The following is a series of short films of me picking up rocks and putting them down again, shot in Baxter's Harbour in Nova Scotia on a sunny day in late April.
The shale crackles under my palms as I lumber across the rocky shore. I'm up high and far from the tide, which is out for the day but will rise 32 feet by sunset, swallowing these very rocks.
Below, the "beach" –the looser shore– is made of large pebbles. I haven't gone all the way down to the looser shoreline, or to the water's edge at low tide, not any of the times I've been here. Today, I think about how I could. The day is warm, and dry, and gentle, as there is no wind. But I'm exploring the western trail of quartz for the first time and am not bored enough with my discoveries to climb down and scramble on my knees across pebbles to touch frigid water that I can see, hear and smell just fine from up here.
All along, there are cradles, places where the quartz splits, carves out a hollow and then rejoins itself as if to build a nest to hatch new rocks. I pick out the interesting ones, investigate them in the water, the light, put them back where I found them and move on to the next nest.
Then I nap on the rocks near our home deck, like a selfie. When a man walks by on the looser shore below, I slip back into my wheelchair and roll out of sight.