Liverpool, Nova Scotia

Caught the ferry from St. John to Digby this morning, a long, boring, uncomfortable 2 1/2 hours. The ferry was like an airport without the release of actually getting on a plane, both being large sprawling habitrails for containing impatient waiting people. Even though the ferry was an airport that moved, it moved imperceptively slowly, and it cost almost as much as taking a plane anyway. The ferry also had the added bonus of beginning and ending with a traffic jam.

Then we rode in the rain for awhile.

We stopped for a moment on the shore of Kejimkujik Lake as we crossed the peninsula, a beautiful lake with shallow, stoney shores, the stones small and flat like tiles.

Liverpool seems like a nice town with giant old shade trees and graceful old white houses beneath them, but at the elementary school I found the remains of some kid’s jacket which had been hung on the fencepost and set on fire. All that was left was a charred cuff and scorchmarks on the chainlink — if the kid was in the jacket at the time he must’ve burned clean.

There’s a fine cold blue-grey beach, long and wide and gently sloping, backed by spruces and meadows of beach grass. No houses, no restaurants. I found alot of small black shells, maybe baby mussels, from a couple millimeters to an inch long. Lots of them, stuck in the sand like tiny crow feathers, or miniscule pieces of coal-black crow platemail.