I was nineteen years old and Christmas 2006 was coming quickly. I took my Friday off work to head up the Valley, and on my way out of town, pulled up at Bridgetown Regional High School. I spotted Celia in the mix with the lunch hour kids. She didn’t say much, but clutched an envelope all through the conversation, till I finally asked if it was for me. S…

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I’ve gone on long walks in search of a narrowing sliver of sunshine. That’s often what I’m after in the forest, the boundless beauty of lucky light, crossing the gauntlet of a canopy to reach me. The many scattered cabins I’ve discovered are welcome waypoints in the deep and dappled shade. Harley’s Hangout, like most, have an unlocked door and a guestbook for you to sign. With that comes the promise that you’ll keep it mostly to yourself. The preservation of these places is a matter of trust — because it’s basically impossible to prevent intruders from structures sitting empty for weeks, months, or seasons at a time. I’ve seen more damage done to places bolted up tight than ones that invite an occasional visitor. I’ve got a longterm respect for these bastions of backwoods history, little windows into the decades leading up to my youth. Those with a short future hold the most precarious beauty. Their heyday might be over, but lingering, they have a way of holding up mine.

August 29, 2026
Parker’s Cove, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6866 of my daily journal.

Stumbling down the rocky ruts of Lightfoot Road, cleared fields gave a newly wide view to the expanse of Fundy. While I stood here catching random raindrops on my unprotected head, I questioned if I should rush to my car or wait. On the walk back, I watched a downpour track exactly west/east over Isle Haute, the high island. It was an almost perfect match in size, and for a couple of minutes, swallowed the landmass entirely from sight. These days remind me why I’m depressed by unbroken blue skies and sunlight. They give no sense of scale out in the open, driving my back to the darkened spaces of forest trails and streams. If a view has any chance of moving me, it’s in the storms conducting passage, patterns of weather in progress. I can’t recall a summer more prone to the proliferation of scattered cloudbursts. Most pass quick, but rain down just enough to keep the ground from growing thirsty. Humidity buzzes in their absence, sneaking up in sweat that drenches me for daring not to stand still. With the heat, I’ve hardly even thought of autumn, often very much on my mind by now. Finally looking forward to the fall.

August 28, 2026
Victoria Harbour, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6865 of my daily journal.

Unfinished but already abandoned. It’s a surprisingly common sight when I wander in the wild, cabins left to nature in a not-quite-completed state. Somewhere in the wide-eyed tangled woods surrounding Brown Brook, I spotted a shining metal roof through the trees. Such sights are like lighthouses calling this landlocked sailor in. Somewhat porous to weather, with a door that couldn’t close, no matter how hard I pulled. Welcome shelter on an afternoon like this, when I gambled on sunshine and didn’t dress for rain. When you come alone, they’re lonesome places by nature. That sense of separation is something I’ve grown to love with time. There’s a necessity in knowing what you need, your mind fulfilling curiosity when there’s no one else to ask. I’ve got a great disdain for emotional cowardice. Regular abusers of the phrase: “I don’t want to talk about it” generally struggle to communicate with me. It’s part of why I’m driven in the direction of introversion, because I know that my thoughts will never run away. The forest is too rooted in reality to avoid an honest heart. I try my best to only speak with people willing to do the same.

August 28, 2026
Victoria Harbour, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6865 of my daily journal.

I’m a low-stakes climber, where the only real consequence is a skinned elbow or wet feet. I like to look at the wild world as a kind of ever-expanding playground. Where nature intersects with crumbling infrastructure, I get to feeling like it’s space made just for me. You won’t often encounter anyone here, where the semi-abandoned Ween Street spans Sheep Shearer Brook. I’ve been visiting for most of my adult life — and always had it to myself. These wooden cribbing bridges are endangered species, slowly being replaced in places closer to civilization. It won’t be long till the only ones left are on backroads like these. It’s aspects of a disregarded ordinary that help to shape our exact concept of time. When you see an old photograph, you can immediately tell the details. Old signs, road lines, bridges, the layout and shape of intersections. Here lies a passage to the second half of the 20th century. Time traveling isn’t so hard after all.

August 27, 2026
Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6864 of my daily journal.

