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© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.

Blessings come in large and small packages. We are thankful for this week’s heavy rain, which has fully recharged the cistern. It’s a partial blessing since we also await the results of the tested water and are drinking bottled water in the meantime.

A week of dreich (Scots Gaelic for gloom) has been followed by several days of great weather, so we do our errands up and down the coast, from Chéticamp to Port Hawkesbury. I never leave my phone at home any more because there are too many pictures already framed and waiting for me to find them.

We take advantage of these mild fall days to ready the house for winter and plan out next year’s garden. But the blessings of fall are fleeting in their beauty and provide a perfect excuse to walk away from the computer. The wind in our faces also pushes the scudding clouds across a cerulean fall sky, with the Bay of St. Lawrence reflecting that blue to the horizon. Shading our eyes against the late afternoon sun with the maples on fire, we can just breathe in the beauty and let it reach all the way to the tightness inside. The landscape draws it out and by the time we arrive home, we feel better. 

Today’s slideshow covers several journeys over the past few weeks up and down the coast, from Chéticamp south to the Margarees, along the beach at Inverness, the harbour and marsh at Mabou, visiting beaches at Port Hood and Port Hastings. This western area has several names – the Musical Coast, the Ceildh Trail, the Sunset Coast. All are accurate. There is much to see and hear in this slice of Cape Breton and we’re trying to pack as much as we can into only a few more months. https://youtu.be/Tp5E97S_YcU

The song, Blessing, was written for a friend’s 40th birthday and I sing it on my 1999 Big Boned Beauty recording. Tom Hodgson plays guitar with Lise Brown on tenor sax. I also fiddled and sang harmony on Blessing with Lui Collins and Max Cohen in 2017. Lui, (who sings it way better than I do!) sings lead vocal and plays ukulele, Max is on guitar and vocal. We performed this in shows with Jane Yolen and 3 Ravens. 

Of all my songs, Blessing has a life of its own and has been recorded so many times that I’ve lost count, though Lui was one of the first, on her Stone by Stone CD.

Maybe it works. Take a moment. Relax. Enjoy the view. Breathe.

Blessed Be.

© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.

This week in Cape Breton was all about water.

Monday morning . . . The good news is that the spring is recharging our cistern, though very slowly. With rain predicted for the next four days, we have our fingers crossed. We both took showers and did a small wash yesterday and now the water from the faucet doesn’t look drinkable, so we’re using stored or bought water for consumption. We’ll stagger our showers and continue to wash dishes by hand. No clothes-washing until the cistern is higher. In the short term, we have friends and neighbors who can refill our containers if that becomes necessary. 

As a long-term solution, we can sink a much deeper well, so the bad news starts at $4,500 and can go much higher. Gulp. Our current water supply comes from a spring feeding into a cistern. There were drought conditions here throughout the summer and it’s been running low since we arrived in August.  Global warming doesn’t improve the future outlook, so sinking a well might become necessary.

Thursday morning . . . It’s been raining off and on since Tuesday. This morning we had some hard rain for a few minutes and it’s returned a few times but it’s better like this, raining gently all day so it sinks into the earth instead of running off. The cistern has been recharging enough to shower and use the faucet for drinking as we had a half inch of rain two days ago and another 9/10 inch today so far. Bob has a weather station on the hill and he checks the cistern daily so we don’t get too low. I realize this sounds as tedious as watching the cracks dry up after it rains but I assure you it’s riveting to find out whether or not you can actually take a shower! 

Friday morning . . . Wow! That wind is crazy and it’s just getting wilder. The Canadian weather service predicted flurries (their butch term for anything under a foot of snow) in the Cape Breton Highlands but here, we had “Oh, the wind and rain” all day, all night, gusting to 90 kph, and it’s still storming mightily. The photo shows what the hailstorm left behind on the deck outside my office. It wasn’t sleet. It was almost 50 degrees at the time and each spattering melted immediately. There were at least ten bursts of hail before the day was over but no rain of frogs so far. At least we didn’t get the snow that Antigonish got 2 hours south of us. They had to cancel their golf tournament. Have I mentioned that Cape Breton seems to fall in the center of a Venn diagram of weather? Yeah, just wait a minute . . .

Saturday morning . . . Bob checked the cistern level and it’s up fifteen inches so we are out of the woods for the moment. We’re still filtering water for drinking because it looks a little cloudy but hallelujah! Showers are possible and as soon as the sun shines, we’ll do a wash and hang it out.

If your home uses town or city water, you may have problems other than a cistern running low. Flint, Michigan residents are still afraid to drink the water that comes out of the tap after six years of remediation. Wherever you live, maybe you wonder what they put in the water to make it potable and maybe you also wonder why is it so fishy-tasting and you filter it anyway just in case. Here, though the water is pure, cold, and delicious, a well might be needed because this year’s drought is a taste of the future. If my residency is approved, we’ll also be here year-round, using more water and tending the large garden we hope to grow with water from that spring. 

