The Waves are Calling

Mimi on the Beach - Jane Siberry

I never thought I would be able to stand it. It has been 6 days without the sound of music ringing in my ears almost 24/7. But something else has replaced the soothing tunes of the bands I love; the constant sound of the waves methodically slapping against the rocky shore and the occasional low-pitched rumble of the hummingbirds coming to the cottage window to feed. It is all very soothing and rhythmic cadence has the ability to lull one into a place of nirvana that puts me in mind of a particularly successful yoga or meditation session. The inner peace that comes with doing something that causes your heart to spill over with overwhelming sense of joy and love: like holding your brand new baby for the very first time. The wonder in their eyes is the wonder that I feel when I watch that movement of the open water. It takes me away to a place where nothing else matters. Of course the spectacular sunsets can easily take the place of the mundane fair on the television, the changing cloud patterns and pictures they make are like a never-ending movie. Even the spinning propeller on the airplane whirl-i-gig can capture my attention for hours on end and I watch it spin while my imagination runs rampant with the adventures that the plane embarks on, the people who have journeyed. I know it isn’t true for only the inhabitants of Lilliput…for they would have to be very tiny to fit into the hull of this particular 12” wooden aircraft. Where are the little people going? Where have they come from? The hummingbirds whizzing past could be pterodactyls in a size comparison. Or fighter jets dive bombing the intruder. Even the yellow caterpillars (no bigger than a grain of rice) that float through the air on the breeze are imagined as paratroopers on a mission. It's a wonderful life when there is nothing but the beauty of nature to clutter your thoughts.

Sunset with a plane ready to land :)

And this is how I have been spending my time for the past week. Well that and soaking up the sun during the day, reading, visiting, building inukshuks. You see a rocky beach - I see art!

a small sampling of the visitors that arrived

It is a beautiful place and the owner who extended the invitation to have me come out and share in the blissfulness calls it heaven on earth. I now for myself see why she does. I’ve never been a cottager but I can see myself fitting in this scenario quite well. Truth be told, I think I knew before I arrived that my heart belonged on the water and that my soul is at peace when it is regulated by the rhythmic sound of the lapping waves. Unconsciously it has always been the go-to place; as a youth in turmoil I always made my way to the look-off in my hometown of Thunder Bay and would sit for hours just thinking or sometimes letting my mind drift like the buoys alerting the watercraft of danger. I was too far away to hear the waters of Lake Superior crashing onto the shore, but I had an incomparable view of the Sleeping Giant and the freighters that navigate the waters of the Great Lakes. The ships came empty and filled up with the grains from the prairies that came to our city via trains. It was a bustling place back then in its heyday. At the time I wasn’t concerned about the  economics, but rather the majesty of those hulking ships. So big and massive yet they could float like a feather on the water. I wanted to be the Sleeping Giant. Laying out there at the mouth of the harbour - he is majestic and so at peace. He was as alone as I felt but he carried a heavy burden. The story of Nanabijou as the Ojibway called him was a legend about the riches of the silver mines over which he lays.  He was condemned to a life of stone to forever be the protector of the bounty in the mines under the waters of Lake Gitche Gumee. To this day you can see partly submerged silver mine shafts but efforts to pump out the water have repeatedly failed. The Great Spirit of the Deep Sea Water ensures that it remains flooded.  It was a great place to grow up but it became infused with too much tragedy for me to stay. I think I have been searching for my Nirvana ever since. 

Sunset with one of the 30 inukshuks I built

Sometimes you can make your piece of heaven wherever you are dependent on the people you are with. I’ve loved every place I have lived with my children, but I was so busy marveling at their beauty as they grew that I never realized how much I was missing the tranquility of the waters. Only in the past few years of dealing with my own personal struggles have I felt a compelling need to escape and return to the water. Maybe I was a mermaid in a previous life…lol! I wonder if Sagittarius is a water sign? Is it just me that is drawn to the waters like a magnet? I doubt that one but I do know it is true for me. Interestingly, while I enjoy boats - I am not drawn to being on the water so much as being near it. That is life experiences I suspect. While I enjoyed swimming, I didn't revel in competitive swimming especially when the coach would throw styrofoam floaties to get your attention. These days you will still find me in the water, but with or on a floatie (so it can't be thrown) and seeking out the perfect wave or rollers to take me away. Like a baby in a cradle I am cocooned in the warmth of the water, being rocked by Mother Nature herself. I've been in a number of boats in my younger years where I wasn't comfortable with the competency level of the "captain". Sailboats may be more my speed - I would like to know what it is like to be gliding over the calm waters with the fluttering of the sail guiding your course. Maybe someday I will. For now the bigger dream is a ocean going vessel to take me across the Atlantic, or on a Mediterranean or Norwegian cruise. I should check those lottery tickets...I could be climbing aboard now :) 

Sunset with a piece of driftwood 

It was with great trepidation that I left this land of peace and love. It is with the knowledge that someday soon I will return. Perhaps the next time will be a more permanent journey. Closer to the people and land and sea that I love. And the host will never know just how much I appreciated their kindness, for they allowed me to clear my mind and cleanse my soul to find a goal that with some conviction and sacrifice I can someday achieve. And not look back.  

