Ruth Fletcher Writings

Clearing a Path for 2016

Well well. We have an extra day, one to add to the other 365! Here we come leap year 2016.

The leap years have to pop up every four years to keep our seasonal names attuned with astronomical events. Otherwise, one day we’d end up with the winter solstice occurring in what we call July.

With any New Year comes the usual practice of listing notables from the previous 12 months. But since this is a leap year, I decided to flash forward instead of flash back.

Keeping in mind that nothing in 2016 is certain (except 13 new and 12 full moon phases) here’s my list of 16 things to look forward to.

1. The joyful feeling you get when you lend a helping hand. Humanity shines when we grab the opportunity to pay it forward in line at the grocery store, smile back at a baby or open the door for a laden down person.

2. The chance to give yourself a pat on the back for learning new “stuff.” Sometimes wandering the streets of today’s digital village can be overwhelming. This week I found an efficient way to back up my computer and organize desktop files. Aaaah!

3. Sunny spots, places where you can have a quiet sit and feel the kind warmth of Old Sol. One of my favourites offers a sheltered view of the lake, even when charging winds whip foamy tops off of the waves.

4. Adventure stories. This is a cool thing. I still remember Katelyn and her horse, Whiskey, meandering along the shoulders of the road. Who knows what Highway 17 North or the waters of Lake Superior will deliver. By the way, Katelyn and Whiskey made it to Manitoba, where Whiskey is spending this winter. Katelyn took the bus back to B.C. where she is working until she starts her ride again in the spring.

5. Puzzles to solve. I found a few brain teasing, although sometimes mind numbing, challenges in a great library book. The Codebook by Simon Singh shows an undeciphered, 1820s code that is supposed to lead to buried treasure. The book also lists the Morse code, which I hope to learn - just for fun.

6. Watching plants surface. Last fall I transplanted the rhubarb bed (for the umpteenth time). This spring I’ll be anxious to see if the reddish tips find their way up through the ground.

7. The emergence of the Pink Lady’s Slippers (aka Cypripedium acaule). The moccasin - shaped flowers appear in the same spot year after year. No matter how freezy the winter or how warm the spring, these bulbous beauties just keep coming back.

8. The different ways to move over snowy ground. So far this year, close to the shore, there has been little need of snowshoes and scant opportunity to ski. No frozen pond skating – sigh, but a recent bootwalk over a few cms of the white stuff was a treat. The forest floor, not yet frozen solid, felt sqooshy and soft, almost like Caribbean sands. (No... I’m not going to cheat and include a trip south in the list. )

9. Crisp perspective of the cold. Snow outlines every tiny twig. Stars and planets are diamonds scattered across black velvet. Frost flowers are a temptation to pick. And clear, mid-day magnetic skies are a deep hypnotic blue.

10. Mosquitoes and blackflies! That’s right! They are food and strength for the beloved spring peepers, the melodic warblers and...the elusive trout. Besides, we’ve learned to survive pesky bugs with screens, bugnets, deet, mosi-q and by seeking the windy places.

11. Loons. Each fall, once their spotted summer feathers turn to the soft grey and white winter plumage, these plaintive voiced water birds take off for the south. Where do they go? Will I see them again when I swim out front?

12. Photos from friends and relatives. There will be beach gatherings, picnics and more joy to share.

13. Books. I like the paper kind and am lucky to be looking at two Christmas gifts - Canoe Country by Roy MacGregor and The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood. A stormy winter day, the woodstove. Need I say more?

14. Music. Yes, yes, always. There are new tunes to enjoy i.e.: Adele’s latest, 25. The old ones still give off their charm too. I love to watch the lake breath in and out while listening to my scratchy, vinyl version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

15. A trip, maybe, to Pukaskwa National Park. Last summer we discovered a tent that can accommodate cots. Yay - glamping!

16. And, finally, giggles and laughter from the grandkids. Or any kids in fact. (Now that says it all!)

So here we go gang. Let’s all jump into life and find a Very Happy, Very New Leap Year.

January waves

wind blown waves

Christmas lightens A New Year once again

ELF ON A TREE

Holiday seasons can tug at the heart. And is there much more of a memory trigger than a box of Christmas decorations? This year, after we hauled ours down from the attic, I came across a card that students made for me the year I retired from teaching. That flashback to Christmas concerts and all the excitement of the December classroom, made me dig up one of my old stories. I wrote it in December of 1993 during the first of the seven years that I taught at C.O.Somes.

