Just the ‘Fax

It has certainly been a while since my lusting rustling — and boy, a lot has happened.

I’ll try to give a rundown as I type this onboard an Air Canada flight back to Halifax for the sixth, or is it seventh, time this year.

My last adventure was Long Island, New York. Needless to say, it was a total bust. The pointy-tooth species I was there to film wasn’t there to be filmed. Not a sausage.

Sometimes that’s how it goes — you win some, you lose some. This series, I’ve lost twice. Two shoots, both with zero minutes of footage recorded. Both costing large amounts of money. The latter shoot was impacted by the Atlantic coast hurricane that passed through a few weeks before my arrival. A huge shift of deep water appears to have pushed all species away from the inshore waters.

I tend not to lose sleep over this sort of thing now, though I certainly have on past series. Nature is outside of your control. As a producer who researches his own stories, I feel like I have a very good, realistic idea of what’s achievable, when, and how to accomplish it. I try to plan for the worst and be prepared to shift direction in the field. But a total loss isn’t really expected — if it were, we likely wouldn’t do the story. So it’s rare to get totally skunked, let alone twice.

I’m not the only one, though. Other teams on this series have met similar fates. Are things changing quicker than we think? Are our coastlines and marine ecosystems having a bad year — or is it just a case of “shit happens”?

I left the strange mix of luxury Long Island lovies and MAGA flag-waving loonies and headed to more familiar, reasonable ground — Halifax.

This was meant to be my final mission to Halifax this year — a wrap-up-the-loose-ends kind of deal. Two aims: film eels, film eelgrass. Both of which had managed to evade my schedule on previous visits.

I had a few days here on my own. I stayed with friends, caught up on laundry and sleep, and even went for a fun dive.

My colleague, EVC, was due to join a few days later.

Finding eels is not easy. You’d assume eelgrass was abundant enough with them — after all, they named the grass after them. Not only are their numbers dwindling, but they don’t particularly like humans and tend to keep a low profile, using vast meadows of long grass as cover. Slippery little blighters.

However, I have an eel guy. Who doesn’t? A gentleman who looked like he could crush my head with his bare hands — but also gentle enough to braid my hair if I asked him nicely — had eels. He has worked with researchers, Indigenous groups, and film crews before. So I was set. I finally had eels, I had eelgrass, I had Ella flying in to film, and — shock horror — I had four hours to kill before I collected her from the airport.

I’d been dying to explore more of Halifax since my first visit here in May. But before that — lunch. I messaged Sonya, a former Haligonian (the correct way to say Halifaxian), and asked her for a lunch recommendation: “Bird’s Nest Cafe. Meatloaf sandwich. Say hi to Brady.”

Clear, concise, contains “meatloaf”. Promising. So I tottered off to the Bird’s Nest Cafe, stills camera in hand, looking like a tourist and ready to see the sights.

The sandwich was excellent. Readers here will know my love for bread-framed eatables. And while this was a different style to a 2-kilo New York deli sub, its simplicity and elegance made it shine.

Oh, and Brady? She owns the place. Nice lady. We fell in love. More on that in a latter Rustling.

The next ten days consisted of diving, snorkelling, filming eels, filming eelgrass, and thoroughly enjoying the helpfulness of the Haligonians who made it all possible. But, as readers will be accustomed to, it’s not all plain sailing…

Things I didn’t like:

Mosquitoes. For fuck’s sake, they are wildly unnecessary on this level. Antigonish — a nice town on the northern coast of Nova Scotia — has destroyed me on multiple occasions this year. Taking a piss outside is an experience that may change your life forever.

Misjudging estuary currents. EVC and I took to the estuary to film eelgrass. The shallow water and badly judged timing on my part made for a fun and breezy snorkel downstream, but a hand-over-fist crawl on the way back. Still, it was kinda fun.

