Still Underfoot
The way the road once went is always obvious in passing, houses crowded close around a curving lane while modern traffic flies by on Shore Road West down below. No one minds a bypass when it happens, unless you’re someone selling something at the roadside. The relative quiet is generally welcomed.
A couple centuries back, this intersection was your first sight of the sea after a long climb from Annapolis Valley, on what was then called “Phinnies Road” (now Phinney Mountain Road). Lots were sold from freshwater to salt, and so everyone cut their own winding trails to connect those bodies of water. Now it’s only off-roaders who come from behind me. The old right of way lies abandoned since the 1950s or so. Rocky, washed out, and in places, nearly impassible. Not that it was ever a whole lot better back then.
Consider the aging asphalt, such a wonderful repository of memory, each retained fissure and divot like grooves in a vinyl record. If you were a kid here forty years ago, it’s all still underfoot. Curl your toes in the cracks and think back. Then look ahead instead, why don’t you, to the sweet and sinking blue of a windy evening. Rain’s coming on any second and it’s bound to be a furious fall.
May 6, 2026
Phinney’s Cove, Nova Scotia
Year 19, Day 6751 of my daily journal.