It seemed like we'd never get out of the tri-state area. Everyone seemed to be going...well, everywhere. But once we got out of Connecticut the states started flying by. At around 10pm we called it quits and stayed in a cute, quaint, and surprisingly cheap hotel in Portland, Maine, the Inn at St. John. The next day we crossed the Canadian border around 2pm and stopped at the visitor center that is about a block from the border police station. The building had a beautiful lawn of green grass on its flat roof. One of the visitor center workers glommed onto us and was giddy with brochures when she found out we didn't really have any specific events planned for our week in Canada, plus we didn't entirely know how to get where we were going. A steady stream of maps, magazines, flyers, and a coupon book came at us like bullets. She even got out a highlighter to show us the best route to take to Nova Scotia and where the best hiking and kayaking was. Where we could go whale-watching. Where we could see artisans and historic re-enactments (I mentally crossed this off the list as it was still coming out of her mouth due to my having lived in the midst of one big colonial re-enactment for the last two years). Here's a national park her kids really like. Here's where we could repel off a cliff. These Canadians are too friendly for my taste I thought while smiling and nodding.
We then drove a short way to a little lakeside town called Woodstock in New Brunswick and had beer and fish and chips before getting on the road for about 6 more hours. They're not really into highway patrol up there according to Matt and indeed speed limits seemed mostly arbitrary. Even though it's listed in kilometers and not miles it's still exciting to see a speed limit sign that says "100"! It might as well say "Speed limit: Sky."
Once we got to Nova Scotia the scenery got more hilly and green and as we drove closer to the coast, very very foggy. We rented a house/studio that's owned by a German sculptor who rents it out when she's in Germany. Her husband lives in their Nova Scotia residence, a ferry ride away from the studio, year round. I had spoken to Meinhard on the phone and he basically said he was lonely and would like to hang out with us during our stay. Weird, I thought. The concept of renting a house sight-unseen except for a photo from a total stranger always feels a little sketchy at first. Anything could happen. But we'd had really good experiences doing it before and I guess the surprise of it is a little of the fun. He had emailed me with directions to a house down the road from the studio, a neighbor of his named Morley. He also said to meet him there at 9 because he was taking the ferry over and wanted to get home before sundown at 9:30 (one hour east of Eastern Standard Time and late on the sundown). We really hadn't planned it too well or timed it precisely--we had a rough estimate of how long the drive was and how many miles each googlemaps step was--but we ended up arriving at Morley's almost exactly at 9, really within 90 seconds of it. As we got out of the car Meinhard rushed to greet us and said "Right on time like in Germany!"
Morley, an 87 year old former carpenter and lobster weigher, invited us into his tiny turquoise house where we sat on a couch about as old as he is. As the nearest neighbor to the studio, Morley was our designated 'host' of sorts who had the spare key to the place, but really he served as our companion every day for about 5 minutes. A really sweet and extremely hard of hearing old man, Morley grew up in the house he still lived in and had never traveled beyond Nova Scotia. Like Meinhard, he was pretty straightforward about the isolation and loneliness of living in what was possibly the least populated place I'd ever been. You could drive for miles and miles and miles and not see any sign of life or another car. We went to a restaurant one night at about 8:15 and it was closed but they said they would make us dinner since there was nothing else open for about an hour in each direction. To be sure, it's a great place for peace and quiet and solitude but it occurred to me that someone like Morley was simply born there and might not even be someone who particularly likes quiet and solitude. Maybe Morley would be a social butterfly if he had grown up in a town that had, say, a few more than 7-10 residents. Meinhard said Morley had been dating one of the 7-10 residents for a while, an elderly British woman, but she broke it off in the past year or so. Made me kind of sad. The only other fish in the sea, I imagine, are the actual fish in the sea.
Helga(the sculptor)'s studio was stark and minimalist, beautifully crafted, homey and had a spectacular view. The bedroom was upstairs behind the main room and didn't have a wall so from everywhere in the studio you could see the ocean. Most of the time we were there it was overcast and misty and rained briefly a few times, but the skyline and the scenery took on such a rich and moody cast that we didn't really lament the absence of the sun. We went to a sandy beach one day in the rain and it was actually pretty great to see the waves crashing and the rain coming down on it. And of course it almost goes without saying, there was not a soul anywhere. Not because it was raining probably but because there just aren't that many people to go around...
