Last month, in celebration of World Water Day 2017 and all the joy our New Brunswick waters give, we sent out a call for stories from people who’ve shared a special memory or connection with one of our beautiful rivers, streams, lakes or bays.
Our first set of love letters comes to us from Ardeth Holmes, 65, a talented writer, poet and proud New Brunswicker living in St. Andrews, NB, who says she enjoys meditating outdoors in nature, especially at her favorite spot in Oak Bay Provincial Park where the saltwater of the Passamaquoddy Bay mingles with the St. Croix and Waweig Rivers.
Holmes says that water is such an important part of his life that she found it difficult picking which stories to tell. I told her, no worries- the more the merrier- and, oh boy, did she deliver!
Stories and poem submitted by Ardeth Holmes, Saint Andrews, NB March 28th, 2017 ©
Haiku to Water
Floating in the womb,
My spirit with water blessed,
Life eternal fed.
The Stream at the Farm in Greenock
Although this is a place from my childhood I close my eyes and there I am. It is a hot summer’s day. The sweet smell of new mown hay lingers in the air. I am happy.
The stream has come down through the forest and field through the culvert under the traffic of the highway where it pools into this little area where the angle of the afternoon sun does not touch it. It is cool. I am ‘seated’ in this little pool of water with my back against its edge like a perfect chair. There is a slight movement and gurgle as it travels over a few rocks to come to me. And who just like me has come to this place? A few little speckled trout. They are barely moving, basking in Mother Nature’s cradle for a perfect afternoon nap. We are one in nature.
Digdeguash River # 6 – Dumbarton Covered Bridge
This 76-foot long bridge built in 1928 spanning the Digdeguash River accesses the community of Tryon. There is something evocative about covered bridges. This one not far from home meant we had a swimming pool.
The depth of the pool would depend on so many things. How much snow had fallen to melt into it during the spring freshet? Was there a lot of ice threatening its existence as the ice broke up in the spring? Had we had a long, hot dry summer with the water lower than usual?
This was a place that Mum and I would go to cool off on a late summer afternoon after picking fresh blueberries or veggies from the garden. We would drive the car as close to the riverbank, get out and walk across this little bar of swirled rock and sand created by the river flow. For her it meant she could walk to its edge, drop her two canes, take my arm, and sink into the depth of the water with a freedom she did not have on land.
This was a shared moment of revelling in the beauty of the landscape, understanding the circle of life, and simply being in nature with each other drifting with the current and swimming back to the little sand bar. Forty-eight years later, these memories still embedded in the heart of who I am.
Camp Talltrees on The St. Croix River
above the Grand Falls Dam
Camp Talltree’s, built by my great aunt and uncle, Richmond and Mabel Steeves was an oasis for them. Its wilderness setting spoke to their souls being in the midst of nature with little contact with people, unless invited. They loved their own company.
Mabel spent many an hour listening to Audubon records of bird calls. She could call the loons at the camp, chickadee’s would eat from the palm of her hands, and the simpler their life, the better.
Richie was a hunter, fisherman, and they both loved to canoe. One year they paddled up the river to McNichol’s Camp with me sitting in the middle. On the way home drifting down with the current a head seemingly floated by in the water. A bull moose crossed from the US into Canada without one thought to the border crossing. Its head seemed small until it came up out of the water and shook itself. It was a huge and magnificent creature. A reminder that sometimes animals and people have hidden depths. We shared the space in peace.
Another trip to the camp was January when the river was frozen. Mum with her two canes was hauled on a toboggan, others walked and some of us skated from the dam to the camp. The change of seasons brings new perspectives on rivers too! This river may be a boundary line between two countries but it does not separate the intertwining of our daily lives or shared experiences being in nature.
Passamaquoddy Bay, Saint Andrews
In the summer of ’72, I moved to Saint Andrews to work at the Algonquin Hotel. There is something about living on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water where the rhythm of your heart and life embraces the ebb and flow of the bay’s tidal action.
The salt-tossed air and the mood of the Bay is not only affected by the changing of the tides, and the seasons but by temperatures too. A full moonlit night at Passamaquoddy Point leaves a pathway of sparkling golden beams dancing like diamonds just begging one to run along its ocean pathway. Would there be a pot of gold and diamonds at its end? The vapour hanging over the wharf not being able to see- the -sea means layer your clothing, bundle up and if you do not have to go out, stay indoors! The sunrises and sunsets, change daily, as they do with the tides. Each is breathtaking in its own way.
Streams flow to rivers which often flow to the sea in New Brunswick as I did with my life from the smallest to the largest. And when beyond the confines of the inner protection of Passamaquoddy Bay lies a vast system of waterways connecting us worldwide.
We each began life floating in water in the womb rocked in the cradle of the deep. Our bodies have almost the same percentage of water as Earth Mother. Without water, we only survive days. Water is to be revered. Water is sacred. Water is life.
With gratitude for our New Brunswick waterways forever imbued in the very soul of who I am.
Blessings to our waterways I love you!
Send us your own love letter to New Brunswick’s rivers, streams, lakes or bays!