Part Five - The Song of the WhalesGoing from riding 600 miles in one day to not having anywhere to go was a real change in pace. I had hours to kill so I wandered aroung the park stopping to chat with my fellow campers. Although Nova Scotia is usually considered an English speaking province French is also common, since it is the original home of the Arcadians, French speakers who were banished by the British in the late 1700s to the U.S. territory of Louisiana and became those Cajuns who talk so funny, cook so good, and play such fine music. So as I approached each campsite I noted the province on the car license plates. If the car was from Quebec I used the what little French I knew; most of which came from reading the bilingual labels on the Canadian beer bottles. The car parked at a camp site with two attractive young women about my age had Quebec plates so I greeted them with my best, "Bon joir." I learned they were both school teachers from Montreal who welcomed an opportunity to practice English, which they apparently rarely used at home or at work. They were quite sympathetic when they learned of my plight, and invited me to lunch, which was a feast of fruits, cheeses, wine, veggies from their garden back home, and freshly caught trout and salmon. Because of the communication problem I didn't really understand that the fresh trout was in still in the process of being caught by the significant others of these lovely French femmes. Seeing some strange guy sitting at the picnic table munching their Frommage and Pain was a bit of a pain to these guys as the returned from their morning of fishing. There was a flurry of French, and while I didn't follow what was being said, I gathered that the guys were wondering who the heck I was, while the ladies were not really thrilled about spending their vacation sitting in a campground while their boyfriends spent the whole day in a trout stream. I caught on that they were using me to send that message to their boyfriends by making them jealous. That was confirmed by the icy looks from the boyfriends the ladies invited me back for dinner. What a deal. I got to learn French from a couple of cute teachers while the guys went fishing, then I got to eat the fish! Suddenly being stranded didn't seem all that bad. That night there was a nature lecture entitled."The Song of the Whales". As walked up the torch-lit path through the woods to the open air amphitheatre I heard the Cat Steven's song, Moonshadow. That made me a bit curious since I didn't figure that Tea for the Tillerman was favorite album of the park rangers I had met the previous day. As it turned out the talk was being presented by the park naturalist, a female college student. She did a very nice slide presentation about the whales which can be seen in the area, and used a National Geographic map to show the migration paths. I worked for National Geographic at the time, in the photomechanical lab which does the photo compilation of the maps. As it so happened I had worked on the one she was using. Great opening line eh? We talked after her show and then she stopped at my campsite since it was the way to the trailer where she stayed. We sat talked together under the carpet of stars. About midnight the rangers cruised by out of "fatherly" concern for their young charge -- she apparently didn't stay out so late and her room mate got worried -- but she assured them all was well. Before she departed we made plans to take a hike to a lake the next day. I was beginning to like being stranded -- a lot. The hike to the lake was fascinating. The area is mostly peat bogs and the footing was moist and springy. In many places the ground was carpeted with exotic carnivorous plants like Pitcher Plants, Venus Flytraps and others I had seen only in pictures. The place looked like it had razed by fire; there were hundreds of dead, sun bleached pine tree trunks and not a live tree in sight. I later I realized the the trees had been killed by acid rain. We went skinny-dipping in the lake, but that adventure was cut short because the lake was acidic and murky. I was beginning to forget I even owned a motorcycle. Next chapter: [ Bob's Adventure ] [ Title Page] |
