McGarvey Lake @12:30pm , perched upon a tiny jutting point of granite, to take advantage of the breeze. (the blackflies back in camp, on this east facing site, are a bit pesky right now.)
We pulled away from the last of day’s two short portages and onto this wild little lake @9:30, having left our camp on North Grace at 6:30 this morning. Knowing that rain was in the forecast for today, and hoping to make camp before the worst of it hit, we’d packed all that we could before bed, and set my watch alarm for 5:30. Breakfast was bannock, which I had baked over the glowing coals that remained from the maple we burned last evening. (thank you little maple).
The winds were quite strong, and gusty, on that North Grace campsite last evening, but the fire circle, high on both sides and tucked neatly against a great boulder, was obligingly aligned with the direction of the wind and blowing the smoke away from our faces. With our Billy bags creating a windbreak behind the log bench, we were able to play a game of cards by the fire’s light and warmth.
The sky is darkening here now. The sun, which was so lovely on the portage trails in the chill of this morning, is no longer warming us at all. But there are some wonderfully wild views from this vantage point, into the eastern bays of this lake, where we hope to watch some moose come out to browse later. This island campsite is littered with moose droppings, and we are thinking that perhaps a mother swam here to the shelter of this island to give birth this spring.
Speaking of scat, we spotted one of the largest piles of wolf scat we have ever seen on the portage trail between Little Lemon Lake and here. That fellow must have had a great hairy meal!
Little Lemon lake appeared to be draining, the waterline down about 3 to 4 feet, the lake’s floor exposed for many yards where we landed the canoe at the portage. We wondered if the beaver dam, which we had walked around along the short (160m) portage at the far end of the lake may have breached. We’d thought the dam was incredibly high, but now we realize it may have only appeared to be so tall because, with the low water, much of it was exposed that would ordinarily be underwater. It certainly appeared as if the land around the circumference of that lake was underwater recently, but what remained of the lake was not much more than a large pond.
The trout lily are blooming still , which surprises me. And the bluebead lily are sending up their flower stalks, preparing to take their turn in the ephemeral show. A few red trillium were sprinkled into the mix today, the viburnum are becoming more bold in their blossoming, and the fiddleheads are unfurling their bows.
The 850m from Lemon to McGarvey was fairly easy, with just a few rises along the way (20meter net gain to the height of the trail) before it descended to the rocky landing here on McGarvey). Along that trail, I fell once, hobbled by a small fallen limb that I stepped over with my front foot but failed to lift the toes of my following leg high enough. I came down pretty hard on my knee. I expect I’ll have a good bruise tomorrow, but I am no worse for the wear right now.
Later
The forecasted rains have arrived, driven by the wind, and so has driven us up beneath the tarp. It’s quite nippy, though not as cold as it is supposed to be in the morning, when temps are supposed to be 28 degrees! It will be hard to crawl out of the tent.
I have heated some water for a cup of hot boullion now. It warms my nose and my belly. We notice the winds have shifted and are blowing from the north (likely the reason the temperatures overnight will drop so much). They’ve already begun their plummet, it seems!
Day 10, Bonnechere Lake
It was VERY cold last evening, bitterly so. After one brief shower passed, we went searching for firewood. The island was full of downed trees, but no hardwood other than birch, which was mostly rotted. We settled for limbs from the large white pine that had fallen alongside the trail to the box. The winds were blowing so hard and cold that the fire did little to warm us anyway.
I was cranky — sniping about where to hang the trash, which wood was worth cutting to burn (NOT the downed green balsam that smelled fresh!) We’d been up, of course, since 5, so my fatigue was probably playing into it, but my irritability was something I noticed in my weary discomfort.
We tried to catch at least a glimpse of the sunset before surrendering the day, but even though the sun broke through the cloud cover before setting, it was too windy to sit out on those rocks where we could see it (though we gave it a good go, Don humoring me, for a good half hour). Finally we decided to call it an early evening, and crawled into the tent before dark.
