Sliding Lessons

Shovelling is almost a sport these days. Each morning, fresh powder waits to dust up the blades of our wooden handled implements. Aaaaah...winter.

The beautiful white has been falling pretty well every day. And that’s what outdoor enthusiasts look forward to, once the driving to destination is over. Skiing, sledding, skating, snowshoeing -all the “s” words of winter - keep us primed for the season.

Part of the reason we have so much snow is because we have so much water around. Moisture fills the air and turns into a soft cousin as it leaves the rivers and lakes. The little ones are frozen over now, but the big ones, like Lake Superior, still are giving up the steam which morphs into floating white.

It has been most interesting to watch the transformations. Especially when big brother wind comes blasting through. Early the other morning, late moonlight was shining up huge smooth waves as they pushed onto shore. The rolling long lines curled with white cresting foam across a silky surface. As I looked more closely and as the light began to grow, I noticed a heavy dark line on the horizon that usually means one thing - a wind is on its way. Sure enough. Within half an hour the air was a thunderous roar as massive water mountains slammed into the bedrock. Spray hit the windows and horizontal snow replaced horizon lines.

I suppose if these waves were in Hawaii or even some other parts of Superior, we would see surfers sliding down the water hills. (Although the cold water surfers might end up singing Elvis’ Beach Boy Blues.) I’d only hit the real slopes, the sliding hills of winter.

This year, for whatever reason, there has been a media flurry about sliding hills. City decision makers in Sudbury fenced off access to their perennially popular urban hill. Would be gliders are raising sleds in opposition and Sudbury officials are rethinking that move. Their favourite free playground now is off limits. At the same time the city of Toronto opened two sliding hills this past weekend. There, children can take sliding lessons! One young girl announced with pride in a radio interview that she had learned how to stop.

Sliding is part of growing up that can give some of the greatest life lessons. I remember well all that it taught me. First off, you had to know the hill before hitting the slopes. There were no black diamond trail markers for safety, so watching for bumps, holes or rocks on the way up the hill was essential. There also had to be a long runway at the bottom with no cars or creeks in the way. It often was a contest to see who could go the farthest. The winner could cheer but they also had a longer walk to get back up the hill.

If you had your own toboggan, you pulled it up yourself. If you were sharing someone else’s, you took turns hauling it up. A padded seat was a luxury. Big thick cardboard boxes were a fun alternative. Crazy carpets were light but you felt every bump.

Then there are the right clothes to wear. Two pairs of mitts were ideal as the outside pair was bound to get balled up with snow. The inside layer made sure fingers didn’t freeze if you had to drag your hands to slow down. A scarf was important to keep the wind from your face on the way down, but keep it inside your coat. Don’t let it fly free. You could choke if it got caught in the sled. Long jackets or snow suits were keys to keeping snow from creeping down your back. Fashionable jeans were a disaster. They flash froze first run.

As for learning how to stop, now that is a bit trickier. And it depends on who is steering the toboggan. At the top of the hill, with a gang on the sled, most yell at each other to keep boots tucked in so the unit will go faster down the hill. As speed increases someone invariably starts dragging their feet to slow things down. Then the others will either poke their boots out too or yell at the cautious (or smart) one to quit slowing things up. The person at the front, by using twists, turns or flipping over, is in the most advantageous position to set the pace. However the front runner often ends up with snow in the face.

But one of the best things about sliding is the laughter in the fresh air. Plus, running up the hills and balancing yourself on the way down is a terrific workout. What a great way to get to know about the ups and downs of life. As a matter of fact, I think I will go get my shovel and dig out my sled right now.

Lights Within

Dec 28 2014...No Lake Ice ...yet

Maybe it’s the dark. Or it could be the cold. This time of year has a way of making us seek comfort. And of course, like people, comfort comes in all kinds of shapes.

A strong cup of tea or a slice of dark chocolate helps. As does a snowshoe through quiet woods or listening to a favourite version of a favourite song. Christmas music does drift out from the speakers at a perfect time. For we are in full swing towards the darkening days and are forced to acknowledge the shifts that nature gives us.

