My Famous Evening

by Howard Norman

  One bitter cold December day in 1993, I had just left the ice rink in Central Park in New York City, having skated with my five-year-old daughter. Just as the Zamboni began to erase all evidence of the zigzag, etched choreographies of skaters from the ice, I glanced over and saw Kristen Heckman helping a little boy off with his ice skates. It was clearly Kristen, nineteen years after I had last seen her at the Halifax train station, December 1974, where we had said a tearless good-bye. She now looked to be prosperously dressed, a phrase I once overheard spoken by an old Russian woman at a bar mitzvah in Halifax. On the wooden bench next to her own skates was a steaming cup of hot chocolate. I thought, Nova Scotia to California to New York, and who knows where in between: Kristen’s come far in life.

  “I think I know that person,” I said to Emma.

  “Want to say hello?” Emma said.

  “It’s cold, let’s get back to the hotel, okay?”

  “She’s looking at you, Dad.”

  I walked over and said hello. Introductions were made, my daughter, her son, about the same age. There seemed scarcely a thing to say to each other, really. “Your daughter’s beautiful,” she said. “Your son’s handsome,” I said.

  “So, you live where now?” she asked.

  “Vermont,” I said. “You?”

  “Oh, I’ve lived here in New York for years. I moved here permanently in 1980.”

  We exchanged brief résumés, our work, what our spouses did for a living, that sort of thing. She told me that her aunt Tanny had passed away. I bought my daughter a cup of hot chocolate. Everyone had gloves, scarves, heavy overcoats on; the Zamboni was moving in concentric circles on the ice to the accompaniment of Madame Butterfly.

  “Where in New York do you live,” I said, “if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Near Park Avenue and 67th.”

  But I refrained from mentioning Joseph Conrad; it would have needed so much explanation, and to what end? “Nice neighborhood, I bet.”

  “My husband and I like it.”

  “Well, good-bye, then, Kristen.”

  “Funny, running into you here, of all places, huh?”

  “It was a long time ago, but I always wondered why you never answered any of my letters.”

  “To California? I never got them.”

  “I sent them through Tanny. I even delivered them to her in person.”

  “And of course you thought she’d send them on.”

  “Of course.”

  “My aunt never did, actually. Send along your letters.”

  I said, “She must’ve had her reasons.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Birder’s Notebook

  “Shorebirds sometimes linger into October.”

  –a pamphlet, “Nova Scotia,” published in 1951.

  1. The Glooskap Trail

  It is one thing to sit for hours and watch a large group of Northern Shovelers at Amherst Point Migratory Bird Sanctuary along the Glooskap Trail, to be impressed and lulled by their floating, sleeping, feeding, their shifting arrays and configurations. Yet it is quite another thing to draw in close through binoculars an individual shoveler set apart in a surround of shallow salt water, to be fairly mesmerized by the sharp intelligence in its orange or yellow eyes, to note its physical attributes, the bill longer than the head, the subtle yet startling feather palette, or even catch a glimpse of its vermilion legs and feet. In other words, to have a sense of that shoveler being, as Scottish bird-artist Alexander Wilson put it, “a recluse in solitary joy, for however long it chooses to thus be a prideful hermit, therefore lavish against conformity, who will surely return to the horde and to what extent in that inevitability be given to happiness or doleful resignation, we shall never know.”

  I like the moment when a shoveler flies off, and if it returns, might cause a current of low-key squalling and muttering to flow through the others. Fly off, return, fly off, return, all day long, one at a time, in pairs or groups; until dusk when all the shovelers leave for—somewhere. The departure of shore birds always causes in me a sharp, melancholic pang, a gut-deep twist into a deeper emotion; light diminishes, an emptiness where moments before was such a vivid exhibition. Wilson perfectly elegizes the moment, calling out to the disappearing shapes of sea birds, “There you go, taking the day’s last light and fare-thee-well, for, alas, one such as I cannot follow.”