I’d wanted to be near the edge of the water, at the top of a short drop to the water, so that I could see the sun rising over that wild eastern bay in the morning when I woke. It’s one of my favorite things to do, to open the door of the tent enough to give me a window to peer through and watch the sunrise from the warmth of the tent on a chill morning. But I didn’t wake this morning until after 6:30 and the sun was already fairly high above the horizon by then. Honestly, I couldn’t have opened the tent even a crack this morning anyway, the winds were so very cold. According to the weather on the Garmin this morning, the temperatures were 26 when I woke, with the windchill at 16. I was warm in the tent as long as I kept my body covered by the down quilt. (The new thermarest has performed well. Thank goodness we paddled out for it that day. I have felt no cold from the ground beneath me. ) My insistence on pitching the tent so close to the edge meant that the winds from the lake found their way easily between the door and the rooty ground, so there was a constant source of fresh, cold air circulating through the tent all night long!!
So, I lay in the sleeping bag, thinking. I thought to write in my journal, but that would’ve meant having my shoulders exposed to the cold air. And so, I wondered instead. And then I wondered what is like to be so still, that even the words you want to write, the words you think, are unthought. All of those words and thoughts you have, which you convince yourself are ‘paying attention’, or naming, or noticing are really just thoughts after all. How often it is that I want to believe that noticing and naming are one and the same as I journal, when instead perhaps I am outside of the experience watching rather than immersed in it simply being? And I thought (yes, more thinking) about the person unable to write, or to speak– the paraplegic, the person ‘afflicted’ by Alzheimer’s, the ALS patient– the infant. Are they truly ‘trapped in their minds’, unable to utter and outer, or is there simply a quality of stillness, of attentiveness free of the confines of words, beyond thought, a quiet contemplation which they may instead be privy to. So… welcome to my brain in the tent this morning…
In order to make an early start on the day, our plan was for a cold breakfast with hot coffee from the thermos. However, with the cold keeping us tucked into the tent longer than usual, we weren’t out of camp until 9:30 . Paddling into the wind through the North finger of McGarvey lake, we were greeted by a camper leaving his site in a solo canoe. We shared a moment with him, reflecting on how cold it was– his water had frozen into slush in his playpus overnight; our handwashing jug had slivers of ice in it.
The 645m portage that left from the north bay involved maneuvering over a few downed trees, one of which required a detour, then passing through a significant mucky section , which sucked the boot from my foot before bringing me down. ( on the next pass across, I also detoured that muck, not so easy finding passage through the bush with the canoe, but still the better option). The trail passed a small lake below us (on the map here, North Lemon lake) before coming out to Lost shoe Lake (an ironic name, given that my shoe had almost been lost to the muck, and given what we would find (or rather not find) on this Lake–)
The landing at Lost Lake was another picturesque one, with a large angled granite protrusion in the water there. Again, we were putting into the water just upstream from a beaver dam, but unlike the beaver dam we’d passed by yesterday, this one was filled to the brim. In fact the whole lake was overflowing, its waters high up the banks, the first few feet of the trees along its shoreline submerged, the tips of shrubs budding just above the surface at the water’s edges, almost as if all of that water that had drained from Lemon lake was over here.
Soon we spotted, along its north shore, a relatively new portage sign on one of the trees that was partially submerged. The sign was labeled ‘North Lemon Creek to Bonnechere L. 1250m’, and though we expected it to read “Lost Shoe to Bonnechere’ we could see on our map that Lost Shoe Lake is indeed simply a widening of North Lemon Creek. Other than the trail we took to get to Lost Shoe from McGarvey Lake, there is only one other portage that exits that lake, the one that leads to Bonnechere. The problem was, there was no trail at the sign.
I got out of the canoe and clamored up the bank, bushwhacking a bit along the shoreline from there and found what looked like a possible trail further upshore, so back into the boat to the next potential landing we went. At this spot, we thought it looked like the trail was headed up over the rise of land , and so, more confident, we unloaded our gear and hauled the canoe up the hill there, about 30 meters or so before we decided that it could not possibly be the trail after all. (At this point, we did consult the GPS and could see that the direction that trail was headed was not the correct one). So, back to the water’s edge we went again, where we followed a faint path along the bank (which was at least headed in the right direction) for a time with a load of gear. Unfortunately, that trail also petered out.
