Ruth Fletcher Writings

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.

May 28, 1955 newspaper clipping.

Storm Waves Nov 6 2015

Walk to Awausee

October 14, 2015 The walk to Awausee.

The bear was a good sign. Ward and I saw the dark shape disappear into the trees just as we turned off Highway 17 North to pull onto the parking lot for the Awausee Trail. Should we go any further? The timidity and no further sighting of the black bruin helped us decide that indeed it would be OK to attempt the hike to Awausee’s first look out onto the Agawa Valley.

Mind you, the thought of my left-over-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich in my pack gave me a nanosecond of hesitation. But I did have my Fox 40 whistle to pummel his eardrums if need be; so off we went.

The beginning of the trail follows an old logging road. Sunlight streamed through the yellow- leafed maples giving everything a golden glow. Soon we left the road/trail and began the climb. Thick flat rocks and gnarled tree roots made perfect steps. A dry creek bed with its bare boulders and wide shoulders hugs the trail, a reminder of the power of seasonal shifts. As the ascent increased, the faint splashes from another creek echoed through the forest. My knees talked to me as we got closer and closer to the top. However, I soon met the flatter, smoother, softer walkway of auburn pine needles and rusty coloured cedar leaves (needles?). One more little incline, then a decline and there we were at the first lookout.

The 180 degree, half-a-circle-wide, expansive view was so beautiful it was ridiculous. To my right, silver light shone over Lake Superior. To my left, crimson heads of hunched bulbous cliffs, left over from glaciers, watched over this most ancient of lands. The red and gold hills were magnificent and each of the million trees seemed to be distinct, to have its own say. The sound of rustling dry leaves rose up from the valley floor. Breaks in the tree line marked the path of the Agawa River. When sunlight broke through the rolling grey clouds, the far hills had the texture of a colourful, woolen, handmade, hooked rug.

We ate our sandwiches and the low scudding clouds thickened. Rested, refreshed, renewed we headed back down and got to the truck just as rain began to sprinkle the windshield. Feeling lucky and grateful at the same time, I said thanks... for the trail and for that very interesting, respectful bear.

The Big Feast

Loons enjoy a summer float

Such a place! How did we get so lucky? Perhaps the gods decided to rest here after all.

The joy of our summertime is so compelling. The sun has diminished the woolly weights of winter. The gatherings, outdoor music and picnicking at the beach or the park make us believe we are on another planet.

A great aspect to this summer life is the growing abundance of fresh food. Vegetable gardens are spilling over with local lettuces and sweet green peas. The untamed fruits are promising to be bountiful as well. The wild strawbs were as big as thumbnails. Blueberries are crowding out their bushes. The rasps, atop those stingy, tall, scratchy branches are starting to fatten up. The mountain ash will be heady orange bunches this fall. Saskatoons or Service or Sugar Plums (whichever name suits you), are a purpling tempting treat for humans as well as birds. And with the wild berries come the wild flowers.

Waving daisy fields and bright yellow roadsides calm and brighten the traveller’s soul. The deep white of winter seems a millennium away.

Time does like to trick us. Combine that with high speed travel and it’s a feat to keep your feet and senses on the ground. This was especially true after recent space photos captured the first close ups of our farthest planet, Pluto - a surrealistic reminder that the earth is not alone.

The universe is LOADED with suns, planets and other galaxies, fodder for a never ending stream of movies and subsequent internet chatter. Conceptualizing how there can be such vast or huge or innumerable (or whatever word humans use) an amount of “stuff” out there often requires some kind of analogy.

The other day as I was walking down a cobble beach, enjoying the gentleness of a calm, sunny, soft Lake Superior summer afternoon I stopped to admire the colours and textures in the rocks. I picked up and examined one after another and couldn’t help but notice something. Some of the rock patterns resembled some of the photos of Pluto. Some of the big round balls of granite even had that heart shape we saw on that far lonely planet. It occurred to me that the countless heaps of beach boulders could be as plentiful as the plethora of galaxies that whirl around our skies. That made it easier to imagine the multitude of universes out there.

A Bud on the beach

Universes don’t have to be far away. Still riding the analogy train, we could say that the area north of the Sault, the land that once held the former ACR passenger line, is another universe too. Four universes actually. In spring, freshly opened lakes and streams are the visible lifeblood for fishes, frogs and other aquatic life forms. In summer, lush tree growth and long lingering days are perfect for the outdoorsperson. In fall, colour feasts overflow with delicious eye candy. In winter, crystal clear starry skies are a silent wonder world against the beautiful white. But those places are becoming almost as hard to access as Pluto! The passenger service has ended. If the writer for the Lonely Planet declared that downtown Sault resembled a ghost town then the old ACR might be the ghost line.

I wonder if anyone has asked CN why it is not in the passenger train business. Freight and passenger trains shared the ACR tracks for 100 years. Surely there must be a compromise/solution somewhere. Can a passenger car be added to the freight train? Google gave me some answers.

There is one mixed train ( carries freight and passenger together ) in Canada. In Northern Manitoba, the Keewatin Railway Company, in conjunction with Via Rail, operates a 400 km passenger service twice a week between The Pas and Pukatawagan.

So, how about this?

In the spring, offer a couple of camp opening special runs. In the summer, pick a day once a week when supplies and folks can get in and out of camp. In the fall, work with the Tour Train. In the winter, run the Polar Express and the Searchmount Ski Train.

Why do it? Because enjoying our natural gifts is a part of life here on earth. And we learn that after the barbeque is over, it’s been all about sharing the feast.

This is our Only Planet but it doesn’t have to be a Lonely One.