  I prefer to watch birds in Nova Scotia alone, to meditate on birds only in the company of birds, and give myself over to the whims of happenstance. I do not mean to promote the obvious as a revelation, but so much of birding is happenstance. You can follow the map to Five Islands Provincial Park, Merigomish Island, Mavilette Beach, Bird Island, Chebogue Meadows, or Missaguash Marsh, to name a few proven sites (which, in my experience, are always rewarding), obsessively studied field guide in hand. But as with any investigation into the Natural World, you simply cannot account for luck. (A philosophical treatise on fate in ornithology has yet to be written.) No matter, that on any given day you either see or don’t see a rail, whimbrel, sandpiper, grebe, murre, woodcock, guillemot, merganser, heron, scoter, or scaup—you are still out there in the grandeur of sea and sky, marsh or field, beach or woodland, estuary or island, and to that condition no disappointment should be attached. Landscape allows for alertness, aesthetic exactness; to paraphrase Wallace Stevens, when you look at an estuary, you have an estuary-shaped thought. Such joyful moments as when you see a particular bird you’ve been hoping to see are never entitlements. “Easy for tourists to see the landscape as due them for all of their hard labors in life, especially since they don’t have to eke out a living in winter up here,” Mrs. Elsbeth Carey, an amateur ornithologist and carver of miniature wooden birds said to me in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, over tea at the Glooskap Restaurant.

  What is it I desire by so often returning, especially in early autumn, to Spencers Beach, or Advocate Beach, or Five Islands? Naturally, it is the emotional equation between the eye and the heart: To see birds is to feel things deeply. To construct memories. Even to try and age gracefully through habits of observation. Alexander Wilson said, “As I grow older, I more look forward to seeing a bird I have yet to see, than derive pleasure from eventually seeing it, if such things such as joyful anticipation and fulfillment should even be compared.”

  In some thirty years of looking at birds in Nova Scotia, I had never seen a Wilson’s Phalarope. Now, a Wilson’s Phalarope (Phalaropus tricolor) is not necessarily considered the rarest of sightings in Nova Scotia, more a sighting, as ornithologist Ellen Lodge put it, “with historical overtones.” That is, over the centuries of ornithological reportage by professional and lay persons alike in Nova Scotia, Wilson’s Phalarope might be best termed an “accidental,” quite scarcely but nonetheless possibly seen. For example, in W. Earl Godfrey’s Birds of Canada, a book I return to as often as some might the Bible, he writes that Wilson’s Phalarope “perhaps breeds rarely in southern New Brunswick (Sackville) and Nova Scotia (Amherst Point). There is a convincing sight record of ten seen off the coast of Nova Scotia, 19 June 1934 (A.O. Gross, 1937. Auk, volume 54, no. l, p. 27); also several subsequent sight records; photo record Seal Island, 25 August 1971. Sight records only for Prince Edward Island.”

  I would like to add my own sight record for a Wilson’s Phalarope, October 11, 2002, at approximately 7:15 a.m., offshore about thirty meters, as I stood at the wharf in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, on the Minas Basin along the Glooskap Trail. I can effortlessly chronicle the morning’s sequence. I woke up at 4 a.m., went downstairs in my bed & breakfast, made coffee, drank a cup, and filled a thermos with the rest of the pot. Took up my binoculars and meandered down to the water. Seagulls, naturally. Then I noticed at the periphery of my vision a “different” bird. The private excitement that it turned out to be a Wilson’s Phalarope.

  It had indeed lingered on into October. As for its identification as a Wilson’s Phalarope, I have no doubt whatsoever: I checked my sighting against three field guides, photographs
, and drawings. I keep no “life list,” but cherish the memory of perhaps the only Wilson’s Phalarope I shall ever see in Nova Scotia, or, for that matter, anywhere else.

  I have most often sought out birds along the Glooskap Trail, in fact have never visited Nova Scotia—not once—without doing so. “Not the most rewarding of birding spots, I must say,” Alan Ringhold, a New Zealander ornithologist specializing in geese, swans, ducks, commented when I told him my loyalty to the birding regions not in Cape Breton Island, his own preferred haunt. Birders, I’ve noticed, can be territorial that way.

  “I beg to differ,” I said, one rainy autumn day in Truro. He drove off toward Cape Breton, I toward the Minas Basin.