We take it for granted on the east coast but clean, fresh water is our most precious natural resource. Access to water will determine the future of all civilization, just as it has in the past. Ghost cities in the African deserts, the American southwest, and the jungles of Central America are evidence of what happens when we outgrow our water resources. At rock bottom, we can’t grow food and society collapses. 

Our fresh waters are ever more endangered and we certainly can’t use them up in some Biblical fantasy of dominion and redemption. People who don’t believe in that particular story also need the water, dammit, so religion just exacerbates the problem rather than solving it. Remember those ghost cities? They’re a warning. 

I’m concerned about conservation and I favor public over private ownership of aquifers and lakes, rivers and streams. That means leaving forests alone so watersheds are protected. It means refusing to allow something universally required for life – water – to become the exclusive property of Nestle or some other international company, who packages it in plastic and sells it back to us at great cost to us and the planet.

Nestle’s CEO has been quoted as saying that we as individuals do not have an absolute right to water, that we must buy it, with the implication that when there is none other to be had, we can buy it from them, or die. I don’t think so. We need to protect that water for all life and for future generations on the planet. It’s far too valuable to squander for corporate profit. 

Water is the true elixir of life and of course, you can’t make decent whiskey without it!

© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.

The longest so far, this slideshow has 52 images and the music (4:40) is the Québecois waltz via Jean Carignan and Willy Ringuette, “La Valse Joyeuse,” from my 2009 In Full Bloom CD. I play this with pianist Rachel Aucoin and button accordionist Sabin Jacques. https://youtu.be/Utdp-MbA1Ew

Margaree is almost a generic term here. “Where do you live,” people ask, and I have to think a moment. “Southwest Margaree,” I answer. But it’s not that simple. We’re on the West Side of Southwest Margaree and it took me awhile to figure out that’s what WSSW Margaree meant on the road sign. There’s an East Side of Southwest as well, on the opposite side of, you guessed it, the Margaree River. But just which Margaree River am I referring to? Technically, there are three of them!

Bob has been taking me around the Margarees, their collective name, for several years. There seemed to be a lot of them, though I knew his home was in Southwest Margaree. There are actually nine Margarees. I looked them up. Only one of them, Upper Margaree, is on “upper” part of the Southwest Margaree River, which, despite the name, is the farthest south of all the other Margarees, as the SW Margaree River flows northeast out of Lake Ainslee toward Margaree Forks, where it joins with the Northeast Margaree to become the Margaree River, flowing toward Margaree Harbour and emptying into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. All the other Margaree villages are situated along the Northeast Margaree River. Got that? It might just be easier to explain that a river runs through it every which way. Or show you a map . . .

 Today, we got into the woods a little more, grabbed sandwiches at The Dancing Goat in Northeast Margaree, and headed toward Big Intervale, source of the NE Margaree River, from the blue dot on the lower left to the red dot in the upper right of the map, following the river/s. The road turns to gravel quickly when you leave the Cabot Trail, but we’ve seen a lot worse. Nice and wide, it narrows at the end, following the river, where it ends at Big Intervale Fishing Lodge. Everyone is obliged to turn around in the lodge’s front yard to go back where they came from.

There was one way in and the same way back, yet it looked different and I noticed little things that I’d missed on the way in, like the fact that they didn’t bury the wires and the trees are pretty thick so anyone who lives there in any season must be equipped with a generator. I also got to thinking about how much simpler the homes were than the glassy showplaces on the ocean bluffs. It’s a whole other island up in the woods. Don’t forget your rod, your reel, and your bug suit. You can fish with a license along the river as long as you can find a safe place to park and you can keep the trout you catch, but the salmon are catch and release.  

We stopped at every bridge to examine the waters that go into making a river, noticing many fingerling trout in the shallows (salmon hide in the deeper pools), and we looked around many country corners. The light was quixotic, with cloud cover moving away quickly and the sun blazing through, only to hide a moment later. There was something new around every bend in the road.

© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.

We live inland from the coast about five miles as the crow flies. It’s a bit longer in a car and there are multiple ways to get there. Yesterday, we took the back way south around Broad Cove and came out by St. Margaret’s of Scotland, where the big concert has been held for years every July but the past one. 

There are often clouds in the sky and facing west into the sun from St. Margaret’s, we saw a sun-bow to the left of the sun. One of the last photos shows them together in the sky. I’m not that skilled a photographer. These are iPhone snapshots of our life here and I’m relying on the landscape to speak for itself – and does it ever!

We live on the sunset coast, so when the light is good, we jump in the car and look for pre-framed photos waiting for us in the landscape. Bob drives and I direct – “over HERE!” I say, jumping out of the car when he stops and trying to grab multiples of what I think I see. The sun is in my eyes but shades don’t help me see the phone screen, so I take as many as I can and sort them out later. I just try to hold the camera still when I shoot. Really, till I get them home and start straightening out the horizons, it’s a mystery. 

