After the Storm

Waves are still high this morning even though Hurricane Bill left our waters yesterday as a category 1 hurricane.  Damage was minimal compared to the havoc created by Hurricane Juan in 2003.

Seaweed litters the beach and is still being brought in by the increased wave action.

Swarms of flying insects hover around Rainbow Haven Beach.  Mosquitoes often multiply after hurricanes due to the increased presence of standing water.  Elsewhere in Cow Bay, swarms of surfers are heading out to catch the waves.

Bird and squirrel activity appeared to be back to normal after the tremendous downpouring of rain.  The forest floor is covered with leaves shaken off the trees.  Only some standing dead wood seems to have been brought down by the wild winds.

It could have been so much worse.  And for that Nova Scotians are all breathing a sigh of relief.

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Waiting for Hurricane Bill

A raft sits vacant in the marsh area behind Rainbow Haven Beach.  It’s been covered with cormorants every time I’ve been by in the past couple of weeks.  Do the shore birds know that Hurricane Bill is on its way?

Herons, ducks and seagulls were still visible in the marsh this morning.  I wonder how long they’ll wait before they take cover from the heavy winds and rains.  The tide was lower than usual when I ventured out around 6am.  Hurricane Bill’s arrival coincides with a ‘spring tide.’  These extremely high and low tides occur when the earth, sun and moon are in a line.

This boardwalk at Rainbow Haven Beach has been rebuilt since Hurricane Juan hit the area in 2003.  Back then, the boardwalks were rolled back by the wind like the lids of sardine cans.  This one is much larger and more ruggedly constructed.

All provincial parks in the area closed yesterday at 5pm and will remain so until after the hurricane has passed.   Still, there were a couple of people tenting at the edge of the park last night in anticipation of the increased surf today.  The waters around Cow Bay are very popular with surfers during hurricane season.  Waves off the shore today are expected to be as high as 35 feet.  The media is warning people to stay away from coastal areas.  Visibility is very poor due to the mist and fog.

Because the leaves are still on the trees, they won’t fare well during the storm.  Tree breakage and power outages are inevitable.  When Hurricane Juan hit, we lost most of the large trees on our property and were without power for five days.

Although it’s still likely to be a few hours before the storm comes down with full force, winds were already quite strong, and rain, though sporadic, was already coming down hard and fast this morning.  Hopefully the wild animals will have the sense to tuck themselves away into sheltered areas.  The trees can only stand and wait.

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Rainbow Haven Beach

The provincial park at  Rainbow Haven Beach can attract thousands of visitors on a hot summer day.   The large sandy shore is beautiful and the cool water can be refreshing in the heat.  A network of boardwalks leads to different sections of the beach, allowing visitors to walk among the grassed sand dunes without having to disturb the ecosystem.

Parking lots fill quickly, so vehicles line the sides of nearby roads, where they are often ticketed if wheels are found touching the pavement.  Lifeguards, washrooms, change rooms with an outdoor shower and a canteen are all available throughout the summer months.  Volleyball is a popular activity on the beach, attracting many young people.  The numerous plastic toys that are left behind indicate the large number of children who are kept busy playing in the sand.

Over the years I’ve noticed a decline in bird and marine life along this shore.  Intensive human activity, even if it’s limited to single season, has an effect on wildlife that cannot be denied.

Plovers no longer nest in the grassed areas, which is probably just as well, since many dog owners ignore the signs that instruct them to keep their pets on a leash.  Sensitive sandpipers have moved further into the quieter watershed area behind the beach.  Seashells have become more scarce over the years, as have the crabs and sea stars that were once common tidepool residents.  Only seagulls remain, if they are present at all, lured by the garbage left behind by visitors.

Wild Statice grows in the park.  Sometimes called Sea Lavender, it will be a bright purple once it’s in full bloom.  This plant is often used in both dried and fresh floral arrangements.  It is illegal to remove plants or animals from a provincial park.

Managing parklands in a way that allows people to enjoy nature while minimizing the negative effect on the ecosystem is an ongoing challenge.  If you visit this beach, take care to leave with only your memories.  Let only your footprints remain behind on the sand.

For all posts about Rainbow Haven Beach see here.

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Love at the Beach

Looking for heart-shaped stones on the beach is something I’d never thought of doing until recently.  Many people have collections of these.  Who would have thought anyone would consider a ‘heart of stone’ something worth searching for?