Now that the cold is here and the snow covers the ground, light takes on a different role. This month’s full moon, along with snow sparkle, has added a bit of magic to the nights. I like the first part of the evening, when there is a bite to the air, the skies are clear and the moon has not yet risen. The stars are twinkling dots, peeking out from the black velvet sky. Later in the night, when the moon casts tree shadows over snow laden bedrock, the outline of each twig and branch creates the illusion that another tree might exist somewhere else.

winter solstice sunset 2014

Not only is the moon playing tricks. The low afternoon sun on the lake conjures a golden road on the water. Sunglasses are mandatory for on a trip to the beach on a sunny day, even if the hard plastic wants to freeze your face. The beach takes a much different shape this time of year too. The fall gargantuan waves, heightened by high lake levels, pack more power than their summer cousins. Sand and pebbles become playthings. Rolling and crashing waves are the hands of a sculptor. All the while, the lake sloshes around back and forth, from shore to shore, until its story calms down.

Like the lake, like the natural world, people have stories too. And perhaps that is what makes this season so famous. At my book launch, I heard many folks speak of their family history and their favourite stories. I spoke with Ollie Kalliojarvi and after he told me of how the bucksaw could be carried in a pack, he suggested I speak about log cabin building with his nephew Ron Holmberg.

I contacted Ron Holmberg at his home in St Catherine’s Ontario. The first comment he made in the phone conversation was that he had just been looking at the snow out his window. He said that snow always makes him think of moving back up north. North, in this case, is the Sudbury /Sault area. Holmberg was born in the Sault and raised in Sudbury. He comes back for family reunions though. That’s where family history finds a fresh life.

In the early 1900s, at age 12, his orphaned dad, Robert (Bob) Holmberg travelled from Finland to Cleveland, Ohio to live with a brother. There, Bob spent a few years learning carpentry at a trade school. With skills intact and looking for work, Bob found his way to Sault Ste Marie. He soon met and married Aino Alexandra Siltanen and began a family. Then in the 1920s, Russ Devlin, who had just purchased “Beaver Rock”, a magnificent stretch of sandy shoreline 140 km north of Sault Ste Marie along Lake Superior, contracted Bob for a special job. Devlin needed Bob’s carpentry and log building skills for his new home site.

So Bob and Aino moved to Beaver Rock with three of their children. Aino was cook for the construction crew and Bob put his building skills to work.

Ron did not know about his dad’s construction work at Beaver Rock until about 10 years ago when he visited his uncle Milton the day after a summer family reunion. Milton drove Ron up to Beaver Rock to see the old cabins there. Bob could not believe what he saw and how he felt when he peeked in the window of an old log cabin. He saw a fireplace that sent him spinning into the past. With obvious emotion he explained his thoughts.

 “I was spooked out!” he said. “That fireplace was the spitting image of the one my dad built for us at our camp near Sudbury.”

Ron had to investigate further. He went inside the cabin. The spookiness continued.

He went on to say, “When I stood there, I had the funny feeling that maybe my father was standing there right beside me.”

Dream Steam

Some places and some stories do that to you. They raise memories that you might never expect. There is no doubt that story telling, in all its forms, is crucial to our nature. The narratives help us to grow.  And what better time of year than now to indulge?

So Happy Holidays everyone and may all your stories be happy ones too.  And if not, may they help you turn towards the comfort, warmth and light that is within us all.

ahhhh.... time for a rest

Welcome winter

Whiskey Jack

After the storm

Pine Martin

 



A rare sunny November day

Yell "Oh!"

You’d almost think they had a voice. They have so much vibrant colour that they seem to be singing. The wet trees must be bursting with secrets that they are dying to tell.

Almost as scripted, Thanksgiving weekend was almost perfect. With deep blue skies laced with streaming yellow, who could resist a hike through crinkling carpets of leaves? Between tearing up bread bits for turkey stuffing I kept running outside to breathe in all that beauty. I finally acquiesced to the cook’s duties but still took joy in the weed and bright yellow daisy bouquet outside my kitchen window. 

The brilliant yellow birch and poplar trees are especially stunning this year. I don’t remember them being quite so amazing. Perhaps it is all the rain we’ve had or maybe it is just me appreciating that hue more than usual. Here by Lake Superior the yellows stand out like cheerleaders along the shore.

Two types of birch trees are the Paper (or White) birch and the Yellow. G.G. Erdmann, on a USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) website, shared some neat data about the Yellow birch. He says that the yellow is the most valuable of all native birches. It has yellowish-bronze bark and the inner bark is aromatic with a flavor of wintergreen. The slow-growing, long-lived tree grows alongside other hardwoods and conifers on the moist, well-drained soils of hills and mountain ravines. The Yellow is an important source of hardwood lumber and a good browse plant for deer and moose. Other wildlife feed on the buds and the very, very light seeds. Erdmann says it takes 99,200 of them to make a kg!