From the water we are born.  

The water sustains us. Food we can live without. 

Water enables all life forms.  

Our strongest emotions are shown by the appearance of water.  

All I really know is it is on the shores that I belong and will one day return to. 

It is not to dust that I wish to return - but to the water.

2-4 Not Just a Number But a Cause for Celebration

The Black Fly Song - Wade Hemsworth

You can call it the Victoria Day Holiday or you can be a true Canadian with red and white blood cells running through your veins and call it "May 2-4"! Most people don't even know who Victoria is and that she was Queen Victoria, the great-great-great-great grandmother of Princes William and Harry. It doesn't really matter to me if we celebrate her birthday just that we have another month in the year with a statutory holiday. The long weekend in May has long been considered the official start of the summer season and the time when people begin to dig into their gardens, open up their pools/cottages and dust off the barbeques. A real party weekend: hence the reference to the quintessential party supply - the 2-4 of beer. A case of 24 cans or bottles of beer for you teetotalers. But despite the party in the backyard and days of sunshine, it can still be a little chilly for a camping trip. This year is different though, we had a unusually mild winter followed with unseasonably warm spring. The weather gurus were predicting weekend temperatures into the mid-20's+ Celsius. That's 80 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale and great camping weather.

The site was reserved in the northern reaches of the vast Algonquin Park in Northern Ontario. The cars were packed with all the essentials - accomodations, clothes, food and beer...lots of beer. So with a tank full of gas, we headed north. My daughter, her boyfriend, me and a couple hundred thousand other cottagers trying to get away from the concrete jungle. We pass the traditional cut-offs for cottage country and we are still heading north. The housing developments and farm country give way to the granite formations of the Canadian Shield. I love the rugged beauty of the Shield - it's a lot like my hometown of Thunder Bay. As I drove, I marveled at the ribbon of pavement that meandered its way like as drunken sailor. I imagined this road which was in the process of being widened and divided as a country road used primarily by horse-driven modes of transportation weaving around obstacles like trees and boulders. The path just grew over time, not really altering its original course. But then you would come across a stunning rock face flanking either side of the road and it was obvious that this little mound was blown apart with dynamite to make the way clear for the horseless carriages. Why didn't they just go over them and make a small rise in the road elevation? I mean it's not like other parts of the highway are level and flat. Before the commencement of the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, I had the opportunity to drive a lot of the Trans-Canada Highway and was thrilled to see all the Inukshuks that were built on the rock shelves above the road side. I was taken aback at how the Canadian pride swelled at the beauty and the  tenacity of the people who constructed them and as I told my daughter about it, we could still see a few remaining beacons that had not succumbed to the ravages of time and weather and fallen over.  

Inukshuk perched on the rock face at the side of the road.

All along the highways in Northern Ontario you can spot the pictorial signs portraying a moose with its head down charging across the road. Personally I would love to see a moose in is natural elements but not poised at the side of the road ready to intervene as I pass by. But the intelligentsia in the government department responsible for road signage has come up with a good one to infuse a little humour into the danger. Two feet square on the diagonal on the reflective yellow background is the familiar black silhouetted charging moose. But the added feature of a light above is explained below - " moose crossing when light flashing". Just like a pedestrian crossing downtown. But wait...who taught the moose to push the button to activate the flashing light? Reminds me of the story of the woman who wrote her local politician asking him to move the deer crossing sign in front of her house because it wasn't safe for the deer to cross there as too many were getting hit and killed. Take a minute and think about it if you need to - it's hilarious!