My years at Somes were fantastic. The former three-room public elementary school at Batchawana Bay had a partial view of Lake Superior, sported a terrific rink and was a place of learning for some of the most awesome students ever. They often inspired me to write and hence this “true” story from 1993. It’s my version of Elf on a Shelf.

The week before Christmas this year was an especially magical one. We hadn’t yet encountered any of the usual Northern Ontario bouts of snow and ice. The playground was a wide open space where grasses shone golden from light reflecting off the lake. And at recess, the children, so happy to be wearing shoes instead of boots couldn’t stop running. They would gleefully toss off their coats and race over the hard frozen ground to the edge of the bush. That’s where the trees rose up and covered a small hill behind the school.

After one particularly sunny afternoon recess the children all came tumbling inside, talking about the leprechaun that they had seen hidden amongst the trees. Each day the leprechaun hype rolled into the classroom along with all the other pre-Christmas Santa talk. The children could hardly contain themselves. By the time the bell rang on the last Friday morning before the holiday, I could see that their excitement was about to overflow. But... I got lucky. It was a wondrous, snow-free, sunny morning and I knew I could settle their bouncy natures by going for a quick walk around the playground. Our goal was to “look for the leprechaun” before we started classes for the day.

The children followed, and then led me across the field. When we came to the edge of the trees, one of them said, “There Miss - over there!” So off we went amongst the trees to search for the elusive elf. With great delight they exclaimed about every hole beside a root being a leprechaun’s home and every collection of sticks here and there being his woodpile. Some of the children started tripping, falling, laughing and saying “The leprechaun is pushing me down!”

We wandered through the bush for a few more minutes and then I gathered up my students for the return walk to the school. As we lined our way back across the field, one of the children pointed at the trees and said, “I see him! I see him! I see his golden eyes shining!”

The others stopped and tried to spot the golden eyes. Some even agreed that they saw the glimmer too. After a few moments of questioning, we continued the trek to the classroom, satisfied with the success of the outing.

I wondered to myself how the reality of this leprechaun would compare to that of the red-suited elder who would later Santa his way into the school. Then one of the students asked me in an anxious voice, “But what if it’s a bad leprechaun?”

Oh, oh I thought. Think fast Ruth.

“Well,” I said, taking a breath. “He can’t be a bad one because this is a beautiful place and you are happy people and only good leprechauns can stand being around beauty and happiness.”

Thanks kind elf and Merry Christmas kids.

And a Very Very Happy Beautiful New Year too!

More Light

That's why

Today another prism hangs in my window. True, the crystal disc splits the low winter light into the familiar reds, purples and greens. But yet they somehow shine with a difference onto the floor and walls.

Words split up like that too. Like Anthropocene. Anthropo means human. Cene means epoch. Apparently that’s the new name for our current time period. Our previous epoch, the Holocene, which began 10,000 years ago, after the last ice age, is now over.

I’m not too convinced of that but at least the weight of last year’s Polar Vortex is over - I think (fingers crossed)! These beauty days of a snowless beginning to December are enough hope for that.

Many times these past few days the lake has shown its magical side. A walk along sand and cobble brings you to the warmth of summer. And before the morning’s first light, the moon turns soft wave foam into silver.

Pink morning clouds over the Bay

This week I had the opportunity to chat with a woman who spent many a Christmas along the shore of Lake Superior. Laurie Penno (Renner) grew up in the Coldwater River /Agawa Bay area, about 150km north of the Soo. In the summer her father Lawrence Renner along with his brother, George, ran a tourist lodge at the mouth of the Coldwater River. Summers were spent playing beside creeks, exploring the shore and one spring she had the company of a pet moose! Before freeze up she and her family boated down to the Agawa Beach north of the Agawa River, where they had a cabin for the winter and were closer to other families.

Penno and I chatted about Christmas in those days. “The Eaton’s catalogue would come out and then the orders went to Frater by the ACR train,” she said on the landline from her home in Iron Bridge.

“We always went out and cut a tree down,” she said. “Mom had a box of decorations we’d always use. We didn’t have lights cause there was no electricity but we did have tinsel.”

Tinsel or “icicles” are the long stringy decorations a person used to thread over the tree branches, one silvery sliver at a time. Penno used to enjoy holding the thin icicles over her hand and delicately hang them in place, adding a shimmer to the tree.

“I like the way the tinsel moved when you walked by,” she said.

Then she laughed, “But you have to watch your cats! For some reason they like to eat tinsel.”
But we no longer live in the times of no electricity, lightless trees and Santa shipments on the ACR train. And yes , Anthropocene is now the way of things. To survive I guess we'll have to pay more attention to our relationship with nature. And although we can't go back in time, we can use some of the wisdom from those who survived the past epoch. Commenting on the overabundance of today's electronic stuff, Laurie Penno said, " It was much better in those days.We didn't have much but we sure were happier."

