Heads or tails. Wet or
dry? Brilliant colour or muted tones? We’ll know at the end of this new season.
On one rainy day this
week, one on which I was not quite ready to move into fall, I took a look at the
photos of my activities this past summer. I smiled as I took a photo journey
back to August when, thanks to friends, we were able to motor out to Montreal
Island. Some pix of strolling along the sand
spit that stretches into Lake Superior like the prow of a ship lit up the small
screen on a dull day. Wanting to experience more of that island experience, I
Google mapped Montreal Island for another perspective on the place. Zooming in
I saw the same sand spit but the satellite view made the beautiful long beach
resemble the beak of a bird or the tip of a broken handle on a mug.
When we are using our
eyes like this for many hours a day, it is inevitable that we will end up taking
our peepers for granted. Plus, we have high expectations that they always will
deliver, especially this time of year when we’re waiting for our annual colour
feast.
That’s provided of
course that you can negotiate beyond the recent rain curtains that have been
blocking out the scenery. There sure has been a lot of water descend on our
little planet this year. Algoma region got its share last week and there are
probably more rain events to come. We must have a river in the sky because it
just felt that we were living under a waterfall.
All this rain had to
come from somewhere. True, the melting glaciers fill the skies with H2O but
surely that load gets dumped before hitting us. Another logical source to think
of is Lake Superior. Has all that evaporation filled the skies to the maximum?
We’ve been aware that for a number of years the water has been leaving the
lake. People complained about the drop in lake levels. Docks became dry. Swamps
turned into grasslands. Gabions lost their role as shore protectors and morphed
into decorative baskets of stone. But now we are witnessing a return to what
once was. An easy way to see this change is to look at the edge of the
causeways along the drive up Highway 17 North. Water now teases the ramparts of
concrete and stone. One side of the roadway at Haviland is back to being a
wetland and the crossing at Mamainse threatens to tickle the highway. (I still
remember driving home along this section during a fall storm and dodging wave-tossed
driftwood on the road.)
Another result of the
recent local deluge was the wash out under the ACR tracks near the Fifth Line
in Sault Ste Marie. Driving into the city last week we became part of the long
line–up that formed as trucks full of tons of rock moved in and out of a new emergency
access road close to the tracks. The train stood dormant on the overpass, visible
to all of us with its silent promise of mobility - a far cry from the rush of
steel on track. I thought of all the
disappointed folks who were so looking forward to the fall colour run up to
Agawa canyon. Mind you, the colours are flat and late so far. Putting off the
tour for another week might result in a better vantage anyway as the most
colourful things to see right now are the vibrant red berries on the mountain
ash trees.
Travelling Highway 17
North in the autumn is usually a delight. So many folks from around the world
love to make that lakeside drive with deep blues and whites on one side and
brilliant flashes of orange, red and yellow on the other. When I read about Bob
MacDonald and Lloyd McLean attempting this stretch of the highway on their
Cross Canada trip on a recumbent bike, I hoped for fine fall weather for them,
free of heavy rains and heavy traffic. A few kilometres north of Sault Ste
Marie we saw them riding their bicycle, the only one of its kind in Canada. As
they headed up a small hill, with the two riders back to back, I became
interested in their story of the one blind man facing backwards and the seeing
eyed person facing front.
I didn't get to talk to them but I did learn
something interesting when I discovered the name of their bike - the Altena
Janus, from Holland. Janus was an ancient Roman god with two heads. His faces
adorned many coins. His personage represents beginnings, gates, doorways,
travels, time, war and peace, future and past. Wearing an image of Janus as a
charm was, and is, the choice of many. A Janus bracelet became popular after
Angelina Jolie wore one in the 2010 movie, The
Tourist, and declared that it was a gift from her mother who wanted Jolie
to know that everyone has two faces and to accept and to love them as they are.
That could apply to
Mother Nature too. We won’t really know what this season will deliver but we
can keep looking both ways before we cross the stream. Or just flip a coin and
hope for the best.