"Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame." ~ William Butler Yeats The Land of Heart's Desire
This Christmas a friend gifted us with a book entitled Tidal Life: A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy. The Bay of Fundy is up and over the mountain on whose lower slope Fat Hummingbird Farm sits. The Bay is only about a 15-minute drive away. Not really a long ways away when one thinks that we are at the foot of the mountain on one side and the Bay is at the foot of the mountain on the other side. Which is to say - perhaps North Mountain is more of a hill. Which had me thinking about mountains and such.
It is understandable that in a place that is so close to sea level 'mountain' may be a relative term. After all, the highest place in all of Nova Scotia - White Mountain, very remotely located in the Cape Breton Highlands - is only 1,755 feet high. Our North Mountain is 771 feet. It does have cliffs though. And I have been told that if I were to climb up to the crest that it would become steep enough that I would have to be on all fours to top it. Throughout my life I have also experienced mountains (true mountains) ranging from 4,039 feet to 12,972 feet. My experience of mountains is varied, no doubt. I feel, however, that I have come full circle.
My early childhood was spent in Bath, England and though my father always said to say that I was born in Bath (because people tend to know where that is) and that is where we lived once my father left the infamous RAF base at Rudloe Manor (yes, that Rudloe Manor - the place of underground cities and lakes and UFOs and wartime secrets) I was not born there. I was actually born in a very small village outside of Bath called Almondsbury, because there was located the 'Lying-In Hospital for Married Women'. The location reads much like most English addresses read:
The village of Almondsbury in south Gloucestershire is located bounded by the parishes of Northwick, Olveston and Alveston in the north, Frampton Cotterell, Winterbourne, Stoke Gifford in the south east, Filton in the south and Henry and Compton Greenfield in the south west. Within the original boundary of the parish are the villages of Almondsbury and Easter Compton, a small village of Over, hamlets of Cattybrook, Gaunt's Earthcott, Hortham and Woodhouse Down, the small village of Patchway, the hamlet of Hempton and the norther half of the town of Bradley Stoke.
Whew!
From Almondsbury (and Bath for that matter), though at some distance away (which is again relative, England being able to fit within Vancouver Island) one could see Glastonbury Tor. The Tor is only 521 feet high but because it is the only height in what is otherwise a very flat terrain it is very notable. My first experience of 'mountain'. Close to the sky, close to the fields and the farms, close to the sea.
We immigrated to the prairies of Alberta. And there the mountains were bigger but, interestingly, nebulous for the most part. At our place in the southern desert-like climes of Alberta mountains could be seen out to the West. There they provided a contrasting horizon to the recumbent and unbroken skylines that reached into the distances of the other three directions. On clear-aired days the mountains seemed to actually float above the prairie - reticent, ethereal, somewhat like the sky islands of New Mexico. The mountains, at that distance, were implied rather than solid. Ambiguous. On stormy days they took on more presence. Hunkered down to the horizon line. Turned purple and sent storms our way that you could see coming days in advance. In winter they furled Chinook winds down their slopes and across the prairie. In winter, they stood white and solid out across the expanse.
We moved to the west coast and were, for the first time, at the foot of mountains. Colossal mountains. Substantial mountains. Capacious and hefty and most decidedly hulking. The mountains of ski hills and avalanches and people lost and in need of rescue. They hemmed in my world and shortened my sight. They loomed claustrophobically. I was not comfortable with those mountains. They took up so much immense, groaning space. They took up so much sky.
Here at Fat Hummingbird Farm we also sit at the foot of a mountain. But it doesn't obscure the sky. It doesn't loom. It channels winds from the Bay of Fundy down into the valley. It's second growth trees create a curled and frizzed top line. The second growth holds hard to the basalt rock with a vengeance - this time vowing to stay. This mountain harbours deer, and bears, and coywolves, and porcupines, and foxes. It's mere height implies that you could walk up and over it like those lesser hills that are walked tirelessly in England. That would be a devious deception though.
I feel at home with this mountain. At ease and comfortable - a lightness. On this side of the mountain are farms, and orchards, and vineyards, and cows, and sheep, and water meadows, and rivers. On the other side of the mountain are immense tides, the last refuge of calving Right whales, rubbing pools for Humpback whales, and the world population of the semipalmated sandpiper.
Unlike Glastonbury Tor, this mountain may not be the Isle of Avalon or the burial site of King Arthur. But this mountain is close to the sky, close to the fields and the farms, close to the sea. Full circle.
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