Six months ago, I moved from Toronto to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. I’m still not exactly sure why — I had a low level desire to get out of the city after 36 years, and to be by the sea. I picked Lunenburg on something of a whim. Long simmer, quick, impulsive leap.
A place like Lunenburg unfolds itself in layers. The surface is the pretty, colourful houses, the fiercely preserved heritage architecture and layout, the famous harbour, the art and food that brings tourists.
But when you live in a place like this, the more subtle dimensions start to emerge. The routines you begin to carve, the quiet spaces you share with deer and wildflowers and the sea. For me, those spaces have wound new pathways in my days, giving me air for more creative time, more analog movements, more elasticity.
One of these is the back harbour trail. The front harbour is the gregarious, gussied up sister who invites the whole class to the party, all Bluenose (yes, the one from the dime), moored sailboats, fancy scallop boats. The back harbour is the quiet sister who hides in the treehouse reading while everyone else is at the barbecue.
The front harbour is a five minute walk from my house, and my go to for my mail and fish cakes and excellent meals and books and good coffee. But I can leave my house, slide down a steep hill and slip onto the back harbour trail in less than 200 metres. And I’m immediately on an old rail trail surrounded by trees, lurking families of deer, wildflowers, peeks at the working back harbour.
This is where I run (fun fact: it is not flat), ride my bike to the farmers market and — almost every day — slip out for a brisk walk between meetings. Mere steps and I’m transported from the buzz of zoom and the bigger world to the damp, muted world of birds and soil and growth and decomposition and air and mist. If I time it properly, I start as the afternoon is waning, circle the town on the trail and end up at the wharf in time for a sunset.
I’ve always built walks into my days when I can — I used to joke about walking my imaginary dog as an excuse to get outside. But now I don’t need the imaginary canine — I just embrace the ritual of feeling my way down the pathway, discovering what it means today.
I’m not sure what winter will mean on the trail — but I’ve already adapted to running in trail shoes and carrying a headlamp as the darkness starts to land. I’ll figure out what winter on the trail calls for.
Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who is a recent transplant to Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people.