We explored a town an hour away, Guysborough, the first full day we were there. It was cute and tiny. There was no stop light in the whole town. We bought some amazing 9-grain bread at the bakery and some vegetables and fruit. We brought back a bag of apples for Morley. Later he brought us some delicious rhubarb that grows in his yard. Either he would stop by or we would stop in his place each day and we'd talk about the weather or we'd ask things about the area or his life. He asked Matt his name and how to spell his last name, to which he replied, "That's a little different." From what I don't know.
Most days we woke up and had tea and coffee, stared at the ocean and read, walked out on the rocky shore (it was really cold most of the time), made dinner, drank, entertained ourselves and the like. One night we played trivia pursuit and as Matt had predicted he won bigtime. That bastard.
Helga had hand-made an oven outside solely with large stones from the beach. Meinhard and his friend Berndt who we met the first night indicated how easy it was to cook with it and that Helga baked bread in it. It mostly looked like a pile of stones to me but we did cook some things in it. Matt went all prehistoric and got really excited about building the fire. I mostly stayed inside enjoying the view and drinking subpar Nova Scotian wine. I like trying out local beers and wines (you might not guess it but Long Island has some great wines and Maine too had delicious dry blueberry wines). But I tried several Nova Scotian wines and it was all not-so-great.
Each day the lobster boats would swing by the orange buoy right in front of our house and pull up the cage with lobsters to take back to the dock and sell. They would throw some of them back in the water, I think dead ones or something, because the seagulls would follow the boats and dive down to get what they left behind.
The few times that we ate out we were either the only of one of 2 or 3 other people in the restaurant. We went to a crab-shack type place not too far from where we were staying and had really yummy scallop burgers. The guy who ran the place lived next door to the "cafe" which really was a tiny little place where he was the only employee. "I don't make any money, I just annoy customers," was a line I got the feeling he said a lot. He was a retired car mechanic who had owned three car shops. He indicated that he ran the restaurant because his wife was too grumpy to be around. Two 20-something couples drove up on ATV/four wheelers. The two guys had on one piece worker uniforms and the girls had on lots of makeup and sullen looks. From the conversation with the owner I heard one of the guys say he worked in the goldmine. The town which was right next to Seal Harbor was Goldboro, "The City Built on Gold" as the sign says as you enter town. Apparently the old goldmines had been somewhat recently reopened. At some point the owner guy said something to one of the younger guys about him not being a hard worker and then the guy told the owner to fuck off and that his ice-cream was a ripoff. But he and his buddies left with ice-cream cones.
The owner guy said he was out of lobster burgers which Matt had originally asked for but he added that his brother worked on the lobster boats and he could get some later that week, Buddy. He called us and the ingrate and his friends "Buddy" at least 4 or 5 times each.
Lobster season was coming to a close so on Thursday we went to the dock to buy some. I hated the idea of getting live lobsters and cooking them and yet I've eaten them in restaurants knowing that that's how they're cooked. I definitely wouldn't have done it myself, but Matt loves lobster and seemed to know how to cook them so I kind of stayed out of it until they were done and on a plate before me. Really delicious too. We were a little uncertain how to buy them and we just walked onto the dock where the lobstermen were taking the cages off the boats and putting them in trucks. We inquired and were readily sold 3 lobsters for $32. They were surprised we paid with American dollars but were fine with it. It's even with the Canadian dollar these days instead of worth a lot more like in the past. Ah, the sinking dollar. It's great if you're European. Speaking of dollars, the gas up there was crazy expensive. You'd think with gas prices as they are we'd take a vacation that didn't involve driving 16 hours each way. We must really hate the environment.
The lobstermen sell us their wares:
...making Matt an uncharacteristically happy camper. (The happiest I'd seen him thus far in the Atlantic time zone.)
The seagulls, grotesquely huge, witness the whole exchange with great interest...
The poor lobsters proved to be a tasty dinner. We resorted to using one of the sculptor's tools to dismantle them.
Matt makes an odd gesture at the end of our meal indicating his gustatory satisfaction:
