Day 7 ,North Grace Lake 4:14pm
We were on the water this morning @9:30, after a slow morning, a breakfast of oatmeal cooked over the fire at the water’s edge to take off the chill. Temperatures dipped into the 30’s overnight. Though by the time we crawled out of the tent they were probably nearing near 40, the sun on the rocks at the water’s edge felt luxurious after the coolness of the campsite back under the trees.
The only portage of the day was a difficult one, not so much in muck or rocky technical footing, but in elevation gain– some 120 feet or so over the first 1000 meters, including a steep section of a couple hundred meters near the beginning. Later, it passed by a lovely beaver meadow, and skirted an unnamed pond. For some time we were following a pleasant forest stream, crossing over it once, as it tumbled its way down into Lake Louisa. At the North Grace end, we were basically stream stomping for the last dozen meters or so, as the trail descended to the lake’s edge. A grand old Cedar graced the landing – I don’t think I’ve seen on with such girth before.
We did stop to rest several times along the mile long trail as we leapfrogged our gear across it. Both of us felt the trail to be longer than the posted 1450 meters, though by my watch we were able to cross in 35 minutes, the entire trip with breaks included taking us about 2 hours to complete.
Landing at the first campsite on the north shore, we had our lunch of rehydrated hummus and cheese, naan bread, dried beets and peaches, a very satisfying trail meal. After, we paddled over to check out a second potential site, a bit farther up shore, but chose to return to the lunch stop, which we found more to our liking, to make camp, While the other site had some nice features- like the hidden pond around behind it- there wasn’t a lot of access to the water for viewing its habitat from camp. Quite a few large fallen trees and a significantly overgrown trail to and surrounding the box secured our decision.
This site has a lovely little sandy cove beneath the graceful boughs of a leaning cedar tree for landing the canoe, and there is granite surrounding the site on 3 sides for panoramic views. I am currently seated on the point of granite facing southwest, where the sun is warm but the breeze is ‘fresh’! Again, I am caught in the cycle of donning then stripping off layers. The breeze is to get fresher yet, as the satellite device indicates we’ll have winds sustained at 20mph and gusting into the 40’s. Hopefully, there will be enough protection back in camp, where we have set up the tent, and where the fire circle is tucked. The breeze really does help with the blackflies though. They can’t quite hold up to it out here, and they were getting a bit pesky back under the trees. So, it’s a delicate balance.
Moose seem to have an affinity for this lake– both sites are covered with piles and piles of mooseberries, and the cedars that line the shore here have all had recent haircuts!
Now I will lay my head back, close my eyes, feel the sun on my face, the breeze on my skin. We are alone with the earth and her beings here. The wind rushing in the trees the only sound. Gusts pick up currents of water and push them like snow before a plow, across the glistening lake- the water making the invisible visible…
Evening falls
Day 8, North Grace- 11:30 am
I sit listening to the wind.
This is what is called a ‘fresh breeze’ on the satellite— somewhat stronger than a moderate breeze, but less than a strong wind. At 20mph still, it is supposed to be gusting today up to 45mph. I have found a chair shaped bowl in the granite on the windy side of the granite outcrop, where I can sit facing the wind, the sun overhead behind me. I am warm enough, thanks to layers and the hood of my sleeping bag, which has proven its value as a windbreak for my ears, which are often bothered by the wind now. I cannot lift my hand from the page in the journal at all, though, or the pages tear loose from its dollar store spiral binding. Occasional white caps lift, even across the width of the small lake, crashing waves into the rocks below me.
I am content in this wildness.
One canoe passed by earlier this morning, in winds lighter than these, its mother and son paddlers working mighty hard to make headway in the stiff (fresh?) breeze even then. I am glad to be grounded today.
I am changing, as the weather is changing, as the season is changing. I can see it from this perspective, here and now, from the perspective of my humanity– my changing body, desires, energy, needs (ego and other), preferences, viewpoints— but also, I believe, from a wider (or deeper) one, in this shifting from role to soul in a more conscious descent–as if I am grounding myself there too, sitting upon something more solid as I watch the winds of change blow.
I may have 30 years of life remaining– 1/3 of my life yet to come— which when I think of it that way feels like I have an entire life yet to life. When I consider where/how/who I was at age 30, how much I have grown, changed, experienced in my ‘lifetime’ since then– how much I did the same in the first 30 years! Might I likewise be sitting one day, upon this exposed bedrock of self, pondering the previous 30 years of my life and what they have brought and wrought.
