Thursday 17 September 2015

More Bluff

First, thanks to that squad of readers--a sunny Scarborough to you kids at Ravine Elem--who pointed out that not everyone uses "bluff" the way the Loyalists do starting with Eliz Simcoe, wife of the first Lt.-Gov of Upper Canada. For her, bluffs were cliffs, like white cliffs of Dover. Westerners know bluffs as members of the gully family.
Anyway, the bluffs here are, by definition, endangered, though the multi-million erosion control project (ECP)will keep the lake off the base of the bluff for now (as in, the next x-million years). That still leaves the wind, which the other day was blowing a visible cloud of fine dust from the upper face of the bluffs. My gnarly head of hair was full of it.
Now, between the western edge of the ECP and the eastern edge of a public beach a half-mile or so west, lake and bluff-base interact as they always have (always being one of those words, like now that can't hold its center in a formation like the bluffs). It's pretty, and inviting . . .













if scrambly on the far side. This is where it gets:










one of the best beach days I've had all summer. On the way back, I picked up a fragment of bluff which, despite its thousands of years of weight, breaks in my hands.
I really shouldn't be here, in other words. And that goes for the rest of  you. ECP or not, the bluffs will fall,










and for those lovers I saw enjoying the beach, that's double the risk.

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