Life's a Beach?

After having practically a heat wave at Thanksgiving the weather has since returned to more seasonal fall temperatures. This means we've broken down and are actually turning on the furnace - even during the day - not just in the evenings when we are being couch potatoes. That was when it hit me that summer really was over. What alarmed me about that though was that I hadn't been swimming even once! This is the first time in my life (and I'm no spring chicken) this has ever happened.

So what did happen? Why didn't I go swimming this year?

We hit the road shortly after summer arrived. Our first main stop was the historic old city of Quebec. It was hot. Really hot. A swim would have felt good after climbing all those hills and steps around the old city. Above right: Staircase at the Rue du Petit-Chaplain)

But where do you swim in this busy city on the edge of the St. Lawrence River? As you can see from this picture (left) I wasn't even bright enough to wear shorts all the time let alone something more appropriate for swimming. But diving off this dock with ferries and other boats nearby would not have been safe. And we were too busy touring the city, sampling the food, and shooting to look for public beaches or even a pool in our hotel. After Quebec City we headed off to New Brunswick's Kouchibouguac National Park. There we would take the boardwalk across the lagoon to Kelly's Beach and the dunes on the Barrier Islands in the Atlantic (below). Ron did go in swimming, but I found the wind too strong and cool for me to swim let alone to expose much skin and risk a sand blasting. From Kouch we moved on to Inverness, Nova Scotia. Yes, that's another beach on the Atlantic and we've even swam there before. But this time both the water and the air were still too cool for even Ron to swim, although we did have to wade across a small cold stream to get this picture below. Further North we would camp in Cape Breton Highlands National Park on a cliff overlooking a rugged beach like this one below: Still, it's not a good spot for a dip. Newfoundland being an island means it is of course surrounded by water. However it is in the North Atlantic, its beaches are mostly rugged, and although the weather is sometimes warm or even hot it is almost always windy. The thought of swimming didn't really cross our minds once we were beyond the lovely sand beach at J.T. Cheeseman Provincial Park. Since photographing the Endangered piping plover is one of our pet projects (we are practically plover stalkers) we spent a day at the park checking the beach for nesting plovers. We didn't find any though, perhaps because we could barely open our eyes against the sand-blasting wind. If we had found some would we really want to take out a camera and big lens and risk giving it a sanding? Probably not. Later, when the wind finally died down enough to get this picture below it was much too chilly to even contemplate swimming. Besides when the light is good we are supposed to be shooting right? So we would photograph many rugged beaches in Newfoundland:

Right: Cape Ray, Newfoundland ->

Above and Below: Green Gardens, Gros Morne National Park, NL

<- class="750495913-17102007" span="">The Arches Provincial Park, Newfoundland Sometimes the problem wasn't just that the landscape was rugged, but that there were icebergs and bergy bits nearby. That would make any swimming more like a polar bear dip.

Below: Icebergs and bergy bits off the shore of Straitsview, near L'Anse aux Meadows, NL

In Labrador there were many potential beautiful swimming spots like these below:

Above & Below: Port Hope Simpson, Labrador, NL

Above: Near Cartwright, Labrador, NL

But they didn't entice us to swim because we were already wearing what Ron calls "Labrador Evening wear". (See image right)

But even if there hadn't been any bugs, to swim in water with icebergs like this one below:

would really require a nice layer of blubber like this minke whale below. On our way home we stopped along the Bay of Fundy to shoot the huge flocks of shorebirds that gather on the Bay's shores on their way south. I must admit taking a mud bath was tempting! But only Ron's sandals really got to test it out.

Once we were back in our home town there were still plenty of warm days when a swim would have been nice. We live near a nice looking long beach along the Scarborough Bluffs (below) and will occasionally even eat a picnic lunch there. But swim? No. Unfortunately out of the 10 Toronto beaches it is one of the two that still regularly close because of high bacterial counts. Perhaps the erosion of the clay bluffs cause silting into the water and is contributing to the problem.

I hear that the weather over the next few days is supposed to be around 20C, or "beach weather" as Ron would call it. So what do you think? Should I find a nice lake somewhere and take the plunge just to break this non-swimming record? I just might - but first let me go find my wet suit.

Getting Started with a Dream

Last night I went to bed mulling over this blog. I was stewing over the technical problems of switching from blogging at http://www.ronerwin.blogspot.com to our own server at http://www.ronerwin.com . But I was also wondering how on earth I would even start writing again after a hiatus of over a year, many weeks of traveling, and thousands of images later when the idea of the blog was to document our photographic journeys. Do I go back and pick-up where I left off and make the postings sequential by date or post randomly? Or, do I skip the last year that took us through the western provinces and north to the Yukon,

(Kluane National Park, YT)

and more recently to the east coast including Newfoundland and Labrador? (Labrador iceberg right) That was my dilemma. So this is where my dream comes in. When I visualize the word “dream” I see it in wavy lines like italics. It’s the same for the actual images of my dreams. In my head they are all wavy or misty like this image taken last Thanksgiving of the sun rising over the St. Lawrence River in Brockville, Ontario. But I digress… The first image I recall from last night’s dream is of me and this grumpy bald guy I once worked with walking on the gravel road past the wildflower filled forest (like this one at Sandbanks Provincial Park below) towards the dairy farm where I was raised. Mr. Bald & Grumpy suddenly had long chin-length dark hair and I thought to myself that Ron would find it really funny that his hair had improved both Mr. B&G’s looks AND his disposition. So the Reformed B&G and I arrive at the farm and go into the barn for some sort of photography class (possibly given by Ron). But the barn is now more of a huge industrial building or warehouse. There were people from my past lives – some I worked with and others I grew up with (cousins actually), milling around in the milking area of the former stable. But the stanchions and gutters were gone. I wandered about taking note of all the differences in the stable and getting in trouble with IT guys for opening doors and peering into weird and oddly placed cupboards and exposing network wiring. We were each to give some sort of photographic presentation on farms. I was dreading giving my presentation as I didn’t know what to present. As I listened to one European immigrant city woman give her presentation on “farming today” I looked about marvelling over the differences in the barn compared to when I was a kid – such as the staircase that now descended from the hay mow above the stable through the feed hole that was formerly used to drop hay or straw bails below. Then it suddenly hit me! I would do my presentation on the farm of my childhood – how I once jumped through that very feedhole/now staircase onto a soft pile of straw below and lived to tell the tale. In the farm of my childhood, we kids (and there were many of us especially when you add in the neighbours and/or cousins) played in corn fields with stalks so high that we couldn’t see over them but yet we didn’t get lost. Today’s corn fields are being encroached on by new subdivisions like this one in Markham, Ontario, (below) where you wouldn’t let your small kids play outside alone let alone in corn fields. So I would do my presentation on the farm of my childhood – the one with a well treed hill with many mighty oaks and birch trees for climbing. Everyone’s favourite was a paper birch tree into which someone (possibly an older brother?) had inserted an old tractor’s steering wheel. As the tree grew it absorbed the steering wheel into its limbs as if it was really a part of it and turned the tree into our airplane and a perfect place to let our childish imaginations soar. I was smiling as I recalled these real memories in my dream, and this is when I woke up - still smiling, for I now knew what to do. I would just write this blog about anything at all – memories, movies, our travels – wherever the day, the road, my dreams or life takes me. But each post will of course feature images and/or photographs by Ron, my partner in life and in Ron Erwin Photography. I hope that I’ve made you curious as this fox (above) on the Alaska Highway in BC, and that from time to time you’ll visit me here at Lori’s Log to see what’s going on – in the past, the present or just my head! And please, leave some sign that you've visited.

Labrador Innukshuk ->