Kayaking on Amisk Lake 2012

Wednesday June 13, 2012

Silo beach, 7pm and the sun sits 45 degrees above the horizon. It is about to slip from behind a bank of cloud into clear blue sky, promising many more hours of sunshine.  The longest day of the year approaches and if increased sunlight is the great cheerer-upper, why am I stalled in melancholy?  Perhaps I’m worn out by months of multiple tasks in several different arenas. Whatever the causes I’m wide open to the great healer that is our Northern wilderness. 

I left home after lunch, having only started packing this morning. Yesterday included babysitting, make-up for a school dress rehearsal, NorVA for the rest of the afternoon, and make-up for the school production in the evening. Before leaving I finished the first coat of painting the new picnic table so now it is sealed and shouldn’t be affected by the rain forecasted for tomorrow.  

The sky looked menacing all morning and carrying my dry packs down to the lake, doubts niggled at my consciousness.  As I set off, the kayak rudder wouldn’t release so I stopped in a bay sheltered from the wind and fixed it under the canny watch of three ravens, sunning themselves on a rock.  Clouds broke up  and soon I paddled in bright sunshine sparkling on waves generated by the south westerly breeze. 

              

Silo beach is somewhere I would never camp when school is out.  A houseboat or two is always anchored here through the summer and motorboats and picnickers make this place way too populous for my liking. Now, still early enough in the season the DNR has not been here to rake up the sticks of drift wood along the waterline and cut a pile of wood for the fire pit. Undisturbed debris has come out of the winter’s snow: a pair of men’s underpants, a flip flop, a broken camp chair, a girl’s tank top, and many beer cans. Someone has spray painted SURFER GIRL on a slab of limestone and BREW HA HA! lengthwise down a tree trunk. Where I sit, next to my tent on the high tip of the island I see none of this.  To my left there is a new fire pit – just stones set in a circle to draw well.  I noticed three others and wonder if some sort of retreat or healing circle has been held here.  The wind picks up periodically. The weather is still unsettled

 I had planned to head for the islands I found last year, the limestone islands that Russell often talked about. I may head there on Friday, after tomorrow’s storm, and when the weekend may make Silo too busy for me.

My meal tonight was not at all what I expected.  I brought leftover boef bourguignon with mashed potato and peas in a freezer bag, and recalling some years ago that boiling in a bag was all the rage, I set a pot of water on the fire and left the bag of stew to bubble away. Oh no! The bag split and I was left with a watery soup. The fire was going well, so I took off a bowl and left the rest to bubble away to reduce and thicken.  It was all remarkably good soup and the final bowl was perfect. Now I’m a convert.  Any leftovers with a little water will now become soup.

I paddled out to fill my big water jug and was greeted by three loons. They danced and dived, putting on a delightful show. Exploring the shoreline I stopped at a rocky mound covered with reindeer moss.  At the spot I chose for a bathroom break, I see someone has been there before me: well -aged bear scat, full of unchewed berries 

Thursday June 14, 2012

A discussion on a writing forum last week centred on bird calls, specifically around what sound gulls make.  We talked about birds which have a variety of calls. Loons certainly do. Last night loons set up a call I haven’t often heard.  Clouds, driven by the strong south east wind had hidden the heavens. No Aurora Borealis tonight I thought as I readied myself for bed.

Then a loon, just feet from away from me, set up a haunting yodel. The tone at the start was conversational then rose to an echoing crescendo topped with a three note repeating whistle, not unlike the falsetto of a Swiss yodeler.  Another loon responded from the other side of the point, then another from farther away.  Soon there were dancing yodels filling the night with ethereal energy, northern lights in sound. 

The grey morning smelled sweetly of wild honeysuckle, a low growing shrub with creamy white flowers. Lightning flashed to the west and thunder resonated from island to island. I dressed in rain gear and as water heated for tea and my coffee thermos, I ensured the fly of the tent was fully secure in case of a wild storm. 

