It was quite foggy when I woke at 6 a.m. this
morning. I ate breakfast at the Hojo’s;
they have a pancake machine, rather than the usual U.S. waffle maker. Other than that, it was hard boiled eggs,
cereal and breads. I checked out about 10:30 a.m. -
forgetting that New Brunswick is on Atlantic Time . . . I should have been out
of the place earlier.
I drove up to the
Meduxnekeag Valley Nature Preserve, and walked the orange and black
trails. I was hoping against hope to
find a ‘year’ bird here, and didn’t expect to find Bicknell’s Thrush at this
elevation, but I enjoyed the walk through this Gem of a Preserve.
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| There were several plaques memorializing people who appreciated these woods |
The first birds I heard when I got out of the car were
the chips of a pair of Common Yellowthroats, with the female carrying food to a
hidden nest.
The trails go down to the Meduxnekeag River and loop back
through some nice deciduous forest. One is warned to watch out for the Poison Ivy.
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| Culturally-modified White Cedar Thuja occidentalis |
After the recent summer rains, the mushrooms are out.
Their trails were in pretty good shape; certainly much
better than the pieces of the Appalachian Trail that I’d recently been on.
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| Fly Agaric Amanita muscaria var. guessowii |
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| Even here, the stream crossings are kind of jerry-rigged |
I finished the walk around 2:30 in the afternoon and took
my leave of Canada, returning to Houghton through the US Customs and Border
Patrol station on on I-95.
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| The red squirrels Out East have reddish pelts; ours in E. Washington have grey fur |
Besides the
usual questions they have for people returning to my Nation, the CBP agent spied
a walking stick in back of the Subaru and asked me where I’d picked it up. “Along the trail in Maine, why?” “Well, you can’t bring a stick into the
United States from Canada, because it might have noxious insects on it.” Mind you, during this short encounter, there
were three (3) logging trucks bringing softwood logs from New Brunswick into
the States in the other lane . . .
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| Irony of Bio-Security . . . I can't bring a Canadian stick into the U.S., but . . . |
I drove up Highway 1 through Littleton, where my friend from Olympia, Don Bulloch, said
he’d lived back in the day, then up to Presque Isle, west to Ashland and
north on Highway 11 to Fort Kent, and back into a corner of New Brunswick and across to
Québec and the Trans Canada, which is numbered 2 in New Brunswick and numbered
20 in Québec, and called the Autoroute Jean-Lesage. I’m used to the
Trans-Canada being Highway No. 1 in British Columbia.
I stopped
for the night in the Ville de Saint-Pascal, checking into the Motel de la Montagne, which is a comfortable two story, 20-room establishment, reminiscent of an
old-country chateau. The nice young
clerk at the desk greeted me with “Bonjour!”, and when I replied with “Bonjour,
Good Evening”, her face fell. She had
even less English than I have of la langue Française. Fortunately a friend of hers was there, a
very professional young Moslem lass, who had a great command of both English
and French (and, no doubt, her home tongue, if not others), and cheerfully
translated for us.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Tri-lingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bi-lingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one
language? An American . . .
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| Oxalide des Bois Oxalis montana |
Meduxnekeag Black Trail eBird Checklist is Here
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| Ovenbirds seem to keep to their cover |
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