Soon enough, we get the first glimpse of our home away from home for the next 4 days. The trees, the nature, the lake...untouched beauty. No cell phones, no computers, no lights or electricity. You aren't going anywhere, time is irrelevant. Step one, crack open your first can of beer and toast the first camping trip of the season. Nothing like a Keith's chilled over ice! It really wasn't until we started to set up the tent that nature began to show it's more unpleasant side in the form of nasty little varmints with voracious appetites and persistence that would drive the most patient and tolerant person mad. Laugh if you want, but initially this true Canuck did not even know what these pest were - all I knew was that Deep Woods Off was ineffective in repelling them. The boyfriend assumed they were attracted to our feminine scent and blamed that shower filled with flowery aromas that we had to make time for before leaving or the very colour of our clothing. He didn't seem to be bothered by the gnats - that's just unfair. Rest assured that for the rest of the camping trip, cameras were banned because the fashion became something no one would want to be reminded of. The hoodie covered the head and the upper torso except for the face, track pants protected the legs and were tucked into the socks. Breaking the cardinal rule of summer fashion - on the feet were sandals. Socks and sandals together normally make me cringe...but this was survival! I was being eaten alive! By days end, relief only came in the form of inebriation. The following day the rest of our party arrived and the only thing we learned was that we were indeed dealing with black flies, commercial repellents did not repel them but stopped them from biting (not!), smoke from a camp fire did not bother them,  food seemed to encourage them to visit. On the positive side, black flies may have genetic origins in Mexico where an afternoon siesta is common to escape the heat of the day. Peel the layer and enjoy the sun and heat...bug-free! If I had a chainsaw I might have hewn 75% of the trees on our sight and sit in the shadeless midst of our site just for the relief. And for those few hours we relished in the nature around us. The forests as far as the eye could see, the clear sky with birds not airplanes soaring above, the bright sunshine, the crystal clear expanse of water that lay before us and the ducks. Canadian geese, 3 families all with little fluff balls in tow living at the waters edge and we watched as they soiled the grass with mounds of goose poo and then took the youngsters into the water for some swimming lessons. They are surprisingly quiet when they are left to their own devices. 


But too soon, the sun begins its decent on the horizon and the irritants return with a vengeance. You don't have a lot of options 1) pack up and leave 2) hide in the tent until the moon is out 3) make the best of it. I won't deny that I considered option one as I shed tears because I swatted a bug near my eye with a hand coated in toxic bug repellent and for a while I even hid in the tent. But eventually, I emerged and while sitting at the picnic table swatting at the cloud of varmints it occurred to me that our neighbouring campers that I thought were so friendly were probably not waving but swatting at their own uninvited guests. In an instance of what can only be considered shear genius a new pastime was born - officially known as the Catch and Release Game. Okay maybe not genius but it was fun and gratifying at the same time. With both hands flailing, grab at the air and close fist around the mighty but tiny black fly. Don't open your hand to look for a successful snatch but in a quick fluid motion throw whatever you hold forcefully onto a plate with some viscous sauce left from the last meal consumed. If you are good at it and the bugs are plentiful, your plate will soon be well coated with tiny legs kicking up at the air in a futile attempt to escape while the sauce acts like a glue on their wings. Smile broadly because they will no longer have the option of biting you! Works better than the most expensive can of commercial repellent. Initially, the hope was that the sight of all their relatives in the throes of death would be a deterrent on its' own - that didn't happen but the burial site was quite impressive :)

This was only the beginning! 

I don't know if it is an initiative started only in the remote provincial campgrounds but this second trip to the Algonquin Park had facilities that were remarkable on a few levels. First of all the facilities were located on the second level of the structure and let me tell you that hill can be a challenge with some decent inebriation or in the darkness of the night. But compared to the olfactory offense of the previously common outhouse, this is a breath of fresh air (no pun intended). I really hope that this venture proves to be successful because it is much less offensive, it is a compostable toilet. A list of do's and don't on proper usage proclaims that you can help the facility do it's job while you do yours. Common sense rules the same as your household porcelain seat. Besides being clean and seemingly more sanitary than your average outhouse, there is an added bonus of a rush of cool air when you sit. A little freaky at first, but really it is a solar powered fan that is aiding in the decomposition of the waste. I could have lived without the knowledge of how the high tech collector uses a variety of microbes down there - it was a little too close for comfort if you know what I mean. Given the alternative, I'll take this. 


Before we knew it, the beer was gone and it was time to pack up and head out. We were halfway home, and screeched to a stop at the first Tim Horton's we saw when the last of the black flies were no longer buzzing about our heads in the car. Like a trail of bread crumbs we tossed dead bodies out of the window as we went - not one was permitted to find a new home in my neck of the woods. Once home the layers were peeled off and thrown directly into the washing machine. Maybe it was my imagination but I thought I detected a film of tiny black bodies coating the surface of the water. The blood and guts that were smeared and smushed into the clothing I didn't think would ever be washed out. And I swear the drain in the shower was nearly clogged with the carcasses I washed out of my hair! 

Rock faces carved out to make way for the road.

We know now for next time that if we go camping during black fly season next year that instead of heading north we will try west or east or maybe the backyard where they deliver 2-4's when you run out!