… I prick my finger (which happens pretty often in this land of skewers, needles, scissors and blades in which I live), right after that “Ow! Damn! Did I get blood on anything that matters?” reaction, my first thought is always of this image.
Taken six years ago with my old Sony DSC-S60.
Like just now.
Odd.
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
One of my favourite sorts of adventures is the kind that you take by simply stepping out the front (or back) door. Today I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and go for a stroll through Torbay, taking paths not yet travelled. After I looked at the photos I brought back with me, the above verse just sprang immediately to mind.
I wandered up the street, to where I startled a flock of Pine Siskins who were grabbing the avian equivalent of coffee and a muffin at the local café.
The breakfast buffet. Pine Siskins enjoy a morning feast. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/350, Aperture: f8)
Fluffed up against the cold. (Focal length 200mm, Shutter: 1/1000, Aperture: f6.7)
Then I crossed the street, and spotted a neat birdhouse on Coppertop Place…
Birdhouse. Unoccupied.
Which somehow meant that I was supposed to go down Coppertop Place. So I did. It is a dead-end street, but I hopped the guardrail and mosied down into the woods.
It was just as well that it was winter, as the area off the end of the road was quite boggy (but mostly frozen) and the parts that weren’t bog were threaded with wild rose bushes. I flailed about in those for a time, before hitting the tree line and threaded my way between some astonishingly immense trees (mostly fir) sporting some impressive bolls. The sunlight filtered through quite nicely. I was able to make my way down to the edge of the cliffs and watch the surf pounding from above. (I steered clear of areas that appeared undercut).
Filtered sunlight
It looked like no one had been down there in years. I came across some very, very old longers (longers = Newfoundland-speak for trees, limbed, and used as fence rails) that appeared to give shape to an old fence. It was likely there to stop animals from looking over the edge of the cliff and watching the pounding surf. I took the hint and stayed near the fence-line, figuring that whoever had placed it probably knew where the edges of the cliff face were soft.
Old Man's Beard
At one point I came to an opening in the trees and was able to make this shot, which shows a sea cave in the foreground and a startlingly yellow house (not saturated in post-processing at all – that’s the real colour!) at the rear. In the books of my childhood, it’s precisely the kind of cave that would have had a secret tunnel at the rear leading up into that yellow house. There would have been pirates or smugglers or kidnappers and the tide would have come in and the secret passage would have been the only way of escaping certain death….
My childhood reading was much more interesting than reality.
Secret passage. You can see the Father Troy path cutting over the cave.
There were animal tracks here and there, showing the presence of rabbits and squirrels galore, but this was the most interesting set of tracks for the day:
Caught.
It looks to me like a bird of prey caught something and tried to reposition it while the prey attempted escape. Possibly a mouse? Who knows. There were no other tracks nearby.
I made my way down onto Torbay beach, poked around there for a bit and couldn’t resist snapping a few wave shots. The water was a strangely tropical-looking colour, but cold!
Cresting
Then it was back up over the main trail (because you’re allowed to take roads on the way home from an exploratory ramble) and home.
*This is the version from “The Hobbit”. There are many versions of this verse throughout Tolkien’s works)
Crêpes. The beginnning of quite a pile.
It’s Shrove Tuesday and while no one in this house religiously celebrates either Easter or its antecedent, Lent, we always enjoy an excuse to eat pancakes. In our house while growing up, “Pancake Day” meant a feast of crêpes, those really flat pancake-like creatures that can be rolled up with an assortment of treasures inside and sauces drizzled on top. As a child, I was thoroughly mystified, at first, when my classmates talked about finding buttons or coins baked into their pancakes. Where would you hide one in something so thin??
Contrary to the actual philosophy of Shrove Tuesday, in which one uses up the food eschewed during Lent (sugar, fat, flour and eggs being among those), I actually had to go out and BUY milk, eggs, butter and syrup.
Anyhow, here’s my Recipe for Crêpes. It’s pretty standard and probably the same as many that you’ll find:
Heat small to medium-sized frying pan (non-stick or extremely well-seasoned cast iron) over medium heat.
Dump the following into a bowl:
Mix these up.
Dump in 1/2 tsp salt & 1 cup flour.
Mix well until mostly smooth. It should be about the consistency of tomato soup. Maybe slightly thicker. If it’s like applesauce or even normal pancake mix, it’s way too thick. Thin with a little more milk to get it right.
When the pan is good and hot, drop a tsp of either veggie oil or margarine in and spread it around. Use a ladle and scoop about 1/2 cup of mix into the pan. Tip the pan so that the mixture coats the whole bottom, but not the sides. Work pretty quick. If it doesn’t spread well, it’s not runny enough. This is when I usually turn the burner down a fricken.
Wait until the entire coating of mixture turns from light to dark (you’ll know what I mean when you see it. Then loosen the edges, work the spatula under and flip it. The second side does faster than the first. If you’re making a lot, it helps to have two pans on the go at a time.
The first crêpe is usually a bit of a dud. It’s the one that tells you if your batter is too thick or thin or if your pan is too sticky/cold/big. It’s the proto-pancake and is essential to the whole process. It also keeps the dogs (or kids) happy.
This recipe should make enough for two hungry people, but it depends what you put inside.
Fillings:
I quadrupled the batch and it was enough for seven very hungry people, with seven crêpes left over.
Taken six years ago with my old Sony DSC-S60.
… I found this in 2006.
Doesn’t look like I’ll get a chance to find any contemporary light today.
It’s a grey old day out there now and I’m tied to a computer anyway.
St. George's Anglican Church, rendered in sepia so as to show off the wooden panelling's richness better than black and white would have done. (Focal length 18mm, Shutter: 1/6, Aperture: f4.8. ISO 200.)
Katherine and I have been having fun with the idea of exploring and going on adventures. Some are just idle meanderings, while others have been bona fide quests, complete with snowshoes, maps, crampons, camp stoves and lunch.
Today we had to stop in at the Craft Council to pick up some papers and chat with a couple of people. AFter that, we headed towards Petty Harbour, because Katherine couldn’t remember ever having been there (she has, repeatedly) and it sounded interesting to her and we simply wanted to get out of town without going too far. To my mind, Petty Harbour isn’t quite an outport. It’s in the same category as Quidi Vidi Village; it *was* an outport, but since the invention of roads, telephones and cars, it has become so connected to St. John’s that it’s more of a “bedroom” outport. That said, it’s wonderful for tourists who come to town and want to see a sliver of what “the bay” can look like and it’s a marvelous little community.
So we cruised through Maddox Cove and Petty Harbour and found St. George’s Anglican Church. In the usual way of outport churches, it was unlocked and empty (it’s Monday morning, so the place really *ought* to be empty, but it was a pleasant surprise to find it unlocked). All the churches we tried to explore on Friday were locked right up, but they were in town (where town = St. John’s). Apparently Petty Harbour is far enough away from the population hub of the capital city to warrant leaving doors unlocked. Memo to self: Check St. Nicholas’ in Torbay.
In any event, we wandered around, looked at the old photos on the walls, took a few pictures and left all as we found it. It was a nice little church. Much wooden paneling and the floors creaked vociferously. It’s obviously well-loved.
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