  In broad outline, the Glooskap Trail runs from just south of Brooklyn in Colchester County, along the southeast coast of the Minas Basin, meanders north, then northeast past the Avon Spirit Shipyard, the Cheverie-Causeway Lookout, the Walton Lighthouse, dips down past the Shubenacadie River Tidal Bore, up to Truro (the “center” of Nova Scotia), then turns due west, lengthening out through Great Village, past Thomas Cove, Five Islands Provincial Park, Five Islands Lighthouse, then turns north along Route 2 until it reaches the splendid Amherst Point Migratory Bird Sanctuary, finally meeting up with the Sunrise Trail, which would take a traveler east again along the Northumberland Strait. Off the Glooskap Trail’s main branch is its westward tributary, a magnificent stretch of beach and cliff all the way out to Advocate Harbour, then up along Chignecto Bay.

  In Parrsboro, in a small park with a gazebo, stands a very impressive, wooden statue of Glooskap.

  In an extraordinary cycle of Mi’kmaq folktales, Glooskap is forever busy adjusting and reconfiguring the topography and weather, not to mention fighting ice-giants and panther-witches, dispensing wisdom, providing outsized dramas, generally comporting himself with matchless dignity and courage, which, of course, is the essential job description of any reputable culture hero with godlike powers and an altruistic agenda. The Glooskap Trail, then, serves as an homage to Glooskap’s former ubiquity and spiritual guidance, his myriad accomplishments. It also charts his historical wanderings—GLOOSKAP WAS HERE!—and any AAA map contains place-names that allude to various incidents engendered by Glooskap’s arrival to this or that village, beach, cliff, lake, woodland, his interventions and triumphs, his prestidigitations and comical mishaps, even his ongoing search for a hidden cave in which to rest undetected from his mighty labors “for the rest of his days.”

  A number of Mi’kmaq stories are replete with birds, sometimes giant birds who cause tremendous trouble. Here is one, which basically explains WHY THE SEA WINDS ARE THE STRENGTH THEY ARE TODAY:

  Glooskap liked to sit on the sand dunes and watch his Indian friends in their canoes. They were excellent paddlers and could go far out to sea. Once in a while a whale would spout, its enormous body rolling like a black wave over the sea. Its broadly fanned tail would slap down, spraying the Indians with foamy water. The canoes would rock on the swells. If one was capsized, Glooskap would right it, then pluck the Indians up from the water and set them back in, handing them the paddles.

  And if Glooskap saw the dark, roiling clouds and slanting rain of a storm blowing in, he would call out, “Storm! Storm!” He would catch the jagged lightning bolts in midair. He would guide the canoes to safety.

  In those days, there lived a giant, fearsome bird, whom the Indians called Wuchowsen. His name meant, “he who caused ferocious storms.” Wuchowsen would sit on a boulder by the sea. Whenever he rustled his wings, clacked his beak, or scratched himself with a talon, a tremendous storm started up! He caused gales, hurricanes, lashing hailstorms that rushed in so quickly that even Glooskap had no time to warn the Indians.

  One day Glooskap went to watch the Indians race in their canoes. But when he reached the sand dunes, he found many canoes washed up and splintered on the beach. One look and he knew that many Indian people had drowned. Glooskap let loose a mournful, echoing cry, “Wuchowsen, I know you have done this terrible thing!”

  A statue of Glooskap

  Just then, Glooskap saw a shadow glide over the sand. He looked up to see the grinning Wuchowsen flying past, each flap of his wings as loud as thunder.

  Whoosh! Suddenly Glooskap himself was swirled up into the air by a tornado of sand. It spun him along the beach, then flung him against some boulders. This was followed by a storm that lasted for five days, and carried with it the most brutal winds Glooskap had ever known. He crouched in his cave as the wind howled outside like a thousand wolves.

  “I must find that Wuchowsen!” Glooskap said. Northward along the coast, toppled trees and boulders stacked in strange formations marked the storm’s trail. Glooskap followed it until he found Wuchowsen sitting on his boulder, daydreaming of storms.

  “Wuchowsen!” Glooskap said with anger. “You have no mercy on people. You move your wings, clack your beak, and scratch with your talons a little too often!”

  The giant bird answered, “I have lived on this Earth as long as you have, Glooskap! Storms are my life! I’ll do as I please!”

  But Glooskap rose up to his full size and flew high into the sky, taking Wuchowsen with him as if he were just a little duck.

  Far above the clouds, Glooskap tied Wuchowsen’s wings together and threw him down onto the rocks.