Since roads in the neighborhood are often rough, we had avoided this one. Still gravel, it’s been re-graded and widened since last year, with new drainage as well, so we checked it out late yesterday afternoon, allowing me to further my obsession with Margaree Island, just off the coast of Dunvegan. You’ll see how close the island is from McLeod’s campground, where Bob and his family first fell in love with the island.

I can’t get around rough ground easily, so we stick close to the road. I’m avoiding shooting homes that look occupied for obvious reasons but abandoned buildings are fair game and there are plenty of those waiting for another photo essay. We also noted how close to the cliff edge some of the fancy new houses are. Money doesn’t make you smart, now, does it? They might just end up with a mermaid on their doorstep one of these days. 

The slideshow music, the Scots air The Mermaid, is from my recording with Jane Yolen, Lui Collins and Max Cohen, The Infinite Dark. (CD download link)

© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.

The slideshow music is my waltz-clog, Little Birds, written for Molly in 2007. I recorded it with Max Cohen playing guitar in 2009 for In Full Bloom. Dancing to this track is Québecois step-dancer Marie-Soliel Pilette.

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Our language is ripe with apple metaphors – the apple of my eye, apple-cheeked, American as apple pie, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and of course there’s the trope of the apple offered by a designing woman: “Adam ate the apple and our teeth still ache,” in a Hungarian proverb. Apples have also long been associated with mysticism. Cut into an apple and you’ll find a five-pointed star, rich with symbolism. Such tempting fruit the apple is, with juice both fresh and fermented, with that tart-sweet crunch in your mouth when you bite into it. Indeed, the apple has sustained us and our domestic animals for centuries.

I live half the year in the north central part of Massachusetts that was home to John Chapman, better known as “Johnny Appleseed,” whose mythology is firmly implanted in the story of America’s westward expansion. Wagons heading into the wilderness of the Ohio River valley carried what was necessary to survive and cuttings and grafts for apple trees –  and cider presses – made that trip. Disney glorified this expansion, implying that folks made pies with all those apples and that the land was empty, just waiting for them (it was not, as they unhappily discovered). What the settlers were doing was fermenting apple juice and making safe drinkables like low alcohol cider before the advent of the germ theory told them why their water was unsafe or why it made them so sick.

Now I live on an island with so many apples that I think of it as Avalon. Let’s just say that if Martha has a vineyard in Massachusetts, Aphrodite has an orchard on Cape Breton. On the west side of Cape Breton, from Mabou to Margaree Harbour, the many colors of the apples line the road like sugar maples do in Massachusetts. As a lifelong gleaner of wild food, they beckon to me but as we’ve learned, they also look better than they taste. Even though we have two of these ‘found’ trees here, we also have four grafted apple trees. The taste difference is marked. One is yummy, one is meh.

Of course the apple doesn’t breed true. It can’t. It has one root and a fruiting graft from another variety. Unlike an oak, where you can plant an acorn and an oak tree will grow like the original, apples have to be grafted to viable rootstock. Every apple we eat today is a clone, so planting the seeds of an apple won’t give you the same fruit. Pretty trees maybe, nice colors, but the apples will taste unremarkable, meh. 

With the hurricane aimed straight at us, we picked ours a little earlier than planned this year and on Monday, we stripped the trees. Tuesday, while the wind blew, Bob chopped a batch of apples up for sauce but when we tasted the cooked mash before processing it, neither of us liked it, so we tossed it out for the fox. Sounds drastic but these came off our trees so we aren’t out any cash and whatever we put up has to taste good by itself. No amount of sugar or cinnamon will make blah apples better or worth the work of canning them and then there’s the fact that we already have more than a dozen delicious pints from previous years.  It’s a drought year, so I’m not surprised. What surprised me was this batch of apples tasted much better fresh, like tart Ida Reds. So now we have our fingers crossed for the second batch, this one of Scotia Golds. Wish us luck!

© 2020 Donna Hébert, all rights reserved.

We went for a long and healing ride Saturday afternoon. I couldn’t bear to read another word about Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death and the opportunity it gives to the evil in office to replace her on the Supreme Court. Every woman I know is grieving her death and fearing her replacement. To comfort myself and to offer it to others in this moment, I made a slideshow of the photos I took. 

May your name forever be a blessing, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

The music is “Ode to Brigid,” in Irish Gaelic, sung by Molly Hebert-Wilson on “The Infinite Dark,” a 2018 recording with poet and reader Jane Yolen, singers and instrumentalists Lui Collins, Max Cohen, myself, Molly, and Sarah Bauhan, who plays “Fisherman’s Song For Calling the Seals” with me here.