Want to share your story? Your ideas and memories of what nature shared with you? I would be pleased to add your voice to the many that have appeared in my column.Contact me the old fashioned way at Box 4, Montreal River Harbour , On, P0S 1H0 or email me at lakefx8@gmail.com and let's chat. Maybe we can put some light into the subject.

Share the light

Biggest waves so far this year ...

The morning of Nov 20.... Still going after an all night blow..

Wave washing

Smoothing it over

To the point

Foam riding

But why?

And Nov 18 ...Two days before..a little warning?

Curly Cloud

Storm Stories Nov 11, 2015

November is a conjurer. The word itself is mystical. Feel the name of our 11^th month roll around the tongue and an immediate sense of grey, and perhaps grief, massages the thoughts. Remembrance Day, with its images of poppied graves and Lightfoot’s haunted song about the Edmund Fitzgerald enhances the somber mood even more.

But this November is a bit different. It must be the past few glory days of warmth and sunshine. Waves wash cracked cliffs with a lacy spray. And Lake Superior’s power almost seems delicate against the shimmering golden threads of hilltop grasses. The days are precious. You have to rush outside and hug them; hold on tight to something that you know soon will be going.

I’ve been enjoying this November gold by hiking along the bronzed grey trails where leafless trees allow a peek into an otherwise hidden forest world. The magic is everywhere. Even on one of the wet days, when I had to admire the outside from behind rain splattered glass, I found treasure. A yellowed, 60-year-old Sault Star newspaper clipping emerged from one of my paper files. The May 28, 1955 article, written by a Pat McColl, featured interviews with three men who remembered November 1913.That’s when the “worst storm” in Great Lakes recorded history took the lives of 250 people.

In the article, a Captain Raeburn from the Michigan Sault said, “All of a sudden Lake Huron seemed to back into the North Channel. My room aboard ship had a foot of snow in it but at that we fared better than hundreds that night.”

A second man, Sault Harbourmaster Frank Parr added his memory of the storm. “I was a passenger aboard the Winona going to Marquette Michigan. In 36 hours we made a distance of eight miles!” he said. “Needless to say I returned by rail.”

The third interview was with the Sault’s Captain J.W. Alexander. 1913 was Alexander’s first year of sailing on Lake Superior. Only 16 at the time, he was wheelsman aboard the ACR ship the Thomas J. Drummond which was carrying rails to Thunder Bay. That night Lake Superior showed him power that few will ever witness.

“It was the night of November 11,” he said, “and that gale really was the worst ever. Our ship passed the (ship) Palaki off Whitefish Point and I guess we were the last to see her.”

After that gale diminished, people spoke of it as “The Big Blow”, “The Freshwater Fury” or “The White Hurricane”. The storm lasted a long time, whipping up four of the five Great Lakes from November 7 to the 10^th. In fact it, was an extratropical cyclone, the result of a collision between two major fronts. Winds gusted to 145 km, waves rose to 11m and snow squalls reduced visibility to near zero. The storm’s deceptive lulls heightened the anxiety. Just as sailors thought the worst was over, the fury raged back again. By the time it was done, besides the loss of 250 people, the storm destroyed 19 ships and stranded 19 others. Two ships, the Leafield and the Henry B Smith, went down in Lake Superior. The Leafield, with a loss of 18 lives, broke up on a shoal off Angus Island near Thunder Cape, Ontario. The Henry B. Smith, along with 25 crewmen, sunk off of Marquette Michigan.

Captain Alexander stayed with the Drummond until 1915 when he enlisted in the army because Canada did not have a navy at the time. After World War One, he sailed on Abitibi tugs and then joined the Royal Canadian Navy from 1940 until 1945. After World War Two, Alexander returned to the Sault to become Marine Superintendent for the Abitibi. The Thomas J. Drummond had her own fate. She went to Canada’s eastern shore to deliver coal from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. But an October 30, 1937 Atlantic storm took the Drummond. She and her crew left Sydney and were never seen again.

Losses from the storm of 1913, the Great Wars or the sinking of the Fitzgerald are embedded into our culture. We remember the tragedies as best we can. We lay wreaths, wear poppies, light fires and cherish bagpipes, hymns and ballads. It's how we grieve. The memories from those who knew such difficult times are a gift, a reminder that humanity can be calm, reflective and gentle...like the soft light of a fine November day.