kolbykirk.com

Trip Report: Nova Scotia

Filed Under Uncategorized, international travel, photography

I visited a friend in Nova Scotia for a week earlier this month. The excuse to visit her and her Canadian providence was to teach her high school art class a little about photography. She could have simply asked if I wanted to go up there to take our her trash and I’d probably had said “yes”, but it was fun to share some of my photography tips and tricks with her class.

The area she lived in - Cape Breton Highlands - is unbelievably beautiful. Wildflowers were in bloom, the pristine forests were alive with wildlife. I saw moose, coyotes, egrets, geese, rabbits, snakes, eagles, toads… I went on a couple hikes and admired how they were so clean and without graffiti or trash, an unfortunate occurrence here in Southern California.

If you want to save money, you should go to Nova Scotia instead of Scotland. After all, Nova Scotia literally translates to “New Scotland”. The people speak English with a Canadian/Gaelic accent. Even street signs along the Cabot Trail, the main highway snaking up the eastern coast of Cape Breton Island, are in both English and Gaelic.

I enjoyed the graciousness of my host and those who lived in the area. The people I met in the highlands of Cape Brenton had family in the area for many generations. I was staying in a cabin with a friend on the property her family settled on some 200 years earlier. The graveyard on the old property had over 100 tombstones, all related in some way to my friend. Her great great great grandfather who came over from Scotland was buried there.

All the sleepy towns in the area were beautiful, with their cottage-like houses painted either white or a bright color. A local told me that since the weather changes so often and usually involved wind and rain, they use protective boat paint to cover their homes – which probably comes in colors with names like “Ocean Blue”, “Fire Truck Red” or “Banana Yellow”. With the contrast of their well-manicured lawns, the brown rocky shoreline and the blue ocean, it was easy to take “postcard perfect” photos. Here are a few:

I’ll post more photos, as well as a few other things (maps, journal scans, etc.) from my trip, in  the coming weeks.