Bottom of the Ocean

     The bottom of the ocean is a long way down.  Not something that’s easy to picture. However, the world has been challenged with just such a thing, and much more.
     The past while has been rather chaotic.  If anyone wanted to pump up Halloween scariness, there was no need for a Queen Street zombie walk.  All it took was the weather channel. And to think that when the popular TV site started out people thought it was a joke.
     But Sandy was no laughing matter, as we all found out.  I got a hint of what was to come by the cloud action the day before the waters let loose in Wawa.
     That Thursday there was a sky show the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.  Low slung blue-black tubulars were having a full blown race due north. The entire sky was one mass of heavy darkness as wave after wave of water-loaded clouds steamed ahead as fast as they could.
     And it was warm, way too warm for October. That evening I grew concerned for my sister Noella Depew whom I figured would be getting the full brunt of it where she lived in Michipicoten Harbour. Sure enough, creeks rose, beaver dams gave way and an onslaught of water let loose in the middle of the night. Noella’s home was safe, but it was very close to the deep thundering rush of water. Her neighbours, Jim and Debbie Saunders, lost their house to the Brient Creek. The Ford dealership west of Wawa on Highway 17 lost vehicles to a gaping washout. Owners of the Northern Lights Motel lost their business and travellers lost a way west. Everyone was devastated.
     It takes a while for the seriousness of such a situation to settle in.  One very startling thing to absorb was the fact that raging creek waters pushed the Saunders’ vehicles out into Lake Superior! The photo of waves sloshing over the roof of their red truck was a sharp reminder of what had happened.
     The cleanup will take ages. That monstrous hole in the highway was a huge open mouth hungry for fill. And feed it they did. While truckload after truckload of gravel filled up the washout, the  highway north remain closed. We've had many highway closures, but never one this long, this time of year. I walked out to the road and was amazed. The silence was a calm contrast to the regular hum of traffic including the echoing buzz from vehicles as they cross the rumble strip on the Montreal River hill.
     The lake, being quiet too, accentuated the silence. I wondered if the animals felt the same way. Did they wander to the side of the highway too? Or maybe the coyotes ventured to places where the steady stream of trucks sometimes discouraged access. Like our yard, where wild/tame bunnies live?
The quiet days were awesome. We took a drive up to Lake Superior Park and hiked a sand beach. The campground at Agawa was a hush. Summertime campers who sling derogatives at traffic noise would have been in heaven.  The silence ended in a few days. The highway south of Wawa reopened and cold north winds charged due south. Then, on October 29, just before Halloween, devastation hit another shore.
     Hurricane Sandy punched the east coast of the United States and knocked out one of my favourites – the Bounty! I became enthralled with the wonderful tall ship, built in wonderful Lunenburg, when it docked at the marina in Sault Ste Marie before heading up on a circumnavigation of Lake Superior. Just when the bizarre nature of the Wawa floods was beginning to subside, I heard that the well-loved ship, had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean.
     The burnt bones of the original Bounty lie in the bottom of Bounty Bay in Pitcairn Island. Now the rebuilt Bounty lies on the bottom of the ocean some 90 miles south east of Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina. Fourteen of her crew are well and safe; Captain Robin Walbridge, who in an August interview laughed about chasing hurricanes, and another crew person, Claudene Christian,(some reports say she was a direct descendent of the original Bounty’s Fletcher Christian) perished in the storm. Sandy took them, as well as many, many others who lost lives and homes in the wind and waves. With so much devastation and hardship people are looking for solace and answers. This is when the human spirit surfaces.
     The outpouring of help to everyone affected by the Wawa floods is proof of that. The folks at Michipicoten First Nation opened up their homes and their hearts to help Noella. So, just as trucks and workers and ingenuity must raise Jim and Debbie’s vehicles out of the waters of Michipicoten
Bay, maybe craftsmen can build another Bounty. There’s always hope to sail again another day.