The shorter-lived Paper birch has the distinctive white bark. The tree starts out as coppery-brown when it is young. As it ages, the bark begins to peel and then turns white. The Paper birch gives out an abundance of sap in the spring, which can be boiled into syrup. Some peoples used this sap as a medicine for colds. And the leaves, twigs and buds contain salicylates (the ingredient used to make aspirin), so they have been used to make teas to relieve pain and inflammation.

Birch trees have a very important role in life’s play and at one time their demise was a signal that perhaps not all was well. If Shakespeare had to use trees as characters, the yellow and white birch would have been in almost every act. For the story of the tree has some parallels to the human narrative. The birch regenerates best under shelter wood, but after 5 years, the tree seeks freedom from the protective overstory. Flourishing birches have an adaptable, well developed root system. They spread horizontally or go deep underground or follow the route of older root channels. And trees, too, suffer from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Damaged trees can take a long time to recover. Or remain beautiful with their sculpted injuries. I celebrate birch trees whenever I can. They are the last lights in the forest; their preparation for winter is a warm glow of hope.

Last week I discovered another kind of hope, not that given by old trees, but by old humans. I was waiting in line at a store in the Sault and was becoming impatient. The women ahead of me seemed to be dallying. (Heaven forbid that one holds up a busy line on the Friday of a holiday weekend!) However, the moment turned into a bit of magic that affirmed for me the importance of the aged. The delay was due to a younger woman paying for a stranger’s, an older woman’s, items. It was a pay-it-forward kindness. The elderly lady was in shock; the younger woman was just pleased to help; the cashier was smiling and warm. I was humbled and amazed at the simplicity and strength of the single caring act. And after going through the check out myself I stopped and spoke to the slower moving, elderly woman. She was 90, still living in her own apartment and oh so pleased with the moment. As was I. We hugged and almost cried. For a nanosecond I felt like I had my own mother back.

If people are connected to trees then this was a forest of emotion. We need trees of all ages. We need people of all ages. Our world is a better, healthier place when it is diverse. We might be all seen as green but the true colours shine under that cloak. So as our fall season becomes yellow with age I’ll remember how great this all is. And wait to hear what our white winter will have to say.

Once Upon a Time is the Best

Crescent moon

From the earliest days of bed time we’ve known about something. The once upon a time world was the magic that carried us off to dreamland. Even as very young children we’ve been aware of the importance of story.

Every day dozens of stories slide into our lives. Some of them come to us in many layers. Stan Roger’s epic ballad, Northwest Passage, is a dormant earworm that awakens in a nanosecond every time I hear those words. So when crews discovered one of Franklin`s ships lying under 10 metres of freezing Arctic waters, the song began playing in my mind and all over the airwaves for several days. Most of Canada now knows Franklin’s story but how many of us appreciate the role story telling had in the discovery of the ship? If the Inuit people had not valued their stories and passed them on to each generation, then the precious information they had about the Franklin expedition could not have been used today.

Modern times have modern ways of storytelling. Today, people walk down the street reading their phones to get the latest news. YouTube has become a popular medium to learn just about anything. And screens hold listeners’ attention for most of the day. Story telling has morphed indeed, but the old reliable methods will never fail to please. Nature can tell a magnificent tale without uttering a word. Last week the jumping antics of 2 am northern lights lit up the sky. The searchlight beams spoke of life in the dark void. On September 22, the vernal equinox sun again set in the exact same spot, proving that balance does exist amidst our earth’s confusion. And the smaller tracks I saw with no telltale tang told me that a cow, not a bull, moose had meandered down the road.

Driftwood on Agawa Beach at Agawa Bay

Of course people are the steady storytellers. We were at the Agawa Bay Visitor`s Centre in Lake Superior Provincial Park for the arrival of the busload of folks on the CAPT trains Group of Seven and Glenn Gould weekend. The congenial chatter amongst everyone was contagious. One group member remarked that he could not believe how much culture he experienced in just two days.  I treasured the stories of how A.Y. Jackson`s urge to paint had him climbing up steep hills and bushwhacking over rough trails, even though he was almost 80 years old!

The very young can be some of the most compelling story tellers. Their view of the world is keen and refreshing. I listened to a nine year old brimming over with enthusiasm about the possibility of walking himself to and from school and maybe stopping to get an ice cream on the way home. And a six year old repeated the story her teacher had read to her that day, word for word, sound bite by sound bite. Ahhhh. The wonderful memory of the young.

