Crossing the Canso Causeway the morning before, I was pleased to see a string of heavy traffic – vans, trailers, campers – headed in the opposite direction. I had picked the right time to come to Cape Breton and that night I had happened upon a great place to camp: on the edge of the woods and entirely alone. The threat of a black bear visiting me in the night had me move the tent closer to my car in the darkness. I didn’t really know what purpose the exercise served. I suppose that after the last two days my Ford Focus seemed like a safe haven. Besides, should a bear come moseying by my tent, I could honk my horn from my keyless entry device, an ingenious idea I thought.

The only restaurant in Pleasant Bay was a squat affair, adjacent to the only motel, itself adjacent to the only liquor store. I felt a bit wobbly walking in after my evening trip of whale-watching and I was famished. I enjoyed a pleasant turkey dinner and a bottle of Keith’s, eating alone except for the owner and waitress, who sat in the corner, chain-smoking and slurping coffee. I awoke early the next morning without any provocations from bears and set out on in my tired car up the steep road of North Mountain. Next to the road was a recreated crofter’s hut and after the summit, the splendidly deep and plush Aspy River Valley, spreading like green velvet to the south. The sun rose over the mountains and spread a wide blanket of light across the valley. The early morning light was brilliant and, despite the chilly early morning, seemed to be warming fast.

The Cabot Trail again leaves the park at its northeastern fringe in the village of Dingwall. Several square miles of Nova Scotia’s northern fringe lie north of the park; no more than a couple of hundred people live up here. North of the village of Cape North, the curving road crossed over several rivers, one of which emptied into the sea in a broad flat plain of small, reedy islands and hummocky grasses. A perfect place to spot a moose, I thought, but I saw none. A few miles up the road, a plaque and statue mark the place where Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), sailing from England, made landfall in 1497. Cabot’s Landing is now a large well-groomed park fronting a ¾-mile-long beach of reddish-white sand. Gulls silently hovered in the small updrafts, and sparrows flitted in the rushes that ended at a long sandbar. The spectral cliffs of Cape North emerged just beyond.

Cresting over a hill, the extraordinary panorama of Bay St. Lawrence spread out before me. Situated on a lovely bay of the same name, nearly cut off from the Atlantic by the Cape North headland and a finger of land at the harbor entrance, the village appeared as a postcard from the west of Ireland. Bright red fishing trawlers looked like toy boats from the high road as it wound down and through town. I remembered the last time I had weather as bright, clear and as memorable as this: the last time I was in Ireland.

“Wow! Amazing! Unbelievable! Hey, sorry. I hope I’m not spoiling your picture. I just gotta get one of my own”. The road ambled through town and, on the opposite side, I found a photo opportunity too beautiful to resist. He had pulled up in his fat Durango, and right into my picture, crossing the wide plain of grazed grass that dropped off suddenly into the sea, just beyond the shoulder. “Amazing. You believe it?” he asked, “My family owns this land. I haven’t seen it for twenty-seven years. I grew up here.” “Why’d you leave?” Given the beauty of the setting, I found it was a reasonable question. “I’m not really sure.” And with a shrug contradictory to his exclamations, he peeled off in his SUV with Ontario plates.

Past Bay St. Lawrence, the road turns to dirt and winds along the coast, embracing the steep mountains to the left to avoid the precipitous drop to the right. The village of Capstick – eight or nine houses backing a slate-grey bay was followed a few miles later by the inexplicably-named (to me) Meat Cove, the end of the road and the top of the province. Meat Cove made Capstick look like a relative metropolis though the former boasts a campground, situated in the most spectacular location I had ever encountered. At the end of the road, a few level terraces cut into the high cliff served as a place to park a camper or pitch a tent. In the distance, the heights of Cape North seemed to shake a fist at uninhabited St. Paul Island, in reality, fifteen miles off the coast and graveyard of dozens of ships, the northernmost point of the province. Newfoundland lay somewhere beyond.

A “No Tresspassing” sign guarded a short walkway to a rock outcrop teetering high above the sea. “Go ahead. We checked it out earlier.” A man with the look of one from Massachusetts that his license plate confirmed, addressed me. He was of course speaking of this space with room enough to pitch a small tent, surrounded on three sides by the sea far below. It was connected to the campground by a slender footpath that would make a mule shudder. “They call it the Honeymoon Suite. More like Lover’s Leap to me.” I concurred. Surely, even the most fearless adventure travelers and cultivators of the extreme wouldn’t flirt with death in their sleep.