Beaches are favorite places for couples to visit.  They take long walks along the shoreline at sunset, or sit on the beach together, gazing out at the horizon while sharing their dreams of the future.   Nearby Rainbow Haven Beach attracts numerous singles seeking summer romance .  Glowing with suntan lotion, they bask in the sun while non-chalantly checking one another out from behind their fashionable sunglasses.

The shore and its pounding waves are sometimes employed by poets as a metaphor for the coming together of lovers.  One waits patiently for the other to arrive at long last from afar.

But what happens when love dies and couples who walked together so often hand in hand along the sand must now walk alone?  If love can begin at the beach, could it not end there as well?

This week I found not only one, but several yellow long-stemmed roses tangled in the seaweed on the shore.  Although they were a bit frazzled by the elements, they still looked fairly fresh.

In the language of flowers, yellow roses symbolize the end of a love affair.  Could someone have been given a bouquet of yellow roses at the beach?  And could these have then been abandoned on the shore or thrown into the sea?  We’ll never know.

Strange how my heart beats
To find myself upon your shore.
Strange how I still feel
My loss of comfort gone before.
Cool waves wash over
And drift away with dreams of youth.
So time is stolen
I cannot hold you long enough.

~ Enya

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Where Mermaids Arrange their Hair

This large, smooth stone near Rainbow Haven Beach is where mermaids sit at dusk and at dawn. And what do they do there at the rising and setting of the sun?  They arrange flowers in their hair… flowers they’ve found on the beach, growing just at the edge of the high tide line.

These pink-lavender Beach Peas  have tendrils that can easily be twirled and fixed into long mermaid hair.  Land dwellers may have the wind to be concerned about, but mermaids also have to worry about the currents messing with their hair.  It’s not easy to find ornaments that stay in place.

Can’t you just see a pretty mermaid placing one of these pink and white Morning Glories  above one of her ears as she sits on the stone at dawn.  These wild blooms are colorful enough to look striking both above and under the water.

Jacques Cousteau believed that Manatees were what sailors really saw when they thought they were seeing mermaids.  It’s sad that scientists often try to make up in research for what they sometimes lack in imagination.

There are thousands of stones on shores around the world, where mermaids fix their hair and look out to sea as they plan or reflect on the day.  Perhaps there’s one such stone near you.

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Elusive Summer

This empty boardwalk should be teeming with sun seekers dressed in bathing suits, eating ice cream cones, carrying beach chairs or picnic baskets and heading out for a sunny day at the beach. Where are they? 

During the summer, this blue mussel bed at Rainbow Haven Beach is usually a magnet for children looking for crabs at low tide.  It too is desolate. 

Although we’re already well into July, endless weeks of rain and cooler than seasonal temperatures have made Nova Scotians feel like we have yet to experience summer this year.  Our winters can be quite harsh with lots of ice, snow and cold, but our wonderful summers usually make them somewhat tolerable. 

Somewhere, beyond the fog and clouds, I know there are blue skies and the sun is shining brightly.  Maturing robins are looking for worms in the lawn, wild flowers are blooming and the grass is growing, carrying on as though it is indeed summer.  They don’t seem to need to see blue skies and experience soaring temperatures in order to go about their summer business.  Maybe we should be more trusting too.  Hopefully this week’s forecast for sunnier skies will give us all something to smile about.

The blue of heaven is larger than the clouds.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Seafood Buffet

Dismembered crab carcasses litter the trail that runs through the salt marsh.  Seagulls fly onto the trail to crack open and eat crabs found in the marsh.  Although Rock Crabs are most common, Green Crabs are also on the seagulls’ menu.   Sometimes cracked Northern Moon Snail shells can be found as well, remnants of a tasty breakfast.

Although Rock Crabs can run sideways at great speed, and are masterful at wedging themselves between the rocks along the shore, they are still easily caught by the seagulls.  These crabs are most active at night. 

Crabs are Decapods, having five pairs of legs.  Their abdomens are small and curled under their bodies.  They share the lobsters’ marvelous ability to regenerate legs, claws, eyes or antennae.  They are predators and scavengers, eating dead creatures found on the bottom of the marsh and sea.  Common prey are starfish, sea urchins and other crabs.  Crab shells fade in the sunlight, becoming a light orange color over time.

