At the Camp - Bear Falls on the Medway River, Nova Scotia

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As I write this I am sitting on the dock at my cottage. From here I can watch for salmon surmounting the short rise to the pool stretching out on three sides of me.

The sound of the falls is a muted roar. It is exactly the same sound as the wind during a hurricane but softer, less jagged, without the threat. A Bald Eagle flies over and agitates the Black Backed Gulls sitting on either side of one of the narrow dumps over which the river rushes.

They have been sentries to that gate since time immemorial. The rocks painted white with their droppings, witnesses to their patience. What they hope for is hard for me to know. I have seen elvers, the little glass eels, leave the water there and creep snakelike over the spray dampened rocks to avoid the treacherous currents but they are scarcely a meal for those voracious scavengers.

Along with the salmon, alewives, or as the primordial Mi'kmaq called them "Kiacks", run in their thousands through the channels of these falls. Shad too run in this river but rarely this far up. There are trout here, the speckled treasure of the Nova Scotian backwoods and all the small minnows, catfish, parr, and fry. Somewhere in the rich life of the river is their reward.

The gulls settle back to watchful immobility. The Eagle drifts on down the river with the strange, slow motion flight of his imperious kind, unimpressed by the constancy of the Gulls.