Nature & Conservation

(Saltscapes Magazine, Mar/Apr 2015)

Four-year-old Gabriel Jesso squeals with excitement. He and Joy Munford have been spraying sunscreen in the air and dashing into the cloud. The spray has settled on the ground, revealing a lacy spider’s web. While sunscreen may not be ideal for the spider or its handiwork, Gabriel has made a fascinating discovery and is now spraying elsewhere to see if he can find more webs.

Meanwhile, Jesse Savoie scrambles seven metres up a pine tree, anxious to show off his agility. The lacquered look of the limbs tells the story of many small hands and sneakered feet gaining familiarity with the landscape of this stalwart friend in the forest.

This is Tír na nÓg, an outdoor classroom for pre-schoolers near Sussex, NB, where two days a week children spend their day climbing trees, wading creeks, hiking the hills and daydreaming in wide-open fields of wildflowers. This natural landscape is their teacher and their land of discovery…a playground of innocence and delight within the natural cycles of life and death.

excerpted from Atlantic Salmon Journal, Winter 2004 / photography and text © Deborah Carr 2004

Birthed in an era that predates the Ice Age, the waters of the Upper Salmon River in Fundy National Park have tumbled over massive rock outcroppings, carved deep pools, then meandered along more gentle grades to the Bay of Fundy for untold millennia.

Standing on the bank of the river named for its once plentiful bounty, park eco-scientist Renee Wissink exhibits a curious mingling of sadness and optimism.  His quiet gaze traces the river’s current where clear water persistently polishes a riverbed of smooth multi-coloured rubble, the geological remnants of ancient mountains that once could rival the Canadian Rockies. The late summer sun filters through a canopy of green, casting dancing shadows on the rippled surface.

This should be salmon heaven.

There are defining moments in life, when one is truly humbled and finally able to grasp their place in the world as a participant, an observer, a protector…this one was mine.

Moving as if to the sweep of a conductor’s baton, they flow off the beach like a tide of liquid mercury, then swoop into the air, a darkly ribboned smudge against the August sky.

As if on prearranged cue, they bank as one and the flock metamorphoses, revealing the flashing white of ten thousand underbellies caught in the glory of the setting sun. A dance of precision and grace.