The windows of the main room in our house look east across the water. This means we can watch the sun come up and check the signs for how the day's weather will go.
Monday morning, a line of dark blue-grey clouds moved over Coffin Hill and out over the water. Beneath them the sky was red. Dark lines ran down from the clouds to the water. Out there, at the edge of sight, snow fell. Despite the old adage, "red in the morning, sailors take warning," the colour of the sky did not portend a terrible day. No precipitation fell on the land or water around our house.
Most mornings since we moved to the shore, if there was any break that let the sun shine through the clouds, the eastern horizon where sky and water meet has been tinted red. More often, like Tuesday morning, mist and cloud sit over the water, shortening the distance we can see and making the eastern edge of vision a pale, pearly grey. On these mornings, it is hard to tell where water ends and sky begins.
On Sunday, when the sky was bright and the air cold, tendrils of mist rose from the water. The blue water was warmer than the air, and the gentle wind lifted molecules off the surface to dance just above the water. Where the escarpment ends at the bay's edge, it seemed to jut out over the water like an overhanging cliff. Mist masked the place where rock and bay met.
Most days, we've had a lot more wind than that. Waves have rolled, broken into white surf, crashed against the shore. On those days, at the edge of our sight, the horizon undulated. Instead of a flat line between sky and water, we saw a bouncing blue and white wave. Some days, where the escarpment land reaches out into the bay, the water is fairly calm, a gentle wave. But further to the north, in the open bay, the horizon is rough, with water climbing into the space where sky should be.
Water isn't remaining in the bay either. Pounding against the shore leaves crystals of ice clinging to the cold rock. The stone breakwater at our neighbours is white, completely covered with a thick layer of ice. Strong winds race across the bay from the north, building long lines of heavy cloud that will drop snow on Meaford and Thornbury. Sometimes these come west and we too get water turned to snow falling on us.
A few times, when the sky was almost clear but there was just enough haze sitting above the water, we've looked east and caught the tint of red from the setting sun. We could rush around to the other side of the house, see painted clouds above the trees, take note of the portent that promises good weather for the next day. But what holds our attention is the gentle rose in the east. We cling to the hope that the sky will be clear enough to see the moon rise, to see stars shine above the water.
On Monday afternoon, I drove across the Dundalk highlands where the land is flat. The horizon is not distant, however, as lines of trees bring close the place where land and sky meet. Back on the farm, the place that land and sky met was constant, marked by the swamp to the east, a rise of land to the south. To the west and north, if we moved away from the house, we could see further across the Strathaven valley to the next rise of the escarpment. The view would change as land experienced the shifting seasons, but the horizon did not move.
Here, we are sometimes closed in to a narrow strip of water and land. Other days, the stretch of water and sky extend for miles. And at the edge of sight, there is a rippling place where sky and water seem to come together. In this place, I am reminded that sky and bay, air and water and land always touch, always interact with each other.
Cathy Hird lives on the shore of Georgian Bay.