Ancient things also have a lot to share. Lake Superior has enough stories in its depths to fill Mishepechu’s library. Lighthouse keepers stranded for the winter out on Caribou Island. Shipwrecked folks from the Goldspie walking in the late fall from Old Woman Bay to Michipicoten Harbour and freezing their feet. Nine days of pure flat calm that bedazzled boaters.

Crescent Lake 

                                                                                                                                                       

Little lakes tell amazing tales too. This week we hiked into lake Superior Park’s Crescent Lake. The colours were splendid, the kind that fill you with peace and good thoughts. A red maple made flames on the water. The oranges looked good enough to eat. Yellows were cousins of the sun. And the reflections were almost uncanny. The water was a wall of colour, inviting you in with the promise of hearing the story of the seasons. Sleep and renewal, emergence, playfulness and return to sleep. It was difficult walking away from all that beauty. 

Ducks in reflection  on Crescent Lake 

Just before we left, Ward and I visited an chiseled granite chimney - all that remains of a log cabin from the 1920’s, near Kenney Lake. The monolithic old fireplace smokes with mystery. An old shoe, tin cans and thick broken bits of an old, green glass bottle lay on its mantle. Oh to be a witness to the fishing and scotch soaked stories in that old cabin.

Chimney close to Kenney Lake

But there is one scene I witness in real time, one I experience with awe. That is the sight of hundreds of geese heading south. Each year they catch some high swift air and make their pilgrimage to the warm place. As I watch them fly high overhead, if it’s quiet enough down here on the ground, I can hear the geese calling to each other. They might be telling tales of encouragement. Or the lead goose could be chattering about what they will find at their winter home. At the same time they are passing hope all along the line.

Not a bad way to go. Stories to give strength and peace. That’s a great book to snuggle down with at night.

September sunset on Lake Superior

Twenty three and a half degrees

Wow! School’s back in action. Summer went by already. Did you catch at least one of those hot days in the middle of August?

Before the warmer time packs it up for another year and school chases thoughts of it to behind the blackboard- oops, I mean computer screen or whiteboard - I’ll give you ten things I liked about this summer. Not in order of preference necessarily, but just some great things.

1. One is the long, lingering twilight. One calm evening, we canoed back to the beach after visiting some friends at their cabin. Along the way we watched the sun, a red ball, sinking into the lake. And near the end of August we sat by the campfire, watching that same red ball making the same dip again into a glass calm lake. That was the same day the highway was closed due to two separate accidents. With no traffic or lake sounds, a complete silence had enveloped all of us. No one wanted to speak, wanting to preserve the smooth quiet of the unique moment.

2. Watching dragonflies dance through the skies on a lazy morning. Their shimmering wings caught the growing light as they caught the flies.

3. Listening to the young ravens chatter. In the early spring their persistent calls to their parents for food is more of a racket. But by summer they have adopted a kind of chortle that comes out as verse. A young raven sometimes wakes me up in the morning with its talk. I think it could almost be tame, well, almost.

4. No matter what the weather, being with kids while they play is the real sunshine. They chat about all their summer fun. They run barefoot over the sand and rocks, find bugs we would never see and laugh at the silliest things.

5. Of course I have to mention the fresh food from the gardens. The sweet crunch of sugar snap peas straight off the stalk, or an onion pulled out of the ground then tossed into scrambled eggs has no resemblance to mid-January, California greens. And this summer I learned that roasting beets is much easier than boiling them. Along with the bounty comes sharing and long easy meals taken outside. Put a cloth on the picnic table; grab a plate and try all the different offerings. We are so lucky.

6. My, oh my, I can’t forget picking blueberries at the burn in Wawa. That’s a visit to another realm. The fields of blue amongst the sweeping vistas of smaller trees are a timeless existence. All that matters is shifting your position so your back doesn’t get too sore as you bend over to pick.  Whenever I see the roadside Wawa blueberries (at some stops they now are $30 for a 3 litre basket) I understand and go right to memories of our berry picking day. 

                                                                                    

7. A trip to Bathtub Island in Lake Superior Park is an annual pilgrimage. But this year one had to be a live hard fan to make it out there. Even though it’s a short distance to the wee island, you had to be very brave to make the freezing cold walk. Tummies sucked in and whoops when the water reached certain body parts were unavoidable. However, the beauty of Bathtub made it all worthwhile.

8.  Exchanging stories around the dining table is always fun. Summer is travelling season and friends bring interesting perspectives. One was about an arduous July kayak trip from Hattie Cove to Michipicoten Harbour. Fog, wind and rain turned the trip into a challenge with hypothermia as well as hypertension!  But fond memories of Lake Superior often can be that way.

