Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick: Day Six

Our first full day in New Brunswick was dedicated to experiencing Fundy’s famous tides first-hand, in a sea kayak. We had arranged a tour in advance, with a local outfit called Fresh Air Adventures. The departure time was 8:15 a.m., and they were emphatic that because of the unforgiving nature of the tides, we could start no more than five minutes late. So we were up and out early, into a town that was still sound asleep. A real breakfast was out of the question, but luckily, a convenience store across the street from our hotel was open enough to sell us two styrofoam cups of abysmal coffee, some bananas and two surprisingly decent blueberry muffins. We breakfasted on a picnic table outside the store, already enamored of what was promising to be a spectacular day as far as the weather was concerned.

Fresh Air was a scant two blocks away, a two story clapboard house on a half-acre of lawn, a couple of hundred feet away from where a stream flowed into the bay. The lawn was strewn with kayaks. The owner – his name escapes me now and I neglected to write it down – was very nice if a bit servile in his manner. A former schoolteacher, we later found out. He introduced us to Robert, our guide, a local about our age, who gave us the rundown of basic safety, five minutes worth of instruction on how to paddle a kayak, and showed us ho to put on paddling jackets and spray skirts. He then gave us an amazing piece of news: we were the only people on the full-day tour. A couple dozen feet away, the half-day tour was going through their safety briefing – at least fifteen people. I was very glad to have paid the extra money. Robert and I carried the boats to the water while J. followed with the paddles, and we were off.

The Bay of Fundy was not identifiable as such – despite the crystal-clear day, we could not see the Nova Scotia side. We paddled West, in the direction of the bay’s mouth. We were moving into the wind, so we stayed close to shore to avoid the worst of it. Most of the time, Robert kept his boat close enough to ours to allow for conversation without raising our voices. He made a few comments about the bay, the famous tides, and the local wildlife. A porpoise flashed its fin a couple of hundred yards astern – scant consolation for the previous day’s dearth of aquatic life.

After a while, the tide began to recede, opening up rocky beaches along the shore. At one point, Robert pointed to a hole in a rock outcropping that jutted out into the water. The hole was easily twenty feet above the surface as we passed. “Once or twice,” he said, “we paddled a boat through that hole at high tide.” We paddled on, contemplating the landscape. On one hand it was a generic Northern coastline – sheer cliffs of brown rock topped with scraggly pines. On the other, being on the water, a mere six inches away from the surface, bathed in the uncharacteristically bright sunlight reflecting off the bay’s surface, inhaling the invigoratingly salty wind with every swing of the paddle, was breathtaking. There was no other place I would have rather been at that moment.

Eventually, the shoreline curved and we faced directly into the wind. Though we were paddling with all our might, progress was slow. J. had to take breaks every couple of minutes, and when I was the only one paddling, the best I could hope to achieve was to keep the boat from drifting backwards. Another rocky outcropping loomed in the distance. “We could go as far as that rock,” Robert said, “or we can turn back now. It’s up to you.” Erring on the side of caution, we turned back. Soon it was time for lunch. We pulled up on one of the rocky beaches we passed on the way out, now a lot wider since the tide was approaching its low point. Unbeknownst to us, both boats’ holds had been stuffed with gear – a camp stove with its fuel canister, plastic dishes, a wok, and several containers of food. Robert quickly set up and a few minutes later we were enjoying delicious chicken burritos with peppers and onions, pink lemonade, and generous pinches of dulse – local reddish-brown seaweed dried into flakes, salted, and served as a snack or lunchtime side dish, the way potato chips might be served elsewhere. The beautiful weather was holding up, the wind that was buffeting us on the water a few minutes earlier was now a gentle breeze, and sitting on the coarse sand, sated and slightly intoxicated by the intensely fresh salty air, we were as far away from the daily grind of home as we would ever be on the entire trip. Robert started to explain the Fundy tides.

Due to the combination of the Earth’s rotation and the moon’s orbit around the Earth, the tide cycle is six hours and 13 minutes everywhere in the world. Additionally, the Earth’s axis, which is not completely true but “wobbles” a bit as it rotates, produces a sloshing effect in the world’s oceans. The length of the Bay of Fundy happens to be such that a single “slosh” takes exactly six hours and 13 minutes to travel all the way to the innermost point of the bay, combining with the natural cycle in phase and augmenting the change in the water level. New Brunswick’s celebrity is somewhat ersatz, it turned out – the highest tide ever was recorded on the opposite side of the bay in Nova Scotia – an even 54 feet! The explanation over, we chatted about this and that. Finding out that Robert was from a small town in the French-speaking part of New Brunsiwck, I dusted off my French. We had no trouble understanding each other, though the conversation was admittedly brief. More curious was the fact that Robert had to look for off-season work anew every year. His guiding at Fresh Air was steady (he had been doing it for four years) and provided a place to live for the season, but he could only do it June through October, and was on his own the rest of the year. The previous winter, he was lucky to get a job with the provincial government, assisting on a research project in Moncton. Unfathomable to me, but liberating, I am sure, if you can handle the lack of permanence.

The remainder of the trip was short, and we were out of the water by 2:00 p.m. The launch site was bone-dry by now, and we disembarked on another beach, met by Fresh Air’s owner and driven back into town. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable and spectacularly organized trip. The folks at Fresh Air deserve major props for their work. If you are ever anywhere in the vicinity of Fundy National Park, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you make a detour and take a paddling trip with them.

The long hours of Northern daylight left us with quite a few hours of productive time, so on a whim we decided to check out Hopewell Rocks, about 20 kilometers East of Alma. Small islands with some trees and shrubs at high tide, they are exposed for the giant rocks that they are when the water recedes, leaving odd-looking clumps of vegetation atop otherwise barren formations. Curious enough, and certainly a good way to demonstrate the tides’ drama, they are also a tourist trap par excellence. Save for a mini-gang of Quebecois bikers (far thinner and more fit than their typical American counterparts), we were the only visitors who did not arrive by tour bus. I can report, with some disappointment but little surprise, that the slice of Canadian society who chooses the bus tour mode of sightseeing offers no respite from its American brethren’s lack of taste, discretion, or personal fastidiousness.

Hopewell Rocks dispensed with, we drove back into Fundy National Park proper, found our campground and claimed the site – camping at last! After a surprisingly satisfying dinner of instant noodles and canned sardines cooked on my trusty single-burner Coleman, we retired, exhausted but elated, into the tent, reasonably confident that the raccoon that had paid a brazen visit to our campsite an hour or so earlier would be our biggest natural threat.