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Farewell to Nova Scotia, the pastel map,
The Earl-borne Rhynchops on the beach,
For when I am away on the Hwy 401,
Will you ever heave a sigh or a wish for me?
The sun is setting south of west,
And all nomadic folk head home,
But while there's aliens upon the roadside verge,
There will not be any waypointing rest for me.
I grieve to leave the native Phrag,
I grieve to leave undetermined slugs,
The little hybrid Birches in the brushy cuts,
And the rolling tides of Fundy that I do adore.
The road runs on, and the weeds alarm,
The data call, and I must obey.
So farewell, farewell to Nova Scotia's charms,
For it's early in the morning and I'm on my way.
But the Blanding's Turtles are secure,
The Glyptemys are known by genes,
and John Gilhen keeps his eyes on the colour variants,
and he seines up tropic waifs from the dark blue sea.
...I suppose Nova Scotians get tired of this kind of rewriting of this
song, but this version does summarize what we've done and seen here
(though we saw the Black Skimmers only on posts to NatureNS; for those
who don't follow the turmoil of modern herpetological taxonomy,
Glyptemys is the current name of the Wood Turtle). You can see Aleta's
Nova Scotian paintings at http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
We're very grateful to the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History,
Kejimkujik Park, and members of NatureNS for guidance in our quests for
various organisms,and the name of the Kennetcook River, back when we
were relying on the "pastel map" (we've now gotten a copy of the MapArt
atlas to Atlantic Canada, and are navigating as smoothly as we do by the
MapArt atlas in Ontario), and for the hospitality of the museum, a
couple of Roman Catholic churches, and especially Bev Wigney, for
tolerating our campsites.
And especially to John Gilhen for hospitality, for the opportunity to
see the landscape where he's done herpetology for all these years, and
for the "tropic waifs from the dark blue sea" which as long ago as
1977-1978 were converting middle-atlantic fish from the Toronto
Kensington Market garbage (which we were skeletonizing for the National
Museum) into "Canadian species," which we fancied they were more willing
to purchase.
fred schueler
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Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
now in the field on the Thirty Years Later Expedition -
http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
(613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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