Halls Harbour this morning at high tide. Some days the tide is even higher. Click the picture to go to the webcam and see what Halls Harbour looks like right now.

Here’s a link that will give you the current tide times for Halls Harbour (actually for nearby Baxters Harbour, but close enough).

Making landfall on the island

Across from the tidal inlet near our house is a small island which is a symbolic destination for us, depending on the time of year. We celebrate spring, and the ice breaking up, by canoeing to it. In winter, if the ice is thick enough, we walk or skate to it. Today the ice was over 6 inches thick, the required minimum, and we walked there.

Snowy road

1. The smooth, quiet brush of fresh snow under your skis.
2. The way ice breaks and cracks over rocks as the tide falls.
3. Empty beaches with shimmering vistas.
4. 

   Sea ice and rock, low tide

   The mildness, softness and peace a snowfall brings.
5. Like the folks here, a winter is softness and gentility: quite well mannered, and departs when the welcome is worn.
6. Snow days!
7. A crackling fire in a woodstove making heat that penetrates to your bones.

8. 

   A boy and a buoy

   Walking ON the bay in places we usually row, paddle or sail.

9. Sunlight sparkling off snow-laden branches.
10. Minas Basin ice shifting, buckling, making strange sculptures on the shore.
11. Magnificent bald eagles.
12. Watching the days get longer in the coldest part of the winter.
13. 

    Icing on the cake

    Shovelling the driveway with a helper who will clear up the last little bits: the sun.
14. NO mosquitoes, NO blackflies, NO no-see-ums!
15. The weather changes frequently: it’s fairly mild, and cold snaps are short, warm periods are also short.  There’s something for everyone and no time to get bored!
16. The province is small but has a variety of microclimates.  Want more snow?  Ski hills are not so far away.  Want less snow?  Go walk a deserted South Shore beach.


Ice floes

17. Memories of crazy winter antics performed when we were young and immortal: descending hills at great speed, jumping from one ice floe to another as the frozen ocean broke up (some have memories of being rescued in these situations!), “getting towed on a sled behind my dad’s car on a snow-covered gravel road, riding my bike through the streets of Halifax when the snow wasn’t too bad,” ice boating, skating on thin ice….
18. Maple syrup made in the woods.
19. 

    Alone in a drift

    Patterns made by drifting snow.

20. Winter skies unlike anything you see in the summer.
21. Eating fresh snow.
22. Cardinals and purple finches at the feeder.
23. Getting insight into the life of rabbits from their tracks in the woods.

Oak leaf shape in ice

Ice on rocks near Oak Island

I love how the soft sea ice forms, bends and cracks over rocks as the tide recedes.

It was -8° C this morning along the shore of the Bay, and the tide was falling.

Ice breaks over rocks as the tide recedes

I’m fascinated by the formation of ice and how it interplays with the tides. And it has started again with cold morning temperatures which leave a layer of ice which plays with rocks as the tide goes down. You can hear the cracking as you walk along the shore – just little crick-clicks now, but bigger booms when the ice is thicker.

I made a video called Frosty Morning last year which you can see here.

One of the book’s biggest fans is my mother.  She has read it several times.  When I took her sailing around East Ironbound Island, the setting for the novel, the binoculars and cameras were in constant use.

If Day’s characters were as thinly disguised as his settings, it’s no wonder that the locals he met on Ironbound felt betrayed by his portrayal of hard-drinking, feuding fishing families eking out a hardscrabble living on a small island.  But they are long gone now, and new generations of readers marvel at the dramatic sweep of his story, his vivid characterizations and the detailed portrayal of pre-industrial fishing.  For me, Rockbound has made the outer islands of Mahone Bay come alive with the ghosts of those who have gone before.  Imagine rowing from Tancook to Ironbound, from Ironbound to Pearl (“Barren Island” in the novel) – well, I can’t, really, but characters that I have come to care for do just that in the novel, so I believe it is possible.

Poster for Rockbound, the musical. Click picture to visit Two Planks website.

When I heard that Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company was developing Rockbound as a musical, I was astonished and very curious.  Written by Allen Cole and under development since 2006, it is now playing “off the grid” (outdoors) at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, half an hour north of Wolfville.  My mother and I, both very excited, went last Wednesday.

From the opening song, my questions and doubts about how a musical format would serve the story were laid to rest.  My ears were awash in delicious sound and my jaw remained in my lap for much of the performance.  Harmonically and rhythmically complex and expressive, the music transcends genres and beautifully evokes the epic story and the setting.   The acting and singing were wonderful.  How else could this play have been done?  The music elevates the story, poeticizes it, universalizes it.

I hope to see Rockbound again when it comes to Chester Playhouse August 13-16.  Meanwhile it is playing until August 9 at Ross Creek.  Not to be missed.