Living on the Island can be challenging at times. Yes, the winter here can be dreadfully long and the spring; well, that's even longer. When you think the shoveling is over, ...it's not, and when it finally is, ...the mud season begins. Let me tell you, the lane gets even longer when you're standing there in your rubber boots with two bags of groceries in each hand and one hanging around your neck.

But for about  three weeks when the weather is warming up, the lane is drying out, and the bugs haven't arrived yet, that's when everything comes to life on the Island.  That's when everything gets done. I call it the Islander's time. Everyone emerges from their house after a long winter... and they start diggin'.  The whole island is buzzing with the sound of preparing for summer. Gardens and fields have to be tilled, flowers and crops have to be planted, shrubs pruned, fences mended, paint, clean, airing out, ...you name it. Every yard is busy and Canadian Tire is bulging at the seams with the do-it-yourselfers in a shopping frenzy.

Then the summer finally arrives and I can't imagine a better place to be. The soil is red, the land is green, all those flowers that we were so busy planting are in bloom, and the sand dunes are lush with marram grass.  Over three hundred varieties of birds are flitting about making nests and the fox and other fauna are busy with their young.

The clay roads are as red as they get in those first days of summer.  I love to walk down the ones where the tree canopy from both sides of the road meet over-head. It's like walking through a tunnel of foliage. And I like to stop here and there and just listen, ...or examine the flora, ...or just take in my surroundings. 

The shore; there's plenty of that here. What ever suits you. If you like a sandy beach, a rocky bank, marshland, pond, or a river bank, it's all here. Water always draws my eye to it. I'm not keen on being in it, unless I'm in my canoe, but I love to stop and look at it.  The ocean is so powerful and unforgiving when it gets all riled up.
 

There's a great variety of birds here on the Island. Birds of prey, shore birds and inland birds can be easily found by bird watchers and photographers. The Great Blue Herons nest here and are in great abundance.  You see them everywhere. Skittish big things though, and clumsy. You'll see one standing motionless in a pond, looking majestic and as elegant as an orchid. Then as soon as your intention turns to walking toward it the silence is broken by a noisy flutter of flopping wings and an amateurish lift off maneuver that makes Baby Huey look graceful.  Makes me laugh every time.

Summer brings the weeds too. I think we have the prettiest weeds in the world. Did I call them weeds? Nah, they're wild flowers. There's no question that the lupines create a lush garden in every ditch and field from Souris to Tignish, but the flox, vetch, golden rod, daisies, wild roses and black eyed susan have their time to shine too.  And if you're really looking at the flora you'll notice these wonderful bouquets of wild flowers that grow next to the fence posts, or out of mossy tree stumps or right in the dunes. Even in the fall when everything has died off these wonderful dried flower arrangements grow everywhere.

There's plenty of ghost stories around here too. Every old house seems to have its "story". I hadn't thought much about the stories until the day I paid a visit to the oldest brick lighthouse on the Island at Point Prim. It was early in the spring when everyone else was diggn' in their yards.  The road was still muddy so I parked my car and walked down the lane to the lighthouse. I took plenty of photos and was there for about an hour and in that time I never saw another person around. When I got home and was looking at the photos I had taken, it was quite unsettling  to see that I hadn't been alone.  Click here to see the photo, and here to see the closeup. Some people think that lighthouse has a ghost.  I'm just sayin'.

Houses here are subject to some harsh conditions and if they're the least bit neglected they fade away very quickly. First the paint starts to peel leaving them a colourless shadow of what they used to be.  Then it's only a matter of a few years before the winters, winds and rains wear them down to the ground. Abandoned houses always intrigue me. They stand helpless to the elements while they hopelessly guard all their stories inside. 

My favorite places are the capes where the banks are high and rocky and the power of the earth continually percolates with the movement of water and birds. The capes put me in my place; standing small against the power of nature itself they remind me that my needs and desires come only at the mercy of what the earth will provide. I sometimes visit the capes in the early morning and ponder that mercy. What will happen if our host, earth, begins to crumble from our thankless devouring of her generosity. Perhaps a big wave will sweep over the land in a gesture that proclaims, "That's enough".  Or maybe she will just stop providing and let us fight over what meager remains are left. Perhaps she already stopped providing.  When I go to the capes I think deep like that.

For the past couple of years I've been enjoying a new hobby and a new way of seeing the Island. I got myself a canoe and have enjoyed paddling my way to new places and seeing the Island from a new perspective.  There are so many interesting ponds and rivers to explore and I intend to paddle as many of them as I can. It's also a great way to find birds to photograph. They seem a little more at ease and approachable when I'm sitting down.

It's a bit of a risk taking my camera equipment in the canoe with me but I feel that sometimes you just have to take chances to get what you want. Luckily I haven't had any "accidents" ...yet.

When I spot a bird in its natural habitat, away from any human activity it really gives me a rush to see if I can capture it in my lens without intruding on it. I admit that I have managed to flush a few away but on many occasions I've taken my shot and then left with just a little "thanks".  Most of the time they seem to be as curious about me as I am about them.

Maybe I should take up fishing next. Nah, I'll leave the fish alone. There's not many of them around any more and I think we need to be more mindful of what we take from the earth.

Lyndon Johnson once said, "If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."  I hope that glimpse that we leave is more than just photos.