The tent blends into the island landscape

There is a light shower, then another, not changing the pattern of my morning routine or that of the water birds. Are they breaking their fast or have they fished on and off all through the night?  Perhaps the loons, but the terns I’m sure found somewhere to roost because I heard none of their explosive dives.  Now they are in full fishing mode, as are the Americans who I see heading south to the river.  Bears are no doubt fishing too. Walleye, Northern Pike, White fish and suckers will fill their bellies until  berries start ripening.

How much did earliest wo/man learn from watching the behavior of animals, I wonder? Did they learn from them which berries were safe to eat? Where fish gathered at certain times of year? Did they marvel how the loons’ yodel could communicate over long distances, and copy it?

Animals are companions to the solitary soul. Small birds trill and whistle as I write. As soon as one sets up a tent, there is always a squirrel to scold that she’ll tear your eyeballs out if you steal her winter stash. 

Ants are other creatures that share the campsite. Anywhere good enough to put up a tent is perfect for an ant colony. Ants ranging from nearly an inch through medium to miniscule share this patch.  Perhaps they work in concert with the squirrel to see no-one over stays their welcome. So far the wildlife is congenial and I wonder if my not having any idea what they think makes this comfort possible. Do we find our human neighbours sometimes difficult because we know their language and think we know them?  Is that why I feel freer in Mexico? Does communication bring its own complications? 

Gandhi said: “We find so many people inpatient to talk.  All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time.”

After breakfast of a hard cooked egg, rye bread, and an orange, I settle back to take in this space.  Facing south east, the shoreline of two intersecting islands surrounds me with a perhaps a hundred yards of water separating. Ham Island on which I am camped, was settled by a white man for whom the local native people took such dislike, they burned whatever cabin he put up, time and time again, until he brought a corrugated iron silo to use as a summer home.  Who knows what made him finally leave, but it has been abandoned for as long as we have known the beach.

Silo just visible through the trees

 Encircling this point are more islands, some a mile or more away, but close enough to obscure the greater part of the lake which opens up beyond them, virtually island free, to the southernmost shore. 

 This lake is partly in the Canadian Shield and partly in the limestone beds left by an ancient ocean that washed the shores of a land mass known as Laurentia. Lake Agassiz, a lake so vast it contained more water than in all the lakes currently on earth, spread north with the retreat of the glaciers, and as it diminished, eons later, left as a remnants of its passing, Amisk Lake. 

Rain drives me to the shelter of my tent where I page through personal journals from the past eight years. These contain Morning Pages, a product of The Artist’s Way, the first self help book I encountered that actually required me to DO something.  Morning Pages was one of the essentials, but what to do with page after page of angst and rumination?  Eight years ago I burned wads of that yellow blue-lined paper but still I carried on my morning writing and for whatever reason changed to hardbound then spiral bound notebooks. Finally I gave up altogether.  

There must be a word to describe the guilt felt by people who’ve given up on their self-help gurus. Or perhaps those who switch to self-help blogs feel no guilt, a bit like parishioners who swap churches because the minister is more dynamic in one than the other.

So I page through, picking out partially evolved poems and tidbits and crossing out page after page, wondering what good it has all done, and yet: I saw years ago how I poured my energy into projects that denied me time for my own pursuits, and here I am again: NorVA, Flin Flon’s Northern Visual Arts Centre – a wonderfully worthwhile and successful project which has swallowed every ounce of my energy and time, so much so that I have completed only one art project since returning from Mexico in February and have barely written anything but by-laws and grant applications. 

Is it religious or social indoctrination that makes the greater good trump my individual success, time and time again?  Am I alone in this?  I think perhaps not. Creatives have plenty of useful work to do at the foot of the ladder to success.

Back to leafing through my Morning Pages.  Tonight’s fire will light the heavens with my wails and supplications.