The oldest surviving gravestone at Nictaux Cemetery has been half-swallowed by a tree. Sarah Whitman Morton died in 1824, and this lovely sandstone marker was placed where she was buried. Perhaps a century later, a tree was planted nearby. Too close, it turns out, as the trunk has slowly expanded to hold its captive tight. When I first walked this way on a blue August evening nine summers ago, it might’ve still been extricated. Since then, the forces of nature have conspired to crack it in half. I expect more fractures to follow. Despite the damage to history, I’d rather it be this than any other way. Mark it as a reminder than most of everything will never last, and the value we place on what does is only a reflection of rarity. We’d hardly care for anything if all of the past still lingered. Just think of me as your living signpost to the beauty of death in transit.

August 26, 2026
Nictaux, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6863 of my daily journal.

One of the first areas I explored in depth were the woods along Arlington Road. Old hippie houses, winding streams, marshy tangles of brush. It all felt so remote and lonesome then, though the folks who live up here simply see it as home. Like a lot of kids growing up in the country, I’d assumed I knew my area better than I did. It didn’t take long before I discovered all the detours I hadn’t taken, turns never made, vast swaths of forest slow to show what they were hiding. You can’t go anywhere no one knows, of course — but you can sure go alone and gather that scattered solitude into a sense of place unlike anyone else’s. My mental map is different from yours. We’ve chased our own streams, followed specific sections of coastline, and made connections that make sense only to ourselves. Every hike is like a line in a constellation specific to you. It’ll show up as some sort of picture in the end.

August 25, 2026
Mount Rose, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6862 of my daily journal.

We say that night is falling, but really, it’s day that’s always on its way down. The sun sinks and shadows rise, starting from places like these. This is where the night comes from, evening expanding from stream hollows and dark forests, floating from the bottom up. Gehues Brook is good to me when I want the world to go dim. Plenty of chances to restrain what’s bright and let the days end early. I don’t want to be left alone — I aim to actively look for alone and love where it lies. There are places where it’s predictably waiting. Turn my head till I discover the depth of separation. Company can be a kind of curse at times. It’s something you can always seek, but can’t always shake. I often think of that when I speak at nursing homes, how I’d struggle as an introvert in a world of enforced society. Most folks don’t want to die alone, but I can say for sure that it’s how I’ve done a lot of my best living.

August 25, 2026
South Williamston, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6862 of my daily journal.

some say:
“live every day
like it’s your last”
but that came to pass
when I was ten
and I spent that week
(just waiting on the world to end)
tell me, who’d’ya think you’re kidding?
‘bout being old before your time
you’re only strange among your family
sticking out in that suspect line
of everyone guilty, so take your pick
in this church, we blame
the sickness on the sick

and the victim
is shamed better
than the perpetrator
forgiveness comes first
(we promise that sympathy shows later)
everyone loves a good prodigal son story
but the prodigal daughters
are often more worthy
with the worry of what
it’ll take to be loved
when they’re under the heel
of our father above

now I know
why some folks
pray for the end
when they can’t bend or bow any lower
and they can’t end their lives
but they can beg to be over
as the holy rollers roll up the sky
like a scroll every sermon
and we’re like worms who squirm
in the stern certainties
of a dark Sunday morning
as the pastor with the matches asks:
“well — would you rather
be burning?”

~ ~ ~

August 24, 2026
Port Lorne, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6861 of my daily journal.

This stream is spanned by an old tank of some sort, with the ends removed to form a makeshift culvert. The washed-out road surface is spanned by wood in various stages of rot. Mill Road isn’t in much demand from this direction. That’s exactly why I’ve come so many years, chasing down a feeling of rutted obsolescence. If it’s ever improved for some modern purpose, then I’m more likely found elsewhere. There’s a curious kind of call to places people once went on the regular. Given all the wildness in the world, I’m always a little more likely leaving footprints after others. Once it gets deeper into side trails and ever-narrowing paths, those last steps might have been years or even decades. Sometimes, as the trails fades to brush and I’m bending branches back from my face, I think I’ve finally outrun any human influence. Then some rusty can or old glass bottle appears, and I realize that the past is catching up. I guess I can wait.

August 23, 2026
Round Hill, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6860 of my daily journal.

