundlanders know how to rock winter. I have heard that a lot of snow is good for the gardens.

So that’s where I am. (Or more likely where I was, by the time you read this) It is odd to be sitting in this house after 40 years of living away. So much is familiar: the granite out-cropping behind the house, the view of the big hill up West, the kitchen cupboards which open on both sides, the sound of feet on the front steps. But the clothesline is gone, there are no more church bells on Sunday mornings, and there now seems to be more blue jays than grey.

Let me back track a bit and let me fill in some gaps. Here are a few pictures from the drive across Cape Breton to catch the ferry.

The Cape Breton causeway. For the ten minutes we waited for the bridge to swing open and closed, Cape Breton was an island once more:

I was pleased to see that the bridge treats all as equals. It stopped traffic and opened for this power boat as readily as if it had been a tanker.

Once across, we stopped at the Information Centre in Port Hawksbury to have a picnic and watch the sun go down.

We later stopped  to admire the ‘super-moon’ as it rose over Boularderie Island. Thankfully there were no moose or moose events to photograph.

There are no photos from the ferry or the drive halfway across the island the following day. Too road weary to take pics despite the beautiful west coast scenery. The only thing I would have stopped for would have been to take a photo of “the old man in the mountain” in the cliff face outside of Corner Brook but as usual, I couldn’t find it.

the bridge to Cape Breton Island

If you watched that it was probably the most boring three minutes of your day!!

© Judy Parsons 2015