Liz and Anthony were spreading peanut butter on bread when I rudely interrupted their breakfast. “Where in New York you from?” “Brooklyn.” “Long way from home,” I said, needlessly, but their pop-up Westphalia certainly indicated that they liked to get away. In an incredibly strange coincidence, they were from my neighborhood, living a mere handful of blocks from my apartment. There in the sun-bathed waters of the Atlantic edge, at the end of a twisting dirt track, I really began to appreciate the New York diaspora, as wide as a world.

I drove back a few hundred yards to a small building beside a stream. Upon opening the door, four seated people greeted me with a stony silence, each one with a cigarette dangling from the lips.

A dusty-brown cat led the way when I set out on a trail to the nearest headland. My ankle was still giving me trouble so I wanted to take it slow; I didn’t think I could do an overnight hike though the wilderness here looked fascinating. It was bright and downright hot as I pushed up the narrow trail through a thicket of colorful wildflowers, among them, yes, orchids. Apparently, Meat Cove harbors a couple of varieties that grow nowhere else in the world. Before I knew it, I was standing atop the hill that overlooked the village and bay. There I met a young couple from Ottawa who were helpful in telling me where I might visit in New Brunswick on the drive back. Several grasshoppers bounded out of the weeds on this grassy bluff, each one sounding like those little packets of gunpowder that children throw against walls and sidewalks. An invisible bird piped a clipped song that sounded to me like “Steve McQueen”. I walked down the steep slope closer to the sea and found a rock with the contours of a cozy recliner. I sat down and took it all in, the sweeping coast of tall cliffs, bays and headlands, the expanse of deep blue water, and a bald eagle that hovered over the cliff, nesting somewhere below my dangling feet. Several species of whale congregate here where the waters of the St. Lawrence mix with those of the North Atlantic in a nutrient-rich swirl. Though high above the water, I could spot none today. It was hard to imagine this scene in February, covered in cracked sheets of drift ice. It was one of those awe-inspiring views that made me want to reassess, to balance my priorities. I was reminded of the lines by Wislawa Szymborska:

I’m no longer sure that what’s important is more important than what’s not.

“Hey Brooklyn.” It was Anthony and Liz. We enjoyed the view together, and I found it nice to talk about the neighborhood we shared, the park we ran in. Back at the campground, we exchanged numbers and I headed back along the dirt track, marveling still at the views.

I left the Cabot Trail again and headed down a smaller road for the village of Dingwall, handsomely situated on a slender harbor. Several miles past this, I descended on gorgeous White Point, a tiny village with a cluster of boats in a small harbor behind the breakwall. The winding road passed through several small villages, each with its requisite assortment of fishing boats moored in the bays. Past Aspy Bay, I stopped in Neil’s Harbor where a squat, red lighthouse guides the harbor entrance. I stopped there for ice cream and vainly tried to count the lobster traps stacked along the docks.

I rejoined the Cabot Trail and continued south, again in the thick forest of the park. The day before a fire had consumed an area here and some trails were closed. Black Brook limps into the ocean at a quiet, sandy beach, near empty today; Green Cove is an area where the shoreline of pink, glacier-scoured granite blocks meets a thundering sea. A few miles on, I found myself in the town of Ingonish, where a slender finger of land splits a bay in two. Here I found the largest tourist infrastructure I had seen thus far. The town’s jewel is the Keltic Lodge, an enormous complex of rooms and restaurants on the peninsula, adjacent to a beach and Atlantic Canada’s premiere golf course, Highland Links, as well. Reclining on a painted Adirondack chair on the hotel lawn and peering through the pines to a placid bay, I was reminded of Lake George in upstate New York.

Leaving the park for the last time I drove up 1200-foot Cape Smokey, which offered views of nearly the entire eastern half of the Cape Breton Highlands. I took a hike to a high outcrop and watched eagles soar on the updraft. I fell into conversation with a man who seemed starved for it. He was from Saratoga Springs, New York and he and his fancy camera had “been everywhere”. “This is nice but nuthin’ like Alaska. That’s some real wildlife. I got a buncha shots of moose last night but in Alaska I saw dozens of bears – real bears, you know, Grizzlies. Got close to enough to see ‘em drool. Those things are big. Huge, huge.” He went on like this for a good twenty minutes as I stood at the cliff’s edge trying to spot whales and eagles. I had given up trying to get a word in edgewise – each question I asked was met with more tales of rapids, mountains, and of course, Grizzlies. I said goodbye. “Hey, nice talkin’ to ya.”