What I love most about these ancient boulder fields is a sense of false precariousness. You feel as if something could suddenly come tumbling, though it’s clear on closer examination that it can’t. Everything left where it fell for untold centuries, hung up after the age of the glaciers passed away. They always seem to gather and congregate, left along the slopes above streams or here, on the shores of Round Hill River. These are somewhat small as they go. I’ve found a few that tower two stories above me, immovable beasts scattered like the children of South Mountain. I feel a stronger draw than ever on these rainsoaked afternoons. Thirsty moss soaks up the downpour, holding on for days in places where sunlight struggles to shine. The air is so thick and humid that I feel almost asthmatic, like I could stretch out my limbs and sense the resistance. The heat is draining, and my legs were dragging by the time I made it back to my car. The winding depths of Mill Road draw me like a log to a saw blade. Always new reasons to rise.

August 23, 2026
Round Hill, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6860 of my daily journal.

Every year when my birthday catches up with me, I get curious about signs of change. Those are pretty easy to observe, as I can always scroll back to some self-portrait from this time last year, from the previous decade, or even nearly two decades ago. To be honest, I can’t tell much difference. I was pretty sure I’d look older by thirty-nine — maybe I’d start balding, go a little grey, or get some wrinkles. Either that, or I’d just look older in some other, undefinable way. Maybe I do? It’s hard to tell. I’m not the sort of person always chasing physical change. I dress about the same as I did ten years ago, and have nearly the same haircut and facial hair. The only shift has come in building a bit of muscle to provide support against my lower back pain, and I also put on about fifteen pounds last year. Enough to finally lift me from the lifelong definition of “very underweight” to now only “slightly underweight”. For the first time in my adult life, I can finally wear pants without a belt. I’ll probably always be a little gaunt, but I’ve always been, so I’m not sure I’d like it any other way. If I can’t see my bones, something in me feels as if I’m a little less real — and I live by the whims of reality.

August 22, 2026
Beaconsfield, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6859 of my daily journal.

Now and then, I stand in the sun as some reminder of why others must love it. My appreciation is passing to a point where I mostly only find it in reflection and refraction, seen through things or around corners. I’m a spy on a clear sky, just don’t give me too much at once. Even as I pulled up to the shore in Harbourville, it was the shade under cliffs down the coast that called me. Almost immediately, like a salamander exposed under a lifted rock, scurrying away. The tan I accumulate is almost accidental, slowly sinking in my skin across the breadth of summer, bit by sleepy bit. My true draw to the beach is more for a sense of openness. Nothing restrained, no barriers between me and a calm horizon. It’s been a particularly still season; placid days drifting across the lazy curled spine of months. Almost enough to forget the fury sure to come.

August 21, 2026
Harbourville, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6858 of my daily journal.

I often follow the cliffs of Fundy until I find the first ingress. Any weak spot will do, wherever the waves have drilled their way through solid rock, where it hasn’t collapsed yet. That won’t happen while I standing here. Those big sloughs wait for heady weather, thundering waves, all the power of the tides trying to take it all down. They range from tiny holes to towering outcrops overhead. Whatever form, it’s a sense of safety that I find. Comfortable illusion coming close. The erosion is just steady enough that I’m sometimes unsure where I’ve been before. The swirling reshaping is happening in perpetuity, and my memory isn’t so sharp that one rock from the next is entirely clearly defined. I’ll eventually be aware if it’s a particular formation I’ve fallen for, finding the closest thing to love that one can feel for inanimate objects. Walking in places that take all day to see the sun, chasing down the cool they contain. I’ll be gone long before the light hits.

August 21, 2026
Harbourville, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6858 of my daily journal.

I’ve never thought about mortality more than now. When I was young, death was often on my mind, but in more of an external sense. Mostly religious notions I’d been taught about the end of the world, or the potential loss of loved ones. I remember sitting by the window, believing that every time that my parents were late coming home, they’d been in a car accident. What never really entered my mind was my own demise. This last month telling tales at various nursing homes has had a strange effect. I’d previously only been in the presence of a half-dozen folks with dementia, and unless you work with the elderly, I’d imagine it’s similar for you. Every time after on the road back home, I’m caught up wondering what my future makes of me. I’m a beast made of memories more than most, constantly forcing myself to form new ones out of unexpected experiences. I wonder how it’d feel to be losing that. Will I end up using my journal as a path back to me? Will my words seem like a stranger’s when I read them? These sentences could be breadcrumbs I’m leaving. Maybe that’s why unchanged places have a pull on me, like the boulders of Roop Brook, frozen in position. Find me waiting where time doesn’t mean much.

