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From "The first year of retirement"

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FUNDY SUMMER IV

Around Cape d'Or

Walter Aue and Helga Kraus, July 2001


This is lonely country. Lonely and beautiful. It's not that only the lonely is beautiful (although tourist hordes can make you think so). It's also that you have to be lonely to see beauty.

Too abstract? A sleight of language? I apologize. Might as well: I shall have to apologize anyway for including a few pictures from beyond the Bay of Fundy. I'll give you a map later on, just so you'll see how little I've digressed.
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. The Cape d'Or lighthouse sits where enormous currents stream in and out of the Minas Channel. The waves in the background are driven by current, not wind.

Where the water...

. My thanks to the unknown visitor who stood just in the right place for this shot.

...meets the rock

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. There's no "No Swimming" sign here. Because it's obvious. Wish that were so everywhere. (I hate "No Swimming" signs: They are put up by do-gooders and insurance freaks. And, while they don't get into the way of my swimming, they do get into the way of my taking pictures. God didn't plaster the world full of DANGER! signs in the first place - and I'll die, if I must, for my right to see the world God's way. How's that for enlightened sedition?)

No swimming

. The view reminds me of the Na Pali Coast on Kauai - just a little colder.

Looking West

 . It looks friendlier thataway. And it actually is.

Looking East

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. There you might have a careful swim. It comes free with a ticket for hypothermia.

Minas Channel

. The cliffs at Joggins are full of fauna and flora from 300 million years ago. Only the waves - and a few biologists - are allowed to dig the cliffs, but you are welcome to search the beach for what the tides have excavated. That may include ferns and trees, but also amethyst and agate. But don't restrict your eyes to the stones: The sky and the sea are spectacular - and they are there every day.

At Joggins

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. Joggins Fossil Cliff at high tide

Into rock

. Actually, that tree stands at Cape Enrage. But do you have to have everything in black and white? What's important is not the place, what's important is the meaning.

Into sky

. That's a nasty caption. But you must understand: The photographer comes from Europe, where they put such things underground. And isn't it amazing what the photographer (and his computer) did to that eyesore?

Into culture

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. The lighthouse at Cape Enrage stands across Chignecto Bay from Nova Scotia. Yes, it's already in New Brunswick.

Clean colors

. Consult Mark Twain about how to get kids to paint a fence. It works in New Brunswick as well as in Missouri. Here they are restoring the whole lighthouse area to boot. How refreshing it was to hear their laughter. I hadn't heard them laughing all schoolyear long.

White fence

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. Form is in the eye of the beholder. So, too, is that purple flower patch. They say that it is a weed, that it destroys many indigenous plants. Still, doesn't it look pretty?

Form

. Function it was, form it is: Driftwood on the beach in Joggins.

Function

. Color abounds when form becomes function.

Color

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. Same driftwood as above. Driftwood says what the photographer wants it to say.

Driftwood

. It's the same salt, though no longer the Bay of Fundy: It's Rushton's Beach Provincial Park on Tatamagouche Bay.

Lonely

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. A salt marsh at Rushton's Beach, home to many birds (as is obvious from the picture).

Water-fowled

. I was tempted to call that reversion "Christmas". Though, by then, the birds will be in the South (and so will the Canadians). But the mind and the computer can twist anything around. As Tom Lehrer sang: Don't stand underneath when they fly by!

Of things to come

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. Time to leave. Leave the birdies to what birdies do. Life flows as life must.

Flowing

. Peace has come before tomorrow's dangers.

Fading

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