The Last Best Place Read Free Page B

few hours later when they bob in a nice chop over exactly the same spot and think “Well, would ya look at that,” then stumble towards the next miracle. In this case, the Wind Birds, a million or so migrating sandpipers, that each summer descend on Fundy like a cloud, banking, gliding and twisting but never colliding in their ever-changing patterns. They descend on the mud flats, grazing on the thousands of sand shrimp that live in the muck—their last meal before the final leg of the journey to the north coast of South America.
    Wonders abound at the end of Fundy, at the base of the thin isthmus that connects the province to the rest of the continent, where the world’s greatest tides have stripped away 200 million years’ worth of land until the cliffs shimmer with the layers of geologic time, like a serving of spumoni ice cream. Welcome to Nova Scotia’s Jurassic Park: 150 years ago the remains of the first terrestrial reptile ever discovered were found in the fossil tree trunks here; in 1986 a team of American scientists uncovered the biggest dinosaur fossil find in North America along the shores of Fundy.
    Around here is a village called Parrsboro and the Parrsboro Rock & Mineral Shop. The place was packed last time I stopped in, which was about 5:30 p.m. I perused the fossils and fondled the fancyrocks that glittered like candy. I kept stalling because I wanted to talk to the proprietor, who was busy working the room, basking in his peculiar fame. Eldon George is a lot sharper than he looks, standing there in a tractor-dealership hat, snap-buttoned checked shirt and jeans. When I finally got him to myself he explained how he turned to rockhounding at the age of eight after a fall from a barn rafter fractured his arm in eight places and left him with atrophied muscles, a drop wrist and no future as an athlete, his first career choice.
    Then he told me what I took to be his favourite story. “It was April 10, 1984, and I was exploring in the cliffs around Parrsboro. It started to get cold so I stepped behind a cliff and saw a mysterious shape in the red sand at my feet. All of a sudden I wasn’t cold any more,” he said, gesturing with his good arm at the slab of rock in the glass case, pale sandstone, criss-crossed with tiny, perfectly preserved three-toed prints. Nearby were pewter copies of the little tracks. I picked one up. On the back was printed, “World’s smallest dinosaur track. Found by Eldon George.”
    The tides do strange things. For long stretches the land in the Bay of Fundy goes flat with acre after acre of salt marshes and bogs built from deposits laid down by the high tides. Then steep cliffs and strange formations carved out by the surging water. The Mi’kmaqs felt it a holy place; Glooscap, their giant man-spirit, was said to owe his power to Cape Blomidon. I cannot say. The only time I tried to hike Cape Split, a four-mile headland stretching out into the Minas Basin, we somehow missed the turn for the trail altogether andplunged immediately into deep, hilly woods, forging ahead dumbly. All we had was a big thermos of Tim Horton’s coffee and a quart of rum, which we pulled on with the grim single-mindedness of escaped convicts. At points we were reduced to hauling ourselves on tree roots up perpendicular hills. I stepped over a fallen tree, slipped and slid down a hill head-first like Pete Rose taking second. We sang songs as we plunged ahead, quickly learned that none of us knew the same lyrics and were left to repeat the chorus to “Chain Gang” (
uhhhh, ahhhhh, uhhhh, ahhhh, uhhhh ahhhh, ohohohoh, uhhhh ahhhh
) until we burst through the woods into the parking lot where our girlfriends, who had been to the top of the cape and back, sat in the car dead asleep.
    There are so many spots where the land meets the water that sure seem like holy places. Even someone with a spirit as earth-bound as mine feels touched by grace climbing Cape Breton’s famed Cabot Trail. I’m convinced