Hay Meadow Going Back To Spruce

© July '10   photo by smck

It suddenly dawned on me that the hay meadow on the big hill across the Alder swamp from us, the hay meadow that had been there for several generations, was reverting back to the arboreal forest of the north.   We flew kites there and picked blueberries and watched hay being 'made' by drying in the sun and then being pitchforked onto an old wagon behind a truck.  It was inevitable - Buddy had valiantly mowed it every summer, long after he moved away, and the hay was of value to those who came and carried it back to their own old farm.  This farm, of the old hay meadow, was no longer the  farm of old, it was a farm of pulp wood for the mill and the hay meadow was a chore for memory only, not a chore of preparing for the winter's long rule.  Several years before this photograph was taken the large granted lot exchanged hands to someone from another time and place.  So in those years since the last haying, the small buds of spruce germinated and year by year they grew almost invisibly it seems - but now, as I took my camera in hand, the visible spruce are visible evidence that another hard won farm lot is being lost - the rural areas lose people, the cities grow larger.  It is like a blight of sadness on the land - and not just in Cape Breton, but around the world.