Musings

I don’t have many photos from the weekend or my first day here in Nova Scotia. There was no lack of interesting scenes and subjects, simply a lack of will on my part to pull the camera out. With Daniel here, I was both a tourist and a tour guide. As were walking around, it felt right to be snapping photos left, right, and centre to capture what we were seeing. It’s not the same when I’m on my own.

I love sharing experiences with people, and I’m so glad that my photography has opened up opportunities for people to live vicariously through my lens; But there are some things that just cannot be captured. As I stood on the balcony of my B&B in Cheticamp tonight, watching the last remnants of the sun skimming across the bottoms of the flowing and billowing clouds, I didn’t bother to get my camera out. My camera can’t capture colors of that intensity. Nor can it capture the cool wind blowing through the valley, carefully perfumed by the wood-burning stoves of the town, the various blooms in the fields of wild-flowers, the freshly cut grass on the neighbour’s acreage, and the salty ocean spray from the harbor just over the hill. Were I to take that photo, all you would see is a cheap facsimile of but one facet of an otherwise rich, dynamic, and beautiful scene.

When we’ve seen something beautiful, our understanding and appreciation of beauty is expanded. It’s a language that we become more fluent in as we experience those beautiful details of the world. Why was I so passionate about bringing friends along with me on this trip? Because I would then have others who would understand the PEI/maritimes dialect of beauty! I’ll come back and talk about what I experienced, and you’ll try to understand it in the terms of your own experiences, and the story will lose something along the way. The beauty of the island is not better than the caribbean, the rocky mountains, south america, europe, or anywhere else that my friends of been; It’s simply different. Just as I struggle to comprehend the beauty of the places that they have all been to, I know that they will struggle to fully comprehend the beauty of what I’ve seen. I wanted to bring you with me so that we could have that shared language, that common knowledge of a beauty that we can remember, remark upon, and discuss with full confidence that we're actually talking about the same thing.

I honestly wish more people had been able to make the trip with me. I was glad to have Daniel along with me and I hope that he found the experience to be enjoyable and enriching. I’m glad to have another person fluent in the beauty of PEI. Who’s next?

(Details and photos from today's trip through the Cabot Trail will be posted in the next day or two. I'm tired and I'm going to bed.)