One Final Backcountry Ramble

On Wednesday, I headed off from Port Hood into the backcountry to see and photograph what was left of the colours. The weather was fine and there was even some occasional sun, but the mostly overcast skies didn’t help much in bringing out the remaining colours and gave credence to the forecast for Thursday. My route took me along the Dunmore Road, the Mabou Road, the Upper Southwest Mabou Road, the Glencoe Road and the Whycocomagh Port Hood Road; I ended that part of the day in Whycocomagh, where I had lunch. I returned as I came to Kewstoke, where I drove the Rosedale Road to the Old Mull River Road and it to Highway 252 and thence to Mabou and back to Port Hood. The photos on this page come from the many I took along the way in the backcountry and give a fairly accurate picture of the state of the post-peak colours I saw.

Photo #1 looks southeast along the Dunmore Road, just northwest of Captains Brook, which lies down in the dip. Two red trees remain, some lemons and oranges, and not a few greens, along with a few bare trees.

Photo #2 was taken just east of Long Johns Bridge in Upper Southwest Mabou, where the sun lit up this lovely maple, which took advantage of it to display its rainbow of colours from greens through yellows and oranges to red. This changing tree is certainly not post-peak!

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Photo #3 shows a stand of lovely yellow birch trees at the side of a muddy Rosedale Road. This was just past a large puddle spanning the road, where I made the wrong choice, going left, and my two front wheels dropped into a V-shaped cleft where they had no purchase when the car frame hit the edge of the cleft. The front wheels were in muddy water up to their middle! I was stuck and the car wouldn’t budge, the first time that has ever happened to me on a back road in Cape Breton. Oops! Fortunately, it was only a 3 km (1⅞ mi) walk to the farm at the end of the road in Miramichi, where I was pretty sure I could get some help, but first I tried rocking it out. That didn’t appear to help much, but it apparently did moisten the earth on which the frame was resting. I gave the motor a rest and tossed some small stones into the puddle below the wheels as I tried to think of what else I might do before setting off on my walk for assistance. I had no bright ideas, but decided to give ’er one last try. This time, the moistened earth below the frame gave way and the stones gave the wheels just enough traction that the car lurched forward and out of the cleft. Whew! I was some relieved! So, when I arrived here, I got out and looked at the puddle ahead, which was perfectly benign, and took the occasion to snap a photo of these beautiful birches.

Photo #4 shows a much drier Rosedale Road, though one not without puddles, lined by lovely colours as it descends. Notice the reds left of centre and another at the far right; otherwise, these are golds and yellows. A lot of bare trees are also showing. The hump against the sky just right of centre is the crown, still steadfastly green, of a large rounded tree on the ridge.

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Photo #5 was taken from the edge of a field I discovered some years ago on my first trip across the Rosedale Road; it is a lovely view to the south of the hills of Upper Glencoe and the Bornish Hills to the south, showing the gorgeous area from Dunakin to Glencoe Mills. A closer but similar scene was seen from “The Plains” in Glencoe Mills earlier in this essay. The lovely bright green field in the foreground and the evergreens in the forest give this a predominantly green feel, but if one looks more closely, one can also see deciduous trees in their fall colours, mostly oranges and yellows. What a beautiful spot!

Photo #6 looks at the stand of green/orange trees at the left of photo #5. The lighter greens in the middle ground are tamaracks, which have not yet begun to change. Miramichi Brook runs through the valley below the field and the hillside that spans the photo, crosses the Old Mull River Road in Miramichi, and enters the Mull River west of Miramichi about 1 km (⅝ mi) south of where Sheas Brook from Brook Village joins the Mull River.

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Photo #7 looks at another lovely panorama, this one at the edge of another field about 500 m (0.3 mi) southeast of the Old Mull River Road in Miramichi. The south side of Southwest Ridge (Mabou Ridge) spans most of the photo, rising above the Mull River Valley. The mountain at the far right is Mabou Mountain. The distance is too great for a good feel for the state of the colours, but patches of colour closer at hand mirror those seen on the Ridge, so one can infer they are roughly in the same state.

Photo #8 looks at the open green area about a third of the way in from the left of photo #7, where a house and other buildings are seen at the edge of the field. The Mull River Road is behind the trees above the house, which mostly hide it from view when one is driving there. The Mull River flows though the forested valley on the near side of the house.

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Photo #9 looks at the left portion of photo #7 at a stand of colourful trees at the edge of the field. Most of the colours are represented here, even some reds. Again, the light greens of the tamaracks, which can be seen to have just begun to assume a yellow hue, provide a lovely backdrop to the brighter colours in the foreground. The mottling of the slopes on Southwest Ridge testifies to the mixed evergreen/deciduous forest there, but is too far away to make out any patches of colour.