Through a series of long switchbacks, the Cabot Trail dropped down and crossed over several rivers, many of them close to dry in this late summer. Past Wreck Cove, the road turned inland into a narrow vale, again not unlike a Scottish glen. At a bend in the road is the village of South Gut St. Ann’s , home to The Gaelic College of Celtic Arts & Crafts, the only college of its kind in North America, and where I stopped to look around. It took nearly an hour to drive around the deeply-indented St. Ann’s Bay and when I did I left the Cabot Trail and headed east again on the Trans-Canada. I was somewhat interested in briefly checking out Sydney, second-largest city in Nova Scotia, despite being warned that there was nothing to see. Descending steeply, the super-highway wound out of the highlands and crossed a mammoth bridge over the half-mile wide channel that connects Bras D’Or lake to the Atlantic. Here in the province’s far northeast, is its industrial center, formerly centered on coal mining, now on steel manufacturing. North America’s first coal mining enterprise was established by French miners in 1720, in nearby Glace Bay; Marconi also sent his first wireless message across the sea from here. The highway sped past North Sydney, terminus of ferries to Port aux Basques and Argentia, Newfoundland, and into Sydney proper. Sydney was settled by Loyalists from New York who were followed twenty years later by Scottish immigrants. By 1800, Dominion Steel was the largest coal mining operation in North America. Though situated on a broad harbor,

Route 4 took me into farm country and along the east shore of the Bras d’Or Lakes, Cape Breton’s vast inland sea. Connected to the ocean by a narrow channel at the north end, the lake divides Cape Breton in the same way peapod-shaped Loch Ness separates Highland from Lowland Scotland. Bras d’Or is vast; even on this unbelievably bright day it was hard to see the other side. Plenty of islands poked out of the water and I thought what a perfect place to sail: the exhilaration of the open ocean without the danger. In the flaxen late afternoon light, it looked indeed like the “arm of gold” of its name. From the map, the lakes look like a soaring bird, the likes of which I saw on its shores. The lakes, with their mixing of salt- and freshwater, harbor Greenland cod and southern sand shrimp; they run to 600-feet deep. The villages on the eastern bank were exceptionally small.

I was passing relatively near one of Nova Scotia’s top attractions: the fortress of Louisbourgh on the Atlantic coast. I lamented that I didn’t have enough light in the day to give more than a passing glance to the enormous historical recreation. Begun in 1713, Louisburgh was France’s center of commerce and military might in the new world. When war was declared in 1744, Britain sent 4,000 soldiers from New England to besiege the fortress, which capitulated after forty-six days. Louisbourgh was returned to the French after the war, but later was smashed by British forces in 1760. It is now recreated to demonstrate life in a French settlement circa 1750.

The town of St. Peters straddles the ½ mile wide isthmus of land that separates Bras d’Or from the open Atlantic. A canal cut in 1854 joins the two, and here I found a place to camp recommended by Liz and Anthony; this morning seemed like ages ago. I found a sheltered spot in the trees next to the canal entrance and walked down to where the narrow slice connects the two bodies of water. Then I headed into town for a meal.

Since setting out days ago, I had been subsisting more or less on candy bars and bottled water. I didn’t feel hungry until evening and tonight I craved a steak and a beer. I went to what looked to be the better of the two places to eat in St. Peters and I swear I heard the jukebox skip when I walked in, the sound of a needle bouncing off a record. There were plenty of tables, but most patrons were in the pool room in the back, quite drunk all. I asked if I could get something to eat. “Kitchen closes at seven,” the waitress said to me. “What time is it now?” It was seven. I was able to get a decent burger and fries (with gravy) as well as the beer I craved. Canadians have long been jostled as being culinarily unimaginative but I always ate well in my many trips to cosmopolitan Toronto. I had hoped I would find some of the pub culture that is so prevalent in the British Isles here on Cape Breton but such establishments were few and far between. This dingy, smoke-infested place had all the atmosphere of a bowling alley and the ambience of a roadhouse. Some places I visited had their food options on display in the cooler or fridge, lobster sandwiches on Wonder bread and wrapped in plastic wrap. But this turned out to be a decent place, and I enjoyed a bottled of Keith’s while I read my book and watched Dixie Chicks videos on the TV screen. The woman who served me asked where I was from. “New York?” she repeated, accent on the first syllable. “Ever been?” I asked. “No.” Her boss walked over and asked me rather abruptly to cough up my money for the second beer I ordered. I left, crawling into my tent in the dark as a wind kicked up, splattering waves against the rocky shore.