Drive to Victory

Victory is a nearly deserted hamlet in the middle of our part of Nova Scotia. Catriona and I decided to go for a drive to Victory. The road is quite a rough road, in parts, and it gets increasinly rough going, but certainly not impossible, as it gets closer to Victory.

Catriona pondered how those old logs got there.

We reckon they are left over from when the road was cleared. They are certainly quite old logs, large, covered with moss and looking nearly half decayed from lying on the side of the road for a long time.

All along the road, and sometimes nearly touching the road, were huge boulders. Often the vegetation was growing so closely to the rocks that it was difficult to actually ascertain their full size until we got out to look at them.

Down one logging road, we saw this tree, pushed over by the wind, we presume. There was a large rock underneath it, so it may well have been unstable due to growing over a rock, and therefore the roots had not enough depth to truly anchor the tree. At any rate, Catriona and Phiri went to have a closer look.

And then Catriona crawled back out, dusted off her hands, and proclaimed it a very interesting item. When we returned home, Nigel reminded us that bears often make their homes under such overturned trees. As Catriona said, "It's a good thing that it wasn't home, then, because I was right underneath." Indeed it is.

Another frequent sight along the road was this type of landscape - a small brook running near the road edge, or underneath the road. Often deciduous trees lined the bank of the brook, and a clearing could be seen in the background.

Sometimes there was a lake in the background.

There were several blueberry fields along the roadside. They all had huge boulders scattered through them, like giants were playing marbles. And each field had "no trespassing" and "no picking blueberries" signs at the roadside.

Another landscape that we saw often was clear-cut. This is when all the trees in an area are cut, and some are removed for sale, while others are left as litter on the ground, where they eventually rot.

And the final landscape was this typical sprucebog.

The trees have died, and a marshy land has grown up around them. It eventually fills in with reeds and rushes, and small cranberry or blueberry bushes.

An amusing sight for us was this survey marker - old boots used to mark the stake.

Catriona tried to look inconspicuous while I snapped pictures. Amazingly, we had very little mud spattered on the car when we popped out onto the tar road just south of Milford.

on