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| Scott Smoot at Tete D'Indien, Quebec - virtually |
According to legend at Quebec's Tête D'Indien camp site, the fallen rock bears the profile of an indigenous warrior who died of grief when his beloved, a princess, was stolen by white men.
36 years ago, I heard a different story from the man who lived on the site. I stayed some weeks there at the summer home of Dan Rose in 1986. Dan taught biology at St. Andrews Episcopal School in Jackson MS during my first ten years of teaching there. He had purchased for cheap this property on the tip of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula. There was a little cottage with a barn. He remodeled the barn to be his retirement home and stored firewood in the cottage. (My job on many cold nights in July was to haul logs for Dan's fireplace.)
In Dan's version of the legend, he had simply remarked to a local that the rock looked "kinda like an Indian head." By the time I visited, "Tête D'Indien" had become a tourist attraction. Strangers would park in his driveway and even barge into his home to use the restroom, and he wasted a lot of energy shooing them away. When we discovered a two-story mural of "Indian Head" in the food court of the region's shopping mall, he gave up and negotiated with the provincial government to open a campground.
The photo is the view from Dan's backyard. I was reading there one day when Dan directed my attention up the driveway, where two moose, male and female, were chomping at the grass around his mailbox. Then he said, "Look back at the bay!" and I turned just in time to see a whale spout.
I recently uncovered a couple of forgotten poems in my journal from that trip -- in English and in French. See At a Beach in Quebec / Sur la Plage en Quebec and Island at Indian Head, Quebec / L'Ile Dan Rose.
March 5 - April 23, 2022
Riding on trails around Atlanta, I've cycled 749 miles in 2022, average speed 15.2 mph.
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