Last light at Cobequid Bay

As I finished painting in the Cape Breton Highlands, I was feeling cranky. I’d focused on one view, never realizing that the ‘better’ one was behind me.

“Too late for that,” I mused, as I loaded my kit into the SUV. Stepping slightly off the road, I plunged into a ditch full of sticky muck, sinking instantly to mid-calf and getting quite stuck. It wasn’t quicksand though, and Mary kindly pulled me out. Now I was both cranky and filthy and had to retrieve my shoes from the muddy gluepot they were buried in. And if that wasn’t bad enough, mud like that never smells very good.

We raced like fools toward Cobequid Bay. “I’m not going to have time to paint a second painting,” I whined. But I did, and it was a lovely sunset across a farmer’s field: gentle and sweet like Nova Scotia itself. It turned out to be one of my all-time favorite paintings.

Meanwhile, Mary raced down to the bay to take photos before the light disappeared. Access was blocked by a sign reading “Private Lane.” She parked and walked down to the water. Apparently, she learned something from her ne’er-do-well mother after all.

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In 2016, my daughter Mary and I set off across Alaska and Canada on a Great White North Adventure, which you can read about starting here. We arrived in Anchorage at the beginning of September and got home in mid-October. In between, we visited every province but PEI (been there, done that), and Yukon Territory. In retrospect, it might have made more sense to do this during the summer, since Alaska and Canada threw a mess of strange weather at us.