“For absolute, freedom and wilderness” Henry David Thoreau, Walking
Walking is one of my absolute favourite activities. Walking for no purpose aside from joining nature and losing oneself. I feel very lucky and grateful that I live in a place that is so close to many magical environments. There are so many different landscapes on the East Coast! This past month we have explored an old growth eastern hemlock forest in the centre of Nova Scotia, rocky shores and conifer forests along the East, the Mountains in the North and the mixed woodlands not far from our home on the Island.
October in the East of Canada is so beautiful! Our landscape is painted with the red and orange leaves of sugar maples, crimson blueberry fields, stark whites and golds of birch and the ever fluctuating bright blue and dark, smokey sky. There’s the song of the Canadian Geese overhead and black specks of crows perched atop the trees. It’s short and oh so sweet.
What do we do in the woods? We certainly spend a lot of time there. We Listen to the birds, the squirrels, the brook. Notice every adorable fungi we come across and marvel at the plush moss where I’ve always fantasized about laying my head to sleep ;). Sometimes, I forage or draw. When it’s really nice outside, my sister and I can spend a whole afternoon sitting by the river, wading in it, deciphering faces in the bark of trees and picking out the perfect quartz crystal.
It’s where I feel happiest and at home.
What landscape makes you feel happiest while hiking?
Ways of Wood Folk 
Hi Julia the photographs of your ‘backyard’ are beautiful, as are your drawings and knitting which I see on Instagram. Am really looking forward to your blog. My favourite places for walking are the moorlands surrounding where we live. I love it in August when the heather is in flower but most of all in winter when the weather makes it look wild and bleak.
Regards Jane
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Hi Jane,
Thank you so much for your kind compliments! You are so lucky you live by the moorlands… I have always dreamed of walking them (a little Jane Eyre obsessed…). I hope to travel there in the next few years and experience those walks! I can relate to loving the wild and bleak looks as well. I’m always more attracted to our beaches in the winter than the summer for this very reason.
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Beautiful photos and words! I, too, always want to sleep on the cushy moss.💚 My favourite places to hike are mossy, rocky woods, like we have here on the Niagara Escarpment, and in Cape Breton. They feel like magical liminal spaces, inviting the visitor to be part of the earth itself.
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Thanks so much Valerie! I totally agree about those landscapes! On PEI we actually don’t have rocks… it’s the one thing I really, really miss (Luckily Nova Scotia isn’t far and I travel there often). The Niagara Escarpment looks amazing (I’m looking at pictures of it right now!), definitely liminal, I love your description 🙂
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What a beautiful, beautiful area, you live in. You are farther north, than us, and close to the coast. We must travel, to get to the magnificent ocean.
Thank you for the lovely photos, and lovely words.
Late Autumn blessings,
Luna Crone
Moon Spinners blog
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Thank you so much! These are such sweet comments! Traveling is never a bad thing!
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Beautiful!
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