August 20, 2026
Springfield, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6857 of my daily journal.

Wetter weather than usual this August has brought fungus out in force. Everywhere I hike, they sprout and spread their fruiting bodies, making the most of rot. We’re not exactly drowning, but this little extra bit of moisture in these weeks of shortening days is well-retained in dark, green spaces. Shadows set upon moss and marshy eddies along streams, droplets still held on leaves and blades of grass a half-day after rainfall. I’ve never felt right looking a mushrooms anywhere but on the level. When I get low, it’s as if they tower above me. I’m a little sprite or faerie down here, borrower in the brush, a creature no taller than them. I could stand under this one for shelter a while, a natural umbrella holding back the sky. Climbing rocks turned to hills where boulders become mountains, I was born to live by way of wonder. Like any emotional state, it begs to be fed and requires withdrawals. I’m always looking for ways to a world not my own.

August 20, 2026
Springfield, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6857 of my daily journal.

Almost every hike in August waits till after 4:00 PM. I’m on hold for the dappled light, when shadow tips the balance, claiming slightly more ground than sun. I really can’t appreciate the full force of our nearest star until it meets a little resistance. Stronach Brook is not nearly the deepest of hollows, but it’s far enough to keep the late afternoon sky safely separate. The nearest roads and homes don’t much notice what happens here and out of sight. I’ve got a longtime love of low places, especially as the final weeks of summer are stretching into reach. It’s been everything that last year wasn’t, just enough rainfall to keep the fear of wildfire quenched. I was mostly walking on the shore, kicking rocks to sea caves, and smelling smoke wherever I went. Much as I love the shore, this is where I’d rather be about now. Chasing spotlights through the shade like some free and wild sprite.

August 19, 2026
East Margaretsville, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6856 of my daily journal.

I find a lot of dumped junk in the woods, random objects with rarely any hint of a story. But this circular structure I stumbled over on the banks of Stronach Brook has to have one. It’s an old lighted sign, hollow in the center with wires run to various drilled openings. A broken bulb still stuck in one confirms this. It must have stood somewhere for years, if not decades, drawing attention to a business, roadside stand, or amusement. The big question is just exactly which it was. All that remains on the rusty surface is a mottled mess of orange and yellow paint, sketchings of a name no longer legible in any fashion. Hooked pieces of metal up top suggest it might have been hanging. I know there’s got to be someone somewhere in Annapolis Valley who recalls this. Maybe a photograph exists when it was proudly placed, or a vague memory buried in some elderly brain. Perhaps it’s all just lost by now, who knows? Not so different from a gravestone discovered, worn down on the way to that second death. First, the loss of life; last, the loss of memory.

August 19, 2026
East Margaretsville, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6856 of my daily journal.

Up a stream without a name, along a winding road the rises away from Round Hill River. I feel the strange and simple fascination of my homeland in most ordinary stead. What looks like a lot else, but is still so distinctly this corner of the world. There is no blacker water than what runs in a trickle from a coniferous forest. Dark needle tea, and a bottom obscured from sight. I’m swirled with that sharp uncertainty, in the warm glow of the woods, under threat of rain. Sometimes, I have this strange false sensation that I’m somehow protected by the canopy. When I can barely see the sky, and leaves have been catching most stray droplets, I somehow imagine that a downpour could never reach me. It’s the comforting closeness that’s convincing. There’s more to life than knowing better.

August 18, 2026
Round Hill, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6855 of my daily journal.

Lately, every afternoon feels like walking in the jungle. I’m out in the woods with that oppressive feeling, humid and windless, sweaty and close, cricket call and cicada song for soundtrack. Winding trails like these serve as reminders of the difference between being lost and not knowing exactly where you are. There’s no chance of me losing my way, so I make a point of not obsessing over my place on the map. I want an adventure constructed of uncertain distances and wondering what’s around the bend. There are still so many paths I haven’t followed that find their way not far from home. That sure means a lot when the price of gas finds me pushed to the limit. If I say what I hope to find out here, might be some sort of philosophical thing like peace or myself. Practically, it’s just anything left by my kind. Some little hunting cabin on wheels, that may or may not ever move again. A tiny bridge over an unnamed brook, perhaps one in a series of dozens, rotted and repaired. A mostly sure and certain solitude, hours all mine, all the way in and out.

August 18, 2026
Round Hill, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6855 of my daily journal.