daughters of the province, though gone away

Is Elizabeth Bishop a Nova Scotia poet? She spent formative time here, with her maternal grandparents. But mostly she lived around: in Massachusetts and the Florida Keys and Brazil, among other places. She was a bit of a vagabond, and not always by her own choice. Still, Nova Scotia was a deep well for Bishop, and she returned to drink from it over and over.

Howard Norman is another writer associated with Nova Scotia, although I don't think he has ever lived here for any length of time. He now lives in the Washington DC area and teaches at The University of Maryland. Much of his fiction has been set in Nova Scotia, though. Even though he's not from around here, the province has taken hold of him. He, too, drinks from this well.

His most recent book, What is Left the Daughter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2010), is set in Halifax and in the Minas Basin area, near Bishop's nesting ground, Great Village. It's a connection he lightly touches with his description of the Esso station in Great Village and passing reference to a local poet.

What is Left the Daughter is a lyrical tale composed within the framework of looming war with Germany, filtered through local senses. A set of quiet lives, mostly interwoven at the village level, suddenly take a hard turn into the extreme. The rest is consequences, and memory. His artfully composed story evokes a sense of village life in Nova Scotia in the 1930s and 1940s, and the grim teeming chaos of Halifax during the war years. The tone is mostly regret, which seeps through the pages like grey fog.

synchronized flight

A flock of bohemian waxwings swooped along the shore the other day, checking out the bayberry situation. These birds actually breed in northwest Canada. But in winter they like to take in the more moderate climes, and usually include Nova Scotia on their circuit. Nova Scotia is their Florida!

It's hard to tell bohemian waxwings from cedar waxwings, except that apparently if I'm seeing waxwings at the end of February I'm seeing bohemians and not cedars.

I barely had a chance to wave hello before they were off and away to visit some other part of Nova Scotia. They swirled from one part of the bayberry bramble to another, up into the swamp maple that's near the shore, and then -- all at once and all together -- came straight up over the bog into the oak tree. When they flew off again (which they did, immediately) they were a breath-taking sight: a hundred tails, a hundred horizontal bands of bright yellow. Then they were gone.

I couldn't take their picture but I knew somebody who had: Ronnie Dentremont in Pubnico, along the shore not far from here, earlier in the winter. Ronnie kindly gave me permission to use some of his truly amazing pictures. You can see more of his bohemian waxwing photos here and here.

one sunny day

A few warm days will melt the ice that rings the island. But here's how the cove shore looked a couple of days ago.
I know you cannot see these sheep out on the point, at least without a magnifying glass. But there are about twenty of them out there, eating their favourite food, kelp.
Another view of the point and the cove, and the old skiff.