Kamouraska by Night

The clock strikes one. It is a new day, the first hour of the night. Inland, the air is salty. The fresh and salty humidity clings to your skin. So early in the morning, the tide is low. The riverbed is bare and left with no one to witness it. It is a dark night: no moon, no stars, no wind. The scent of wrack radiates from the watery clay of the riverbank, where furrows of orphaned seaweed were abandoned by the water.

It is a feeling of being by the ocean without really being there. Even the soundless night’s echo is a regular here. It is an echo reminiscent of the sound of rolling and rumbling waves. It is a sound illusion brought by the smell of the sea. Because if we smell her, we can feel her, the sea…

There is a thick haze over the fields, nature is sleeping. Were it not for the moth flying around, I would be the sole witness to the surreal experience offered by the invisible fragrance of the river.

© Kamouraska by Night, text & photo by Marianne Drapeau