Rain keeps me in the tent most of the afternoon and I heat soup quickly over my trusty Featherlight camp stove. I eat in the shelter of a large spruce, in the company of a nest of ants. The rain lets up after 9 pm and the sun shows itself for the first time today as I head for bed, the smoke of smoldering pages following me.  

      

Friday June 15, 2012

Sunrise! Welcoming the sun is easy here. Tent fabric shows every nuance of light and I have naturally slipped into another circadian rhythm.  This place brings a deep and restful night’s sleep, making rising at the first hint of dawn a pleasure. 5.40 am and up comes the sun.

Rumi: We rarely hear the inward music, but we are all dancing to it nevertheless, directed by the one who teaches us, the pure joy of the sun, our music master.

On CBC Radio the other day, I heard an interview with a French choreographer whose ballet, Swan, combines live swans with dancers.  The swans have spent all their lives among dancers and move with them with apparent pleasure, but the essence of the dance, as the choreographer said, was reconnecting with our primitive core, an essential part of us, rarely acknowledged. 

Camping in a tent in the wilderness touches that core for many of us. There’s pleasure in thriving through the vagaries of weather and temperature, taking good care of one’s needs, because on them depend survival.  In camp the traits that annoy in civilized life, are valued: the early riser who sets the morning  fire is as valued as the night owl who allows the rest of the campers to drift off to peaceful slumber. 

Woman’s detail-oriented skills keep fire starters from moisture (how quickly I forgot how damp atmosphere alone can render matches useless!) keep food out of reach of night creatures (some rodent nibbled into my bread) and ensure bedding is perfectly dry for the night (scored 100% on that).  In a modern house, this fussiness can go wild, but in camp, enough is perfect. I never feel the sense of being caught between tasks and decisions which is a feature of being at home, full of its complicating necessities.

  

A big fish has jumped below here perhaps five times.  Now a tern has moved in. Perhaps he and the fish have the same small prey. The squirrel chatters.  What solitary creatures they are, protecting their territory as they do, though they certainly enjoy the company of dogs, taunting them to chase. Valuing solitude and company in balance: I am reading on my Kindle,  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

The air is still, the water moving barely perceptibly from the south west. A great bank of cloud is moving slowly towards the sun.  I will take my kayak south to Russell’s islands.

I left silo Beach with neighbours in hot dispute: Property lines or some such ignition point between squirrels. As the wind was freshening from the west, I paddled  the east shore of Iskwasoo (Bear) Island encountering the only heavy waves crossing the channel  to Chamney Island.  There I found a narrow pebble beach I’d noted last year, on the south west shore, where I stopped to see if there was a space in the dense forest beyond to pitch a tent. 

Not just a tent!  A rusted bed frame sat in a field of flowering bunch berries, an old fire circle close by.  The storm of last July had brought down balsams all around which gave the place a mournful air.  It is enough to put me off camping there, though the view is wide and wonderful, and who would not wish to sleep on a bed of flowers? 

Back at Silo beach after happy hours of exploring islands.  I found no better site than the rather precarious spot where I camped last year and the pebble beach. Though the islands are lovely, their shoreline change with the lake’s varied water levels. The variance can be four feet, quite altering the outline of the island, from one year to the next. What is an easy place to land a kayak one year, is problematical the next.  A spot where once you could pitch a tent is now under water.

The wind changed to the prevailing north westerly and I could see that several sites that might do for a camp were far too exposed.  On the way back I detoured to an unnamed island directly south west of Silo. It has a narrow neck which I crossed, battling through spindly and spiky branches of dead balsams, victorious to see the other side. The bay where I landed the kayak in is very pretty bay, with a pebble bottom making it easy to land.

 Kayaks are at their most unstable when embarking or disembarking, so a stable underwater surface makes all the difference. As I learned last year, a slippery rock is all it takes to topple and turtle the boat.

I’ve enjoyed tea and supper of re-heated chick pea tagine with quinoa – delicious.  Today a mix of sun and cloud was forecast and that’s what I had, perfect for paddling with just enough wind to generate merry waves and keep bugs at bay when on land. On the water mosquitoes are a no show, a good reason to go out in a boat. 

