Highway 101 - 121208

I was born in Middleton, but didn't stay there too long. We lived in Paradise, Edmonton, somewhere in Mass. state, back to the valley to Wolfville then Port Williams and finally, two weeks before grade primary started, we moved to Halifax.

I spent many years there after commuting via Acadian Lines to my grandparents in Nictaux Falls.

The white gypsum cliffs in St Croix were the first landmark on the journey back to country, to nature. I would drive by picturing the earths plates shaking and cracking... eventually snapping and flying away from the other side as the earth took a giant growth spurt. I saw these cliffs as a shrine to the history of the land, of Nova Scotia.

Last spring I noticed that the cliff to the right as you approach the hill had been shaved nearly bald. Such an odd site. The vertical forest left to nothing but stumps and dirt. A pain squeezed deep in me, another reminder that the past can only exist in the past and sometimes when things change they can never, ever go back.

They began digging that cliff down last week. Piles of red mud are now spreading over the grass fields. I did however notice last night that they hit gypsum while digging. I'm hoping they will make up for defacing my beloved shrine by adding a new one, even closer to the highway for all to see.