  Now there were calm seas for many years, and the Indian people could go out in their canoes all day long without fear of being ambushed by Wuchowsen’s dread storms. But gradually the water became stagnant. It grew thick and muddy. The whales fled far out to sea, where mud did not get into their blowholes, and where they could swim freely.

  “We need a storm to break up these waters,” Glooskap declared. “Why, I can’t even paddle my magic canoe!”

  Glooskap remembered Wuchowsen. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been so rough on him,” he said. Glooskap searched and searched and finally found Wuchowsen right where he had always lived, on his boulder by the sea. Wuchowsen’s broken bones had mended and his wounds had healed. But his wings were still tied and only rustled ever so lightly, causing only a slight breeze. Only twigs were flipped into the air, only minnows were slapped to shore.

  “Wuchowsen,” Glooskap said, “we need your help in clearing the waters.”

  Glooskap approached carefully, untied one of Wuchowsen’s wings—immediately a sharp wind knocked Glooskap on his back! As he lay on the ground, he heard a thunderclap and saw a pack of black clouds tumbling.

  Glooskap stood up and brushed himself off. “I see you haven’t lost your skills!” he said, laughing.

  “Just untie my other wings,” said Wuchowsen. “Then I’ll brew up a storm that will last a hundred years!”

  “I think not,” said Glooskap. “I will keep one of your wings tied forever. Now, cause a storm that clears the water and nothing more. Or I will bind your free wing again.”

  Glooskap went the length of the coast in ten leaps, arriving at an Indian village. There he said, “A storm is approaching!” and as he spoke, the first squalls appeared on the horizon. Quickly, the people secured their huts. As the storm raged, they huddled inside. The thunder drummed in their ears. Their huts creaked and leaned in the wind. But all through this Glooskap stood guard, batting away jagged lightning and swallowing tidal waves.

  When the weather finally cleared, the waters were running free; whales lolled about not far from shore. The sun had broken through.

  The storm had scattered the Indian canoes every which way; finding each and every one, Glooskap lined them up on the beach. “Why not spend a day out at sea?” he said. And that is exactly what the Indian people did.

  Every now and then, Glooskap visits the giant bird, Wuchowsen, just to make sure one wing is still bound tightly.

  The Glooskap Trail, in a sense, then, demarcates the mythological opera that was Glooskap’s life. For example, Five Islands—Moose, Diamond, Long, Egg, and Pinnacle—across from the village of Economy (where it is said you can “walk on the bottom of the sea” b
ecause the red sand and mud flats are laid bare at low tide) were created when Glooskap flung huge handfuls of sod at Beaver, another giant, because Beaver had mocked and doubted his magical powers. Well, Glooskap had a reputation to uphold. Now and then along the Glooskap Trail, one sees various warning signs to the effect of: always be mindful of the oncoming tide as rising tides can return as rapidly as one foot per minute. After creating the famous Bay of Fundy tides, Glooskap left them under the jurisdiction of the moon. Throughout the millennium, the advance and retreat of these tides has erased and reconfigured the coastline countless times, every day depositing tons of soil, forming alluvial plains, replenishing salt marshes, brailling the beaches with indentations of stones, dealing out clam and scallop shells like ten thousand decks of cards, leaving the mud flats glistening like various hues of black or brown shellac.

  Examine a map and you will see that the Bay of Fundy almost dissects Nova Scotia from the rest of Canada. The Fundy tides are like something turbulent deep in the psyche of the planet, awesome, precarious, inimitable, let alone the province’s most reliable and quite lucrative tourist attraction. The funnel shape of the Bay of Fundy collaborates with the moon in a kind of uncanny hydraulics, directing and accelerating the tide until it reaches Cobequid Bay, where, in the upper part of the bay, it may rise as high as sixteen meters. As any guidebook will tell you, this phenomenal onrush of water up into rivers and estuaries temporarily reverses their natural flow to the sea. No wonder one folklorist called Glooskap “a force of nature.” In a church bazaar near Advocate Harbour, I once saw a quilt that replicated a tidal chart, the cosmic arithmetic of the tides stitched in columns, a philosophical query in flowing black cursive lettering stitched along the quilt’s bottom hem: WHAT DIFFERENCE WHAT DAY THIS IS—THE TIDE IS EVERLASTING, almost as if the quiltmaker were jotting down a hymn.