It is good to be still, to have no where to go, no goal to achieve, no need to leave a mark…
Dear Great grandchild of mine,
I write to you today from this bedrock upon which I am grounded and still. Grounded, as in I cannot paddle my canoe alone in this strong wind, but also grounded as in quieted, as in deeply rooted, firmly upon the bedrock of my soul, gazing upon the beauty that surrounds me, content to be still, at peace, in wonder. This journey of life is in many ways unknown to us as we set out upon the way of being human here. Much of what we are, and what we are up to, is and remains hidden. We cross a difficult trail, and find ourselves paddling into a new to us body. Sometimes the passage is easy for us, sometimes it wearies. Sometimes the climb is steep– and there are discomforts of one sort or the other, and we question it all. ‘Why are we doing this thing called life?” Other times we are just so busy, intent on and distracted by the work of getting from here to there, that we forget to pay attention, to love, to take in the beauty in which we are held. The middle of life is often like that for us– full of the doings of career and achievement, family and civil responsibilities and burdens. Yet, there are occasional glimpses – or full wake up calls- when we are brought back to Reality (that is- the opposite of the ‘reality’ we tend to think of as ordinary life, living on the surface, surviving it all). The Reality of which I speak is this deeper one, which we often miss noting. The great gift of age is the time to be still, to pay attention, to notice with gratitude and wonder the beauty of the journey, the beauty of life itself and of its unfolding. I am happy to watch now, to simply be a quiet observer of it all. To sit watching the wind, not needing to enter the chaos it can create. I can appreciate the wild beauty, the necessary change the winds bring, the ‘freshness’, the rain, the music….
Now, Don is ready for lunch..
Late afternoon.
I poked around behind camp for a bit after lunch. My stated purpose was to go in search of standing dead maple, which grow upland from shore, behind the border growth of cedar and fir, spruce and pine, or photographs, but really I just wanted to roam. I did indeed find a small standing dead maple– its young sisters’ buds having already opened into tiny leaves, bright green and fresh. She cracked loudly when I pushed her over.
After this morning’s drawn-out fire-babying, I will be glad for some hard maple for baking later today, and Don will be glad for the bannock for tomorrow’s breakfast as well.
But, before I trekked inland, I first followed the shoreline, along a path evidently favored as well by moose, based upon the quantity of droppings along the way! I soon came to a ravine, where perhaps a small stream empties into the lake, and which I didn’t feel like descending, so I stopped. There stood a great old pine. As I look over my shoulder now, from where I am seated back in the granite bowl, I can see her imperfect top-a bit crooked with a Y at the top and most of the branches off to one side- rising above the surrounding trees. Clearly she has been buffeted by west winds for many years.
But, that was not what drew me to here. It was her roots. They were as thick as a 40 or 50 year old trunk might be, as thick as both of my admittedly beefy thighs put together. They reached out across the earth, also likely atop a shield of granite, though there was enough duff here to also support a lush community of flora, thick with young and old conifers such that a path through them was not easily discernible. That thick root ran along the surface for at least 30 feet before finding a place to dip down into the earth to take hold. Alive was a small universe of beings, nurtured by her — lichen and mosses. I sat for a time with her there, at her feet, wondering at her rooted resilience, the strength of her groundedness to the soil, to the soul of the earth, if you will, her roots grown mighty through years of winds such as these today, through seasons of dryness and seeking water, through heat and cold, through the heaviness of snow and ice on her branches, holding so much that she broke a few limbs here and there in the process.
This morning I read that the Soul perhaps requires the dramas of Ego for the teachings they bring, that we must BE in the world to learn from it, in order to ‘collect the data we need to learn’, to deepen…
to grow rooted
and yet, of course, like the tree is not the wind, nor the soil, nor the dryness, nor the heavy snow, she deepens and grows through these experiences. And she grows old, a wise seer over all, nurturer of an entire small universe just by the nature of her being.
And though the winds continue to buffet her topside, there at the base, she was quiet and still. Calm. It was so peaceful in the shelter of her great trunk. My ear to her, I could hear her groans of old age, the creaking of her bones as she absorbed all that assailed from above, but it mattered not to her. She and the earth here are attuned with the wind and the sky. At One.
Oh, one day she will succumb. Yet, even in her falling she will provide sustenance and shelter for life, and she will inspire wonder. One wonders what she will experience then, how she will be transformed — into nurture, into soil, into something new– as she lays down her life. Will she be aware of what she once experienced up there in the canopy? Will she be aware of what she is becoming now? All of those years of gathering sunlight– of making it into food, of transforming that food into her body– will be released–the energy of a life in the sun, rooted in the earth–as carbon for new life is released for others breathe and to make for themselves, bodies. And she will be a part of them all.
an algonquin affair 