Now clouds are full of interest with rumbles of thunder from time to time. Squadrons of dragonflies course the shoreline. Perhaps I may be lucky and no weekend campers will brave the unsettled weather. None but the foolish or children plan for a swim. The water is barely above frigid. I brought my swim suit but the idea of full immersion has no appeal.  

Saturday June 16, 2012. 

Little evidence of sunrise today.  I woke to the patter of water droplets on the tent.  Shortly after six a.m I stuck my head out into the soft island morning and set water to boil. 

As I drink my tea, a couple of mosquitoes dance around me, like the thoughts of Mindfulness Meditation. They attempt a landing but KONK, the product every serious outdoors person uses on exposed skin these days, does its repellent job and sends them on their way. 

I sit under the spruce savouring a tea subtly different for being made with soft lake water. This spot has been a favoured tea stop from time immemorial for a good reason. The angle to the prevailing wind keeps insects to a minimum, and everything needed is right here: Paths stepped with spruce roots are easier for older bones to negotiate than slippery, uneven rocks; this low rock poking out of the sand ,must have been used for centuries as the fulcrum to snap driftwood for fires.  Sand, the perfect pot scourer, makes washing up easy and dish soap unnecessary. Yes I too would have been furious, when someone put a cabin here.

 Resentment simmered at observing the new fire circles in the centre of what were once tent spaces. Then a thought: for those sleeping with just a bedding roll, there’s ample space by the fire. The people who made those fires camp more simply than I. 

The same dark blue spray paint wrote “HAPPY” on one rock, and on a rock-face by the water, “LIVIN THE DREAM”. Sentiments I share. There are still several spots for little tents like mine and the whole beach for giant shade tents and multi-room dwellings. 

The sky is blue in the North West. Time I think to build a fire.  The final Morning Pages are ready to burn. As their pages curl into flame I feel released from a way of life that was beginning to oppress.  When I discovered the Artist’s Way I was in my forties, and the practices outlined were hugely helpful - then. The idea behind them is that in the morning, fresh from our dreams, our imagination is at a height. It is also when we are most willing to gripe about our life or go into flights of fantasy and possibility.

The author, Julia Cameron says:

 “A second, more important idea behind the morning pages… is that each time we submit our hopes, miseries, philosophy's and grand thoughts, we are also bearing witness to our individual selves…we become more "real" by putting ourselves in print. It is also a place to discuss issues that are bothering us and through the discussion the choices become clearer. It is also a place to jot down the minutia of passwords, telephone numbers, reliable handymen, upcoming appointments etc.”  

Ah yes, but where, dear Julia, do we find those passwords and phone numbers in that great unclassified library of outpourings we have created? 

As W.B. Yeats said, the gyre moves on and what worked then doesn’t now. I’m grateful but not so in love I’m going to hang on grimly to something that’s not working. Burn baby burn, and make coals to cook my breakfast.

The simplest camp foods for me are leftovers packed in small plastic bags which I keep frozen in a tiny cooler.  Remains of meals too small to feed Buz and I are quickly frozen. I bring extras for emergencies which if unused can be thrown away with no loss. 

Pancakes are popular camp breakfasts, but transporting oil, mixing pots and the dish washing that brings! Who needs that, just for one person? Leftover oatmeal and pecan pancakes, toasted over the fire and topped with a mix of applesauce and hemp seed: Heavenly, eaten in the spruce gazebo with a flask of coffee at my side.

Spruce gazebo

The sun breaks through and I set off to bag the beer cans I’ve collected in heaps. Lately as I pick up litter, I’ve started to think of the practice as penance. What for? You may ask. I make the assumption that the litterers, particularly in the case of the beer cans, are men. As a mother of sons raised through the seventies and eighties, I owe amends for the child rearing practices my generation of mothers thought so right at the time. We were slow to recognize the value of male nature, and tried to inculcate the feminine, thinking it was somehow more correct. Only after my sons left home did I come to understand the male need for the challenge of danger, risk taking, testing their wits and mettle in games and role playing, not just for their sense of identity, but their survival through war, for war at times is unavoidable. 

