cycling season in Vancouver, when social distance between riders was a given, I figured that my solitary peddling through streets now emptied of traffic could hardly be considered irresponsible. And if I had to push the envelope a little in order to keep body and mind in balance, well, that was a risk worth taking.

The Masked Journey ‘Cross Canada

            And daily bike rides continued unabashed even when we crept across Canada to a new home in Nova Scotia this past summer. Our attempts to motor invisibly across the country unravelled every time my neon jacket and I got out for a ride. As trackable as a school bus with flashing red lights along a prairie road, my bike, the beacon, beat its way eastwards, its rider happy in the swirl of wind and freedom. Apart from the occasional deer or black bear that scuppered out of my way, I remained uncontestably alone on the Trans Canada Highway, a solitary speck on the side of the road

through The Prairies and well into the lakes and forests and long ago lodge country of northern Ontario.  Apart from those bold and barefaced rides, we alighted from the van only to fuel up, beg for a bathroom, or hunt for a place to isolate (a.k.a., boondock) for the night. We hit the jackpot at truck stops in Quebec:  perfect anonymity, walls of impenetrable steel between us and heated bathrooms.

            Keeping up our masked and unfriendly guises, and ability to muzzle sudden sneezing attacks, we approached fortress New Brunswick where we would have to pass muster in order to enter the Atlantic region. Our BC plates trigger the red alert and we are directed to the ‘we-need-to-talk’ pile.  More rigorous than the grilling at a national border, our address in Nova Scotia eventually awards us onward passage provided we don’t stop, thereby letting New Brunswick live up to its name; ‘the drive-through province’. Normally bent on convincing people that they hardly deserved this hapless moniker, within a few miles it is clear that this year New Brunswick had just thrown in the towel. Reconstructed pioneer villages, covered bridges, charming seaside villages, parks and water sport centres – all are shuttered against Covid. Though the nadir of our journey, you had to admire people who were prepared to take on such bleakness in order to thwart the virus and protect the lives of their most vulnerable.

            Knowing Billy Goat Gruff was defending its outer perimeter, we are ushered into Nova Scotia with a welcoming wave-through and smiling, unmasked faces. The bike soon re-emerges, and teetering on shoulderless roads, I sign my life over to Atlantic drivers. They are patient and polite, creeping past me in the wrong lane upon passing. Social distancing is taken seriously here. Or perhaps it is

because a defenseless cyclist on the side of the road is such a novelty……Inadvertently, and appropriately enough, my bikeborne self-isolation continues.

The Other Side:  Nova Scotia

            Perhaps it was Nova Scotia, perhaps it was our increasing savviness about Covid, but the summer softened my guilt about cycling. There were too many hills to climb, beaches to

wander and histories to uncover – landscapes and lives sculpted by the sea, farmlands reclaimed from it, villages settled, uprooted and resettled. Lazy, winding, storybook roads where silence and space were broken by the occasional tractor rumbling by or the sound of a lobster boat casting off from shore. Daily rides, quarantining under vast skies

along the Bay of Fundy, so foreign to “dwellers of dark clouds” and rainforests, kept me dutifully distanced and gloriously guilt-free. Yelps of pleasure were lost amidst the wind and the seagull’s cries.

            Our summer behind the Atlantic curtain wasn’t only a cyclist’s’ dream. Our arrival set off jungle drums; jars of preserves lined our kitchen countertops, free range eggs from the coop up the road magically appear and

neighbours gather in our yard to greet us. Welcoming handshakes and hugs are awkwardly retracted as they realize we are quarantining and they are supposed to be isolating from people like us. Rather than take offense, it doesn’t take long until we too have adopted a

similar posture; stocking up on an assortment of handmade masks at the farmers’ markets, patronizing the smaller campgrounds, the wilder beaches and theatres that space patrons 10 seats apart. No one is passed without a wave……behind the safety of our car windshield. People let their hair

down at the local town’s outdoor concerts on Friday evenings, huddling around baskets of take-out fish and chips and getting up to dance with their kids on the wide floor of the amphitheatre. There is a reason why Covid cannot seem to find its next host in Nova Scotia.

            Like a true Nova Scotian, our worlds expand to fill the size of our yard. Well-fed hostas and daylilies and purple hydrangeas bury our walkways. Our sheets and underwear flap from our front-yard clothesline, and a small patch of earth becomes home to a bluster of tomato plants and zucchini. The growing woodpile sprawls in the corner of the yard, and settles in the warm summer sun. The shed – the proud, weatherbeaten, stalwart shrine to life in Maritime circles – crowds out any need for pools, hot tubs, koi ponds or bespoke gardens. And down the street, the simple white community hall and church and cemetery perch in copses of old white oaks and elms, the tendrils of history around moss-covered granite headstones and the freshly painted Thread and Thimble Club nearby holding fast. The impulse to impart something bigger, better and ‘from away’ recedes the longer you are here.

            Yes, Covid may have reduced our reach, but the view has been warmed and widened from here.  And I might have missed it all if I had put my bike away.