Dulse

Dulse

Do you like dulse? I stopped at Avery’s to pick up milk on the way home and treated myself to a bag. Dulse must be an acquired taste for I don’t know many others who like it. Strangely, it is very popular in southern New Brunswick, which is made up of mostly rural farming communities. When we moved to Yarmouth, a sea-faring town, I was shocked to discover that hardly anyone would even try dulse. I grew up on dulse, more likely to have that as a treat than chips or candy. I love the salty smell that wafts out of the bag, the faint scent of the sea still lingering.

It is true the scents, more than any other stimulation, seem able to instantly evoke memories. When I lived out west, my parents would send me dulse, fresh from Grand Manan and sometimes still innervated with a heavy dried crust of salt and tiny shells. I was homesick for the ocean and the smell of the dulse would bring it closer to me somehow. When I’m feeling pensive or reflective but can’t find time or opportunity to drive to the ocean, dulse is my substitute.

Today, with the December air strangely mild and still smelling of falling leaves, I longed to walk along a rocky beach. I longed to feel the consuming whirl of the wind enveloping me. So once again, dulse becomes an odd prop in my unfinished script, a dim sense of hunger, a mixture of earthy fragrances that pull my mind through a stream of comforting recollections. I realize that the ache I feel is not a physical hunger but rather an emptiness, for time is so short and every day slips away like the tide across the dulse.