Chebucto Head

One of the things I particularly love to do is to go with Lorraine when she is looking for a location. We drove to Bayswater Beach a couple of days ago to look at a possible site there. Although we decided to look closer to home (this spot was on a small island out in the bay) and didn’t go for a swim, it was great to spend some time just sitting on the sand and watching the silvery ocean and the small waves that curled their fine edges and broke all along that beautiful beach.

This evening we decided to go and check out Chebucto Head. We were looking for the right angle and slope of land, and I ended up standing on some granite bedrock with the sea behind me while L. tried a few shots to see whether this location would work for the project she has in mind. What I love about it is being in a place, especially toward sunset, and feeling the quiet that is in it. I don’t have to think or make any decisions; my part in the process is to help look and to sometimes make a suggestion, but mostly I just have to be there in that place.

So I stood on that rock and noted the kinds of growth that survived on this exposed headland at the mouth of the harbour. I saw that the cranberries were beginning to ripen with a subtle cranberry blush where they were hanging on their tiny plants. The other interesting berries there were the grey-blue ones on the low ground juniper that grew around the rock outcrops and the occasional clumps of red bunchberries. Near the rock I was standing on were pitcher plants growing in the wet spots. I stuck my fingertip into one of the leaf vessels, felt the liquid in it, wondered if it was just water, and thought about how such a plant had evolved (I have since learned that the liquid in the plant’s pitchers is called phytotelma, which translates as “plant pond”).

Chebucto Head did remind me of Newfoundland, and not just because of the pitcher plants. There were a few alders out on the headland that had found a roothold there and just grew along the ground instead of growing up. It made me think of the stretches of tuckamore we walked through on the west coast of Newfoundland where the prevailing winds and salt spray keep the growth close to the ground – I remember an adult tamarack we saw there that was more than five metres across and no more than 20 centimetres high, complete with needles and cones and spread out along the ground.

As the sun began to set, I remembered an evening in Labrador where we walked through a high boggy area near the sea. We knew that people had been picking cloudberries around there, but finding our first ones was a small miracle. We would see one perched on its upright stalk and notice the next one a few metres away and kept on eating and sighting them in the twilight as we grazed our way to the edge of the bluff. There is nothing like the delicate texture and sweetness of ripe cloudberries (aka bakeapples) fresh picked on a Labrador evening.

All this is why I love these opportunities – it is all about being there at that time and all the other times we have been present in some special place in the evening quiet. You don’t need to be a photographer to do it, though scouting for locations is always a good motivator to get you out there looking and a good enough pretext to fall back on should you feel you need one; all you really need is just to be there.