I recently visited Nova Scotia which I wrote about in another blog post. One of the stops along the way of that trip was a place called Burnt Coat. Burnt Coat sits on the Bay of Fundy which is a body of water between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, a neighboring province of Canada.

Burnt Coat is famous for the largest tidal change in the world which occurs about three times a day. At the time I was there, the change in tides was over 50 feet between high tide and low tide. (Pictured above.)

There is no definitive conclusion on why it is called Burnt Coat, but when the tide is out and you can see the sea floor, it has a burnt orange color to it. Like a clay. That is not why is it called Burnt Coat but I have a bias for the color burnt orange so that is my theory on the name.

The cabin we stayed in was about 300 yards from the cliff on the Bay of Fundy, so we had a firsthand view of the changing tides. At low tide (first picture) we walked out on the “burnt orange” floor of the bay. At high tide, the place where we were standing was many feet under the water’s surface(second picture).

I did some research to understand exactly how tides are measured and how does the math in this location result in 50 feet plus difference. I found no straightforward way to explain it other than high tide is the highest level reached during a tidal cycle and vice versa for low tide. Let us just say that 50 plus feet tidal change, the largest tidal movement anywhere in the world, is substantial.

Back to the title of this post, “Things you can count on.” Tides go in and tides go out. The experts can predict tides down to the minute. They are as predictable as the arrival of a Swiss train or Santa Claus on December 24th.

The change in tides can be a metaphor for many things in life. You can think of an example for yourself. For me, it is writing. High tide is authoring a book or a blog post. Low tide is staring at a blank piece of paper endlessly. Which I have been doing for a couple of months now.

But like the change in tides, I knew it would eventually come back. But unlike the actual tidal change, it is not always so predictable. It happens when it happens.

For me, the tide reversal happened at an unexpected time and location. I recently spent about ten days in North Carolina not too far from the Blue Ridge Mountains. At certain vantage points during my time there, I could see views of these beautiful mountains.

On the Sunday morning of the recent Father’s Day, sitting in a small church in Danbury, NC, the tide started to move from the “low point of a tidal cycle” towards the high point. Not sure exactly how it happened, but I knew this was the moment. I took the church bulletin in my hand and the small pencil you see in church pews. You know the short pencils without an eraser that you get with a golf scorecard. I quickly chicken scratched the outline for this post which was running through my head in a matter of minutes. And there it was. I was on my way back to the high point of the tidal cycle. I wanted to write again.

Why am I writing about this? I am hoping that if anyone reading this is at the low point of the tidal cycle, just remember, the tides eventually reverse. Low tides become high tides. And that is something you can count on.

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