Neither Green nor Rock Crabs are consumed by people in Nova Scotia.  Snow Crabs, more common in Cape Breton, are the type usually eaten here. 

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Leave the Beaten Track Behind

A Porcupine Leaving the Salt Marsh Trail

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do, you will be certain to find something you have never seen before.

Alexander Graham Bell

Both humans and animals favor the beaten track.  It’s easy.  It’s less work and there’s less chance of coming across the unknown.  Yet, there’s a price to be paid for both men and wild creatures.

A Fox Trail at Rainbow Haven Beach

Over time, predators become aware of who goes where and when, and stalk their prey from the shadows.  Hunters set snares along trails frequently used by hares and rabbits.  Human travellers become accustomed to getting from point A to B, and begin to lose the peripheral vision that ignited their curiosity as children.  Minds become dull and prone to boredom.

Leaving the beaten track behind doesn’t have to involve throwing caution to the wind and setting out into the wild without a compass.  It can be as simple as taking a little extra time to just stop and smell the wild roses that are growing a couple of feet beyond the trail.

Wild Roses Growing Near Rainbow Haven Beach

If you’re a fair weather walker, you might consider donning some rain gear and setting out when it’s drizzling and there are puddles waiting to to be splashed along the trail.  Even walking along the same path at a different time of day can open up a mountain of new possibilities.  The light looks different in the morning than in the afternoon or evening.  Animal traffic changes throughout the day so you might see creatures you’ve never seen before along the same trail.

Best of all, doing or learning something new will clear some of the cobwebs from your brain and make it work better for the rest of the day.  That’s reason enough to leave the beaten track behind. 

And now for something completely different…

~ Monty Python

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Lasagna, Ice Cream and Insulation at the Beach

If you stroll along the seashore this summer, you’ll probably not give the seaweeds or grasses beneath your feet a second thought. They often look messy, and their muted colors certainly don’t catch the eye of beachcombers looking for seashells and other treasures. But they are worth a closer look…

Sugar kelp (Laminaria saccharina) at Rainbow Haven Beach

This large seaweed looks exactly like the noodles used in lasagna, a dish first served by the Romans.  It is often washed up on Nova Scotia beaches during storms, but is also found on other Atlantic and Pacific coasts elsewhere in the world. 

The Italians cook so many different types of macaroni that were inspired by the sea.  The shells are obvious:  lumaconi (jumbo shells), conchiglie (medium shells) and lumachine (baby shells) among others.  Could lasagna noodles have been inspired by the sea as well?

Known as sugar kelp because of the sugar-like crystals that appear on its surface as it dries, this seaweed can been used as a weather predictor.  It will become soft and limp when rain is imminent, but dry and stiff when clear skies are on the horizon.  Regardless of the weather, it’s always a good time to enjoy lasagna.

Irish Moss (Chondrus) and the rockweed Fucus on the shore at Rainbow Haven Beach

Irish Moss is another common seaweed found on our beaches.  Its reddish purple color is easy to notice among the many other types of seaweed.  If you eat ice-cream, you’ve most likely eaten Irish Moss.  It goes by the name of carrageenan on food labels.  Its gelling properties make it a popular thickener in many foods. However, some researchers have linked it to colitis and colon cancer in recent years.  Irish moss is raked in large quantities for commercial use on our shores.

Dried Eelgrass (Zostera) between rocks along the Salt Marsh Trail

Eelgrass is another sea plant that’s served an unlikely purpose. It was used as an effective insulator for many years and is still being replaced by newer forms of insulation between the walls of some older homes in Nova Scotia. For centuries it helped keep maritime homes warm and cozy while the winter winds howled outside.  It was once used to stuff mattresses as well.  These days it’s woven in some parts of the world for use in home furnishings.

These are just three of the many types of sea plants that wash up on Nova Scotia’s shores. Some, like Dulse and Ulva (sea lettuce) are eaten fresh. Dulse is also eaten dried and is easily found in local grocery stores. It was seaweed that kept many coastal people in Ireland from starving to death during the Great Potato Famine.

There’s certainly more to these sea plants than first meets the eye.

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The Last Remains of Trees

Tree stumps have a beauty all their own.  If you only see them as remnants of the beautiful green trees they once were, you might miss it.  See the movement in the roots above, the way they turn around the centre as if they are dancing.  The salt water that touches their tips at high tide will never quench their thirst, but it matters not.  Their thirst these days is for the music in the winds and the songs of seagulls.