9. Enjoying the rain. When it torrents down, the sound of it on a summer roof is a soothing prelude to a nap. And there is no worry about it freezing. Yet.

10. That big moon in August looked like it was wearing a Hallowe’en costume. When the moon becomes a huge orange ball each summer, it reminds us that there indeed is a pattern to the universe. And also there is that tilt.

The earth’s 23 ½ degree axial tilt is what controls our seasons. On CBC radio’s Quirks and Quarks I heard scientists from the University of Toronto discussing the consequences of no tilt to the earth. If the axis was straight, the world would be a much different place. The tropics would be smaller. The ice at the poles would be much larger. There would be much less habitat variety which means much less life and diversity. And much less change.

Change does seem to be a constant these days. But one thing that won’t change is the love for learning about the lake and the land. And for that, school is always in.

All in a Name

Canada is an interesting country. It is sometimes mysterious and often contradictory. There are so many different cultures and so many unique names. Sorting out what our country might mean and figuring out all who live here is a gargantuan task.

Spread out any Canadian map on the kitchen table and you’ll see all that variety. For example, on a 1979 MNR map of the Township of Glasgow in the district of Algoma there is a Carter Lake and a Loch Lomond quite close to Wabatongushi Lake. Of course the neighbouring Township is LeGuerrier. Warring linguists would have a field day. Just as we do every year on July 1^st, Canada Day.

 Our Canada Day here in Montreal River was cool. Fog clothed Agawa. Clouds covered up that scorching sun from the day before when “swimming”, then   sunning on hot rocks was a pleasant reminder that summer was in the area. When the rains did come thundering through I saw a mother duck turn into an umbrella. She sat on a rock very close to the water and spread herself as wide and as fluffy as possible so she could protect her brood from the downpour.

But we humans also had to protect ourselves from an onslaught of other kind. The Flies!! Oh my. Oh my. They are voracious, aggressive and everywhere. As I don my armour, my bug jacket, I wonder why there have been SO many mosquitoes the past two years. Could it be the lack of bats? We used to watch them in the evenings as they dove around and around catching the mosquitoes. Now a bat is a rare sight. They seem to have deserted us, or have they died off due to white-nose syndrome. I wish they’d come back home.

Oh Canada is our home and native land but who determines what happens here?  Who decides the future of our country? I look to the lake and realize that really no one can own this place. Just as water slips through our fingers, the earth also can escape our grasp. Such a problem always stirs up several forms of debate.

Right now there is a court case over the road into Nanabozhung or Gargantua Harbour in Lake Superior Park. The word “Gargantua” has an interesting origin. In 1534 Francois Rabelais wrote a series of novels about a giant he called Gargantua and his son Pantagruel.  No doubt French explorers or voyageurs, who had read the irreverent series, must have thought that Gargantua was an apt name for this giant among places. But other folks have attached the same name to other things. Gargantua is also a limestone cave located on the Andy Good plateau in British Columbia. This giant of a formation has 601 m of passages and is the largest natural cavern in Canada at 290 m long, 30 m wide and 25 m high. Oh wouldn’t a Canada Day concert sound amazing in there!

Then there is the gorilla born in the Belgian Congo, Africa, in about 1929. A sailor originally gave the infant the name of Buddy but, circumstances had it changed to Gargantua. The unfortunate captive became a depression era attraction in a Ringling Brothers circus. His story is much too sad to print.

Another reference? Gargantua is a solitaire game you can play using two decks of cards.

Lake Superior’s Gargantua is almost 50 km miles north of Montreal River or about 40 km northwest of the mouth of the Agawa River. The harbour itself is a wonderful sanctuary.

In the ancient days, before European contact, the early peoples fished and hunted there. They also attached spiritual significance to the area’s many wilderness islands. Only boat or boot took you to Gargantua until the early 1960s. That’s when a rough access road went in from the new Highway 17 North. During the 1930s and 1940s, when lake trout fishing was at its peak, about 10 families lived there in summer. In the winter at that time, two to five families called Gargantua Harbour their home.

Gargantua is rugged, mystical, Lake Superior shoreline. I like to think of it before it got a name; think of the time when it was a home for moose and bear and caribou and fox.

Before men with ships seeking minerals needed a shelter, before people with canoes had to slip in to spend the night or before travellers on foot went there to live and harvest, the place had become a keeper of magic.

Nanabozhung? Or Gargantua? Who is right? I’m not one to say. But we could ask poor captured Buddy or the mosquitoes. Or even the stars.

They would give us an interesting answer.