Death Race 2000. Nova Scotia is the roadkill capital of the world. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been to the Solomon Islands. Dead raccoons line the roads every few kilometres. It’s heartbreaking. I love raccoons. I’ve had families of them visit my house daily for the last four years. They’re cute, smart, playful, and full of personality. They also form close family and friend units, so it destroys me to think of a little one not returning to its den as expected.

I don’t know why so, so many are killed here. I fear it is a lack of caring by many of the locals. One man’s pest is another’s animals mother, father, or offspring.

Dyson Airblades. You know those hand dryers powered by a small jet engine? They blast air at a flesh-peeling rate in a bid to dry your hands in half a second, preserving your at last paced lifestyle. They’re also excellent at blasting the water off your clean hands and straight onto your groin, making it look like you’ve splashed yourself with pee like a drunk homeless man. We need a design review, please.

Hotel bath mats. I’ve stayed in hotels all over the east coast this year — from nice 4-star places to hotels with ratings so low the stars implode into tiny black holes. Across them all is a distinct and troubling lack of diversity that must be addressed. Hotel bath mats and hand towels are 99% visually similar but result in a substantially different user experience.

They have almost identical appearances — differentiated only by a small border that is noticeable only upon close inspection. They’re the same size and found side-by-side on the same towel rack. One is soft-ish, like a hotel towel, and one has the consistency of old leather baked in the sunlight of an Arizona summer’s day.

Countless times this year, I’ve dried my face with a bath mat, peeling the top layer of skin off like a snake, then wincing as I realise countless gross hotel feet have trodden on this ground before me.

Can we please have a little more distinction? A different size, shape, style, or colour? Make it the shape of a foot. You may think I’m being dramatic — me? — but this is a real problem society faces today. We must band together to end bath-mat face-towel misuse.

Unexpected off-roading. I was told to find my way out, head up and over, and the dirt road loops back. Later on, I deviated slightly by going left before up and over. Big mistake. That small left took me off the dirt road and onto what turned out to be an ATV track — not one large enough for a Ford F-150.

I ventured down the track expecting it to loop back around. It didn’t. It got narrower. And narrower. “This is getting narrow,” I said to myself rather obviously, inching forward rather than backing out. I reached a corner with large boulders and trees on each side. Too tight to drive around. The wheels scraped the boulders. The trees scraped — scraped — along the sides. Good job I backed out. Oh no, wait, I didn’t. I kept going.

Something got ripped off a side bumper, the mirrors slammed inward, rocks and trees scraped the chassis, the top of the truck, the sides. My resting heart rate was in four digits by now. I could no longer go back — only forward. But that’s okay, it loops around.

It didn’t.

After about half an hour of inching forward and possibly destroying a few small trees, the track widened. Fantastic. No. It widened only to reveal a small bridge — suitable for people and a tiny ATV.

Shit.

I had no choice but to return the way I came, subjecting the rental truck to another barrage of scrapes and abuse. By this time I was worried about the vehicle insurance and production insurance having to cover damage. I was also slightly shitting myself that I might not get out at all.

There wasn’t much room to turn around. It was a 36-point turn — like the scene in Austin Powers. Five inches forward, five inches back, full lock each time.

Eventually I was facing the way I came and started back — all the same scrapes and knocks, now evenly on both sides of the vehicle.

After what was likely an hour plus, I escaped. Slightly pissed off at myself, slightly laughing. It would have made for excellent behind-the-scenes comedy.

The vehicle was pretty beat up. Before returning it, I washed it, buffed out as many marks as I could, glued back on the bits that had fallen off, and rubbed a liberal amount of dust and dry dirt over the rest. The return lot was underground at the airport -  with bad lighting. I used it to my advantage. I left the headlights on when I dropped it off, blinding the guy checking the vehicle. I was very friendly: “She’s still got all her wheels!” I chirped. He chuckled.

My devious distraction worked. He waved me off, and I ran into the darkness before anyone noticed.

I am stunned I got out of that pickle.

Oh — and there’s a barber shop in Antigonish called Shiny Scissors. Do not go there. Do not ever go there.