Covered in moss in damp woods, this stump was in a state of decay when I first saw it twenty years ago in my backyard.  It’s still providing hiding places for tiny mammals and a surface for lichens to grow on.  There’s no reason to rush its demise from the forest floor. 

This stump found behind Rainbow Haven beach has been doused in salt water so many times over the years, that it looks and feels more like stone than wood.  I can barely conjure up the image of the boughed tree it once was.  I even wonder if it remembers birds singing in its branches, rain falling on its leaves or warm summer breezes swaying it softly in the sunshine.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.  ~John Muir

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Searching for Meanings at the Beach

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war… Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong… Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings… Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge once called the mighty alphabet of the universe.
~ from The Unexpected Universe by Loren Eiseley

 

Rainbow Haven at Low Tide

Despite differences in sand colour and texture, the presence of pebbles, stones or rocks, all of the earth’s beaches have a similar effect on humans.  Times converge where water meets the shore.  These are places where long buried ideas and memories are dug up and future dreams loom on the horizon.  

Even people unaccustomed to spending time in nature warm quickly to the outdoor experience offered by the shore. Whether the day is bright and sunny or misty and overcast, a walk along the beach puts one into a detached frame of mind that is above and beyond the day’s weather forecast. 

Some days we might look at what’s drifted ashore with the tide or pick up a shell to examine more closely.  Tidepools are full of interesting creatures.  The Blue Mussel bed at Rainbow Haven beach is always a great place to find rock crabs, whelks, starfish and moon shells at low tide.   Much in nature (and life) can be taken for granted unless we patiently give it a more careful look.   

On other days we might look out at the seascape that encompasses the shore, sea and sky.  When searching for new meanings to life’s events and purposes it’s often helpful to step back from the details and take a good, long look at the big picture.  Few experiences put a sparkle on the day as much as witnessing a sunrise or sunset at the beach. 

Each stage of life seems to present us with a quest for new meanings and purposes.  Though these may be hard sought and won, they can also easily be washed away by the tides of time.   It’s best to not leave too much space in between visits to the shore. 

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In Praise of the Imperfect, the Ephemeral and the Incomplete

As a collector of seashells, I’ve always looked for the ideal specimen while walking along the shore:  a flawless shell that’s a prime example of its species.  Strong waves and stones often damage delicate shells and wear them down so that many of the ridges are worn and surfaces cracked by the time they wash up on the beach.  Yet, Rainbow Haven beach has offered up perfect moon shells and dogwhelks over the years, and I’ve found some beautiful urchins on the nearby shores of Silver Sands. 

A couple of years ago, my friend Ruth brought me some shells from a trip she made back home to the south shore of Nova Scotia.  Although she included some perfect specimens, some worn shells were also part of the collection that she had beautifully arranged in a large glass jar.  When I decided to draw them one day, it was the worn shells that seemed most interesting.  One shell in particular was just a skeleton of its former self , yet it proved to be the most appealing subject of all.  It was one that I did not quickly grow tired of drawing over and over again.  Why?

Nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished.  ~ Wabi sabi

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and can identify more with the worn out and frayed,  but as time goes on, it seems that the imperfect holds greater appeal to me from an aesthetic perspective.  Not just worn seashells but trees in an obvious state of decay are also more attractive, as is my gravel driveway with the grass growing up the middle.  

The vines on my house continue to cover up more and more of the ‘clean white’ siding.  Though they look gnarly in the winter, during the summer, their green leaves are so refreshingly beautiful… perhaps even more so, because I know they won’t last.  The grass withers, the flowers fade…  Would something not be lost if the grass was always green and flowers were always in full bloom?  Flower beds that are ‘still in the works’ hold the promise of new plantings and arrangements in the growing season ahead.  I know this long, cold winter will make the sun and sea breezes feel even warmer as I’m hanging the laundry on the clothesline this summer.

My favorite seashell is a small cockle with smoothly worn ridges that my oldest son picked up on the beach and gave me when he was a toddler over two decades ago.  To me, it embodies the ephemeral wonder of children and the wearing of time and the elements on all that is alive on the planet.  It also holds the promise of more days spent roaming sparkling shores in search of the perfectly imperfect specimen.

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