Perfect Moment Monday: Peggy's Cove Piper

(OK, so it's Tuesday, but who cares?)

I'm back! (Did you notice I was gone?) Dh & I were away last week on our much-anticipated Nova Scotia vacation, & we had an absolutely fabulous time. I had hoped to write up my 30 Posts in 30 Days entries & have them queued up to post automatically while we were gone, but ran out of time. The 30 Posts series will resume shortly, although it may be more like 30 Posts in 45 Days, lol.

Anyway -- our vacation was filled with memorable moments, but there is one in particular that I automatically identified as a blogworthy Perfect Moment.

A week ago Sunday, dh & I made the 43 km (about 25 miles) drive from Halifax out to Peggy's Cove, which is a tiny, rustic, 200-year-old fishing village (pop. 35) on the Atlantic Ocean. (SwissAir Flight 111 crashed in the waters nearby in 1998, & there is a memorial to the victims just outside of town.) The village, and the red & white lighthouse on St. Margaret's Bay (built in 1868), is one of the most photographed & instantly recognizable sights in Canada. I've seen that lighthouse a million times in photos & on television... and when we rounded the bend in the road & I saw it (and the broad expanse of the Atlantic Ocean beyond it) for the first time in "real life," I actually started crying. I think dh & I instantly fell in love with the place. (In fact, we loved it so much, we went back again on Friday, the day before our holiday ended.)

We parked our rental car in the big parking lot near the restaurant & gift shop, & made our way up to the lighthouse & onto the rocks beyond to gaze at the ocean. It was still relatively early, & there were only about a dozen people on the rocks (although before long, a half-dozen tour buses would roll in).



It had drizzled for most of the way from the city, and there was a light fog, but it could have been much worse. Hurricane Igor was brewing in the Atlantic, and while he was still hundreds of miles away (& would ultimately pass by Nova Scotia -- hitting the province of Newfoundland instead), he was already making his presence felt in the winds, the whitecaps out on the ocean, and some rather spectacular waves crashing on the rocks below us. I remember thinking that I would almost rather see this place in this sort of weather than on a clear, sunny, calm day. It just seemed right, somehow. We heeded the posted signs (see below) and stayed well away from the black rocks on the water's edge, marvelling at the beauty of the water and the granite rocks, worn over many centuries by glaciers, the weather and the waves.





And then, off in the distance, I heard a sound. The unmistakable wail of bagpipes. It was eerie and beautiful and entirely in keeping with the character of the place and the weather. "Now THIS is a perfect moment," I remember thinking. When we started walking back to the parking lot, we saw that it was a young girl, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a kilt. Her instrument case was open beside her, with a hand-lettered sign propped up inside: "COLLEGE OR BUST."



I grinned and tossed a toonie (two-dollar coin) into the case. She totally made my day.

You can find more Perfect Moments at Weebles Wobblog.