February, along with March, is the worst month when the snowstorms whip over Newfoundland and Labrador. Today is such a day, we expect 75 centimeters of snow. I can’t see the other end of the bay in the white whirlwind.
So far, however, the winter has been bearable despite the cold. That’s why I’m only showing you fair-weather pictures, on the really bitterly cold days I wasn’t outside at all.
I am lucky that right behind our house in our tiny fishing community there is a hiking trail leading up a hill from which we have a fantastic view. Up there, I can also let the neighbors’ dog, which I take for walks, run free. Maggie hunts snow hares and mice and startles the hawk, which is also hunting.
The bays were not frozen over for a long time, and I asked my fisherman if there had been years without ice on the ocean near the settlements (yes, there were, but rarely). Now the most daring among us are already driving their snowmobiles over the ice cover on the water. In some places, however, ice floes have piled up and besiege the shore like hungry crocodiles.
Instinctively, people turn to things that offer warmth, coziness and distraction. I bake Swiss apple pie with puff pastry, play cards with the neighbors, meet other women for a coffee chat, keep the wood fire burning in the oven, plan a vacation in warmer regions and read exciting books (biographies, adventure stories and crime novels). By the way, if you subscribe to “Bernadette’s Letter” on the homepage of this website, you will learn even more about my everyday life in northern Newfoundland.
During an excursion in the snow, we made an interesting, albeit sad find: a dead whale was pushed to the shore. Some locals claim it is a sperm whale. I can’t say for sure, because it would have been too dangerous to walk any closer to the poor animal on the ice.
In these weeks, I’be been busy with the last steps before the publication of my new German Calista Gates crime novel Finsterinsel. The paperback will be released on March 1, the e-book, which can be pre-ordered, on March 20. This time, dramatic events take place on two remote islands in the Labrador Sea. Calista juggles three cases at once (she’s good at juggling, isn’t she?), one of them a cold case and one of them reaches across the border into the US state of Maine. This books will be translated this year for you like the others.
And here is my Canada cap, because we are currently very patriotic in Canada as we have to defend our country. Sending love to my American readers who didn’t want to happen what is happening now.
