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From "The first year of retirement"

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FUNDY SUMMER III

Five Islands (and more)

Walter Aue and Helga Kraus, July 2001


There are many shores to the Bay of Fundy. This shore is opposite Blomidon, from where we started our trip. About five miles across the water, in fact - at least as the seagull flies.
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. How peaceful it looks. How relaxing, how reassuring, how appealing, how beautiful. To our feelings, that is. Not to its inhabitants. Nature just can't work in peace.

Tital waters

. Flowerpot is what it's called at low tide. At high tide it is simply an unshaven island with lots of stubbles. No flowers, just flowery language. Where it is? It's not on the tourist map. But if memory serves me right, it's at Cove Road, off Highway 2.

Flowerpot

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. How life clings to the rock. How it fights gravity with root and growth. How gravity tries to pull it down. How gravity sends the tides to erode its base. How grave a matter that gravity matters.

Gravity

. What an unnatural question! Of course it's not top heavy. Of course there are not too many trees in the flowerpot - just as there are not too many humans in the world. A flower's duty is to flower, right?

Too many trees?

. The tides read history - millions of years of history - twice a day from top to bottom

Book of History

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. Do we see beauty because beauty really exists? Or is beauty just a trick of the genes, A trick so we won't stop doing their dirty work toward an end we'll never know?

Beauty

. Sticky and slippery, that "walk on the ocean floor". I feel like an insect exploring a Venus's-flytrap.

Sticky beauty

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. It may not look it, but most of the time this grass grows under the ocean waves. Have a look at it yourself if you don't believe me. Where? Oh, I am sorry. I forgot. We are in Five Islands Provincial Park. And, yes, we timed it so we would arrive at low tide.

Under water

. Do the rocks in the foreground look like pots of gold at the end of the rainbow? But it's not even fool's gold. It's just slippery, slimy algae. What shall we find when we have finally climbed the rainbow and are sliding down its other side?

Rainbow

. Not StarTrek Voyager. Just two of the Five Islands, beckoning across the tidal flats.

Two of Five

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. No, it's not the red planet. But, here as there, it's iron oxide (rust in the vernacular) that gives it the red color.

Water on Mars?

. Actually, it's not gold. It's algae. But you knew that already...

Gold on the rocks

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. Sure I am repeating myself. If I were a musician, they'd praise me for working on a canon. (Or a Bolero. Or a Ring. Or...)

Repetition

. Man treads lightly on the sands of hell. Woman treads even lighter. That's the hell of man.

Footprints

. What's the generation gap? Just the shadow of time. Just the rock of ages.

Generation gap

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. All the universe is in a stone. Or thus says Zen. There's lots of stones out there, but they are all the same. All drifting on the sand of time. All turning into sand in time: It's the sand that's eternal.

Universe

. Excuse my colors. I hit the wrong button on my computer. And a computer is always right, n'est-ce pas? Isn't that the way NASA operates? Showing us a pretty universe in "representative colors"? (Forgive NASA. Mans eyes can't see infrared and ultraviolet. Only the visible. So NASA must cheat. Politicians and educators must cheat, too. Particularly when they can't see even the visible.)

Oops

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