This morning, I had an appointment with Katie, my chiropractor. We talked about the trails around Middleton.
She had attended a presentation by Cliff Drysdale on a Middleton, Lily Lake / Slocum Brook Watershed proposal. I have known Cliff for many years, going back to his time with Parks Canada and the SW Nova Biosphere Reserve (see post Playing Catch Up).
I shared with Katie my concerns about the ‘hollowing out of the Main Street in Middleton’ (see posts Hollowing Out of Rural Nova Scotia, Heart of the Valley (Middleton) and Community Conversations). She expressed concern about the taxes, and how Bridgetown went bankrupt, and came under the direction of the County of Annapolis.
This set me wondering about the cost overhead of maintaining multiple administrative geographies within a single county. There are many different interests maintaining Highway #101, Highway 1 and the backstreets of Middleton, plus a network of trails.
These thoughts about the geography of Annapolis County brought me back to a book, I purchased at MareGold Bookstore in Annapolis Royal.
The title is ‘Outlandish’ by Nick Hunt. ‘Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes’. Time to pull it down off the shelf.
‘As strange and haunting as anything in the recent literature of place – a beautiful disquieting book’.
REFERENCE
Nick Hunt, 2021, Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes, John Murray Press/Hachette, UK
PS. time to read Cliff’s proposal to see how it fits into the trail network of Annapolis County.