In the sixties and seventies both wars informing my life view, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe, were undeniably wrong and because they were wrong, I thought all war a mistake, something that should never happen.  But wars are sometimes essential, for societies have to defend themselves. 

Like it or not, we know for the most part, this job will fall on our men’s shoulders. Little boys know it, heaven knows how, while we mothers undermine their toughness by making playgrounds and their whole lives safe if we could. Not to mention zero tolerance and all that zero-thinking logic suggests. 

As I crush cans under my boot I wonder if the fire pits, all in their individual spots, were for some aboriginal group. Now there arises another whole area of penance. The generations affected by residential schools, the aculturalization based on a belief that “being just like us” would be good for them. The results of the self-righteousness of my kind, is evident in the courts, on street corners, in crack houses and fighting drunkenly on sidewalks. What can ever make amends for that abyss of grief? Picking up garbage is as insignificant an action as fingering beads on a rosary. 

There is no doubt Christianity brought something positive to these parts. The basic tenets of Moses and Jesus provide much the same essentials as Aristotle laid down in his dialogue on eudomia: essential rules a society needs to ensure its members can thrive. However, amendments added by later followers to the base of wisdom often makes for something not all that useful. 

When an individual discovers something that works for them, they can’t wait to share it and at first this can be mutually helpful. But then the author finds themselves elevated to guru status and newer followers want formulas.  Rules and strictures begin accumulating and then its buyer beware in the realm of snake oil salesman! But do we learn?  Once extricated from one snake pit we go enthusiastically convinced into another. Communism, animal rights, environmentalism, diet, exercise, Occupy Wall Street: who knows when the next sensible idea will mutate into a dogmatized religion which can oppress its converts?

Sun and blue sky brightens up the forenoon and I bathe in a rocky step on the water’s edge below my tent. This tent space is quite the penthouse suite of Silo Beach. At the start of the path going up to it, is the Brew ha!ha! tree sign, which is akin to Bruha meaning witch in Spanish. As I bathe I think of my camp spot as perfect for witches; older women who like to take in both sunset and sunrise; who like to discretely bathe on the sheltered side of the island, their wrinkling skin warmed by the crystal sunlight of a June morning.  Splashing naked on the beach is best kept for younger bodies. 

I start packing up: first deflating my new Thermarest mattress – a masterpiece of camping engineering.  How anything so compact and self inflating can be luxuriously deep and so gentle on the bones! Another example of engineering genius: the kayak which takes all my stuff with no perceptible change to the ease with which it rides the waves.  I raise my mug of tea to its long forgotten designer.

It feels good, relaxing into departure. I pack a little, write a little, add garbage to the fire and plan so unpacking at home will be quick. Sun comes and goes, clouds patterning the island with moving shadows.  Butterflies gather on wet sand.

In Walden Pond Thoreau says the lake is nature’s eye through which the viewer can see themselves reflected.  My solo paddles around Amisk Lake have helped me get acquainted with myself more accurately than regular early morning writing ever has.

In this Eden I can name each tree, shrub, bird, fish, rock, reed, fern and lichen, this naming essential to make this part of the world my home. My origins have often labeled me an outsider. After thirty years of walking the trails, kayaking these lakes and giving to my  community, it’s about time I accept my own belonging.

Amisk Lake is my dancing partner: these waters give me balance, sway me gently with a joyful sense of play and reckless joy. The lake  gives me space for reflection, time to digest all that pours into my mind from the barrage out there, peace to digest conversations, ideas that are like the waves of the North Chanel, almost overwhelming at times. Then the lake gives me respite, a sheltered bay to regain my breath and my senses, to face the wind again.