2 July

Overnight, someone has airbrushed the mountain out of the picture, directly outside my kitchen window.

I wonder what could be hiding through that curtain of mist draped around it – intrigue and suspicion; moose, bears, coyotes.

Dangerous liaisons, I figure – just outside the front door.

I say farewell and thanks to my hosts – mainly for leaving me in peace in the sunrise suite, but also for the plentiful daily breakfast spread – and take off in my car, darting around the hairpin bends heading up out of town, in the thickest of fogs.

At this point, I’m starting to seriously question my reasoning for looking to attempt a long hike today.

I’m going up and down mountains, and at every turn I’m getting ever closer to zero visibility, if not less.

To the point where my speed is so far reduced, I’m in danger of being overtaken by wild animals.

When the sign for Fisherman’s Cove comes into close view from out of the pea-souper, concerns are thrown into the road from the trees (if they could be seen).

Yet just like that, as if someone has clicked their fingers, the fog lifts completely and daytime arrives. I will not have to creep through such thick murk again all day.

Kitting up in the parking lot for my hike, and still examining my motives for being here – unsure of what exactly lies ahead of me. There is one other car parked up here.

A steep higgledy-piggledy path through the forest towards Fisherman’s Cove, startled halfway down to encounter two people carrying tents and supplies coming up the other way.

We say “Morning, y’alright?” as if we are work colleagues, passing each other in the corridor.

In my outdoor office today, all of the mozzies and flies accompany me, and all I want to ask them is … when does a stream become a river? when does a trickle of water falling over the rocks become a waterfall? shall we have a meeting about this?

And when I feel like falling, it’s because I am falling – the damn slippy floor boggy path, sliding into mud baths, flies, tick bites. We accommodate each other; or rather, I accommodate them.

I lay on good hospitality on that trail, I may as well be laying a bloody table for them.

Counting the distance as I go … it’s one click every fifteen minutes, is my calculation.

Passing the guy who I wrongly assume is going the other way, but is actually heading in my direction, very slowly.

This is not a five hour hike for me, when I’m being chased down the trail by all of the local mosquito population.

When I arrive at the 6km marker, for some reason I’m expecting to be trekking for another 6km, thinking the cove in front of me is a false bay … Wrong!

I’ve arrived way more more quickly than I expected at Fisherman’s Cove, which allows me plenty of time to wander around the ramparts – the tent pitches, the broken swings, the toilet block concrete outpost with a view, without a door.

Wondering … who camps here?

It turns out the Scots used to live on this spot, and there was a lobster cannery here … yet it’s all eerily quiet today.

My lunch is devoured in double-quick time, as I feel the flies encircling me. Overhead, a pair of eagles glide around in elegant flight.

Over to my left, water tumbles down rocks, there’s no ‘off’ switch; but there’s always a red deckchair, oversized, government-issue.

In the cold damp of early afternoon, the long trek back up the trail is hard work, and I’m throwing off layers as I go.

Unseen birds up there in the trees are whistling and cat-calling and woo-hooing … yet these hidden melodies and bright arias are at odds with the mood music of the gloom down here on the forest floor; I don’t think they’re impressed.

I head around the coast of the Cape Breton Highlands Park, driving through the mist and the murk, washing up in Ingonish with the driftwood.

My wooden alpine apartment overlooks the water, and I dive down there for sundowners.

Although there’ll be no sunset tonight, more just a gradual dimming of the ashen, leaden sky.