If pictures could tell stories...
then I would love to hear the history of this white farmhouse, located right off the Cabot Trail in the lower Margaree Valley, just south of Fordview. The views across the broad river valley are sumptuous, especially with a full colour array of fall foliage. The sculptured old apple tree laden with plump red fruit raises her outstretched arms skyward as if in proclamation, perhaps in anguish.
The river glides on by as it has always done in its patient path to the embracing sea. One would never guess from the far vantage point over the other side of the valley toward the house that it now stands abandoned, in disrepair, moulding, sagging, fraying, creaking. The mountainsides it is sheltered by stand sturdy, strong, ablaze with autumnal vigour.
What merriment rang out in the dining room in Thanksgivings and Christmases past? What joy was beheld by the pastoral prospects? What spirited ghosts inhabit the wood-panneled bedrooms? What foods did they grow and what animals roamed the barnyard?
The bumpy backroads of Margaree (and the length and breadth of Cape Breton Island beyond) lead past many such homesteads entangled in vegetation and throttled by trees, soon to be swallowed up entirely, reverted to wild land, almost without trace of the stories they could tell.
