Winding Roads, Open Fields, and Old Graves

I’m going to call this road trip the “Harbour” road trip of Nova Scotia because I (very literally) went to a map and found all of the places within a 1-hour radius of the Annapolis Valley that had the word “harbour” in the name and then drove to each of these places to see what is there.

Most people associate Nova Scotia with images of little fishing villages and lighthouses. These two things are very important to the province and perform a very necessary function to a place that has three main industries: oil/gas, tourism, and fishing. The lighthouses draw tourists. Fisherman draw tourists and bring in fish, primarily lobsters and these lobsters are shipped out all over the world. Oil does not fit in with tourism or fishing but it has brought a wealth that previously did not exist in the province… and if you drive around in an RV, it brings cheap gas to the province (I filled up the creaky old jeep with $30!).

There are two main routes that people take in the Annapolis Valley: the Highway 101 and the Truck 1 (a.k.a. The Evangeline Trail – in reference to the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about the Expulsion). On this particular leg of the “harbour” journeys, I chose to take a combination of the Evangeline Trail and very small regional roads to drive on.

The little regional roads are rarely travelled on these days (though they are seeing a renewed interest with a new industry that has popped up in the province: wineries). These roads throw you around a lot because of the cracks, they dip, wind, drop, go sharply up, and take you past farms, orchards, vineyards, old communities and tons of little graveyards. There’s rarely any traffic on these other than those hearty locals who want to meander, farmers, and farming equipment moving from place to place. Don’t fret if you get behind a combine or something else really big and slow… they usually turn off within a kilometre or two.

The cemetery briefly pictured the gallery is the Harbourville United Church Cemetery. I had a momentary realization as I was reading the names on the crumbling headstones. When in little community/family graveyards I always worry that someone is going to come rushing out of a nearby house and chastise me for taking photos of their relatives so I’m on edge. But I realized, that for the first time in a very long time, that I am actually not travelling. I am home. I am from here. This is where I grew up and where “my people” are from. So, I’m probably related in some way to the people in the cemetery (perhaps Joudrey/Jodrey) and can have a conversation about such.