Don set his pack down then, while I bushwhacked far enough to see another possible canoe landing in the marshy end of the lake. So, back to the canoe, which we slid down the hill we had hauled it up, we went, where we reloaded the gear and paddled through an opening in trees , which lined what we now realized was likely the waterlogged shore-hugging path, and out onto the lake proper. Pulling ashore farther along, I left Don with the canoe and got out to scout what looked like it might be an actual trail along the edge of the water there. At first I was quite dubious, as the trail started out by passing through a narrow slot of large ragged boulders, and I had a hard time imagining getting the canoe through such a section. Just when I was beginning to think we’d have to retrace our steps back to McGarvey Lake and take another route around, through Big Porcupine Lake, to Bonnechere, a definite , though overgrown, trail began to emerge. I followed it until I found an old canoe rest, one end of which was still attached to the tree, at which point I knew that we’d found the portage.
Back to the boat, I retrieved Don, and again we unloaded the gear and set off, after a good snack of gorp for energy (we thought we’d be on Bonnechere lake by lunchtime at the latest!) Getting through that bouldery section was indeed tricky, and Don wasn’t at all convinced (I couldn’t blame him) . The broken canoe rest eased his uncertainty a bit, and when we came to an old boardwalk of sorts over the muck, some evidence of trail clearing cuts (though old ones) and finally a wobbly bridge of sorts over a small creek, he too was convinced that we were on the right trail.
The entire portage was quite overgrown, balsam at first that scraped the sides of the canoe as we pushed through them, and farther upland young decidous trees, shrubs and wildflowers were filling in the old trail. By midsummer, when the landscape is in full leaf, there will be no obvious trail there at all.
Based upon the time it took us to return for our gear, knowing how fast we have been walking, I estimated that the first 400meters or so of the trail was underwater in the thicket of shoreline trees and shrubs. That also seems to match the distance from where we first exited the boat at the portage sign, until we finally found a passable trail farther upshore.
Don was pretty exhausted by the time we finally found the trail and carried across it the first time. Walking behind him, I could see he was really dragging. So, we took a long break at the Bonnechere end of the trail, where I dug a lunch out of the food barrel. Somewhat revived, we headed back. Upon reloading the boat, I prayed (please, be open, please be open) that the first campsite we came to would be open and that we’d not have to search, paddling the lake, for very long.
We were both relieved and delighted that it was. We’d hoped for this site, which we’ve been on before, with its phenomenal ridge of granite, its views out over the main body of the lake, where the sunsets are stunning, its intimate views from the rear of the camp into small inlets and around jutting rocky points, its cozy tucked-into-the-hillside-for-protection-from-the-wind campfire circle (especially welcome after last night’s frigid blasts). Here there is both a sense of seclusion and vastness, of intimacy and sweeping beauty. Here we will be warm, whether soaking up the sun on that sun-facing granite, or tucked up next to the fire, protected from the winds.
We pulled into camp, then had another replenishing snack, salty peanut butter stuffed pretzels, before beginning our camp chores. I pulled something out of the barrel to rehydrate for dinner and set up the ‘kitchen’, Don gathered and purified water. We pitched the tent together. Bottles filled, dinner rehydrating, camp set up, we remembered we’d wanted to gather firewood at the end of the last portage, as we knew that this site would have little to spare. Due to its long jutting peninsula of exposed granite, there is really little to gather here. What has fallen is not easy to get to, without sliding down the steep walls of the cliff.
In our haste, our relief, and our fatigue, we’d forgotten to pile some wood into the canoe before we pulled out onto the lake from the portage. So, we paddled back over to the trail, where we gathered enough fallen wood on the overgrown trail for the rest of our time here.
The wind has abated a bit now. It is quiet here. It is almost 7. Late for dinner, but the rest has been good….
an algonquin affair 
I laughed at “welcome to my brain in the tent this morning…”
My brain understands your brain!
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