The Cape Split Trail

The zen music alarm on Gary's phone wakes us up gently at 2:45 AM, but before we really get up we check three different weather apps one more time. The girl in the outdoor store in Wolfville told us she hiked Cape Split to see the sunrise, so now we are inspired to do the same, except it won't stop raining. One app shows a sun with a cloud over it, one shows a cloud with no sun at all, and one shows a bright yellow sun at 6 AM. Sunrise is 5:56. We decide to believe in the bright yellow sun. So we get up and put on our dri-fit clothes and our rain jackets, and pack up our backpacks with extra socks and fig newtons. I grab the walking stick in the hall, and we start driving in the dark. At first it isn't raining, but as we get closer to the trailhead we see it slanting down sideways in the headlights and beading off the hood of the car. We keep driving, telling ourselves we can always call the whole thing off if it's pouring when we get to the parking lot. But I think we are both still believing in the bright yellow sun at sunrise.

We get to the parking lot and it's barely sprinkling. We're the only ones there, and we step out of the car into darkness and silence. A silence so complete it catches me by surprise. There are no sounds anywhere. Of anything. Until we hear a coyote way off in the distance, in the opposite direction of the trail head, and just then Gary hands me a folded-up knife. Which I try to attach to my waistband but can't, so I tell him I'll put it in my pocket instead. He says it won't do much good there, and in my mind I'm thinking it won't do much good anywhere. But I finally manage to attach it to my waistband, under two shirts and my rain jacket, where it's harder to get to than if it was in the little zipped up pocket on the leg of my pants. We put on our headlamps and I pee one last time in the compost toilet at the trailhead. Gary finds a walking stick, and at 4:27 we start out on our sixteen kilometer hike.

The trail is dark and wet and muddy, and almost the first place we come to is a stream bed with rocks, and we can't tell which way to go. We pick a direction and find the path, and I realize water has already come through the mesh of my shoes. As we walk there is a constant misting rain and little toads are hopping in front of my feet. Our lamps are lighting up the trail, and we are squishing in the mud and trying to find ways around the really big puddles. Gary keeps talking about coyotes, and I try not to think about the story we heard about the girl that was killed by them while she was hiking alone in Nova Scotia a few years ago. It wasn't this trail, but still. They say you should make noise so the coyotes know you are coming, so I start singing Joy to the World, but Gary doesn't want to sing, so we talk really loudly to each other about nothing at all, and Gary keeps glancing left and right into the dark woods with his headlamp, looking for coyote eyes shining back. As we walk there is a small and steady rain, but our pants and jackets are repelling the water.

After more than an hour the sky starts to get lighter and we hear the first bird and what we think is a foghorn, but it doesn't really sound like a foghorn, so we call it a nautical sound instead. It's off to our right in the bay somewhere. The rain is getting harder and harder and soaking through our pants now, and it feels like we have to be almost at the end. Gary takes out the rain-cover for the camera bag and tries to figure out how to put it on, and when his back is turned I look past him and see something on the trail that could be a small dog. I start to yell and make big noise, and it turns and runs off into the woods. But I'm not afraid. And it's not because of the folded-up knife attached to my waistband.

The sky keeps getting lighter and pretty soon we take off our headlamps and the trees start to thin out and we see a meadow up ahead. When we emerge from the forest we have missed the sunrise. But it doesn't matter. We step out onto the edge into a watercolor painting. The rain has stopped. The colors and the light and the clouds are pastel muted newborn clean. There are seabirds on the cliff yelling at each other and playing waking up games.

There are wildflowers everywhere and giant dark green pines, and I'm glad we didn't look up pictures of this place before we came, because everything is a revelation. We wander around on the paths made by other people's feet, and find the split in the rocks that makes it Cape Split.

We look over the edge of a cliff and it looks like there's a hidden waterfall flowing into the bay. We're not sure what we're seeing. So we check from another angle and decide that it's the tide flowing fast into the bay. Because the tides here are the highest and fastest anywhere. We are stopped, and stilled, by the tide, and this spot. We're soaking and freezing and the mosquitoes have found us, but we don't want to leave. I want to fold it all up and push it down deep and keep it inside forever. We take out our fig newtons and look at each other. We smile and say cheers.

Finally we find our way back to the trail. And everything is different in the light. The forest is primeval. Made of myth and mist and magic and moss. Wildflowers and ferns are everywhere.

The trees are all bent in mysterious shapes, fallen over and growing in strange ways. There are upended roots like sculptures, and the trail is a river from the hard rain earlier.

Our clothes are drenched, and our feet are sploshing in our shoes, and we are tired and achy and cold. And it feels like we've been to the end and the beginning of everything anyone knows. And as we're walking we stop and just listen, and the silence feels like a prayer, here on the Cape Split trail, where we stood for a while in a painting, and shared a fig newton, and toasted the world.