Sense of Place - Bon Echo Provincial Park

I have always been deeply affected by the natural environment in which I exist; only I failed to cognitively make that connection until recent years. I recall a very specific moment wherein I peered across a flat, desolate field being prepared for residential development and felt utterly uninspired.  My mind then succumbed to its natural inclination to reflect on what does offer inspiration. The strength and courage of the people that surround me.  My adoration for the written word and respect for the lyrical genius of others.  The relentless desire a child holds to please their parents. The inborn need of a parent to protect their child. Yet, while inspiration is found in many places, nothing influences my actions or motivates me in a way that the natural landscape does. It speaks to me intimately and engagingly, teasing and soothing concurrently. 

When I summon up memories and revel in recollections, it is never without a beautifully illustrated backdrop. The colours, the textures, the contours are often more prominent than the moments themselves. When I need to escape the tedious details and obligations of life, I place myself upon the lakes of Algonquin, atop Bon Echo Rock or travelling along the dusty rural back roads of Eastern Ontario.

I fully understand my attachment to and affection for Bon Echo. Situated on the Canadian Shield, this provincial park is where I spent every year of my childhood and willingly return to each year as an adult. Dominated by the mixed deciduous and coniferous forest common to much of central Ontario, the park's most notable feature is Bon Echo rock, a huge granite cliff rising 90 metres above Mazinaw Lake. Arousing the creative inclinations of artists and poets alike for over a century, its face bears a captivating memorial to the late Walt Whitman, while the frequent rock outcroppings and mixed forests shelter the spiritual importance of its aboriginal etchings.

I derive profound comfort from the knowledge that aside from the Great Lakes, Mazinaw is the deepest lake in Ontario. Contemplating the depths of the lake and the life found within never fails to fill me with a sense of childlike wonder.  Each summer I can be found at least once, with my canoe floating effortlessly across the gentle waves, my paddle still, as I lean over the gunwale and try to see the bottom of the lake. I stare intently as life moves below me and conjure up all kinds of stories of the treasures that lie along the floor, of the many lives that have been taken by the lake’s wrath, of the many tears that have been shed into the waters by forsaken lovers. 

My adoration of this wonderful expanse of tranquility in southeastern Ontario began as my life did. The cries of my infancy echoed amongst the same forest that now echoes equally my adult laughter and my moments of silent contemplation. Here, I am at peace. A peace that knows me and welcomes me back each season.

Algonquin owns a part of me.

The draw of Algonquin Provincial Park, the constant pulling on my mind, my soul, my emotions, runs deeper than that which is comprehensible. It is not something I know or understand, it is something I feel. I wake often in the midnight of an urban winter to the sound of the frosted winter wind blowing through the barren trees atop Booth’s Rock. I hear the crack of the ice atop Whitefish Lake as it succumbs to thermal stresses. I feel the icy touch of the Algonquin wind as it dances across my bare shoulders. While wrapped in a cocoon of cotton and sheltered by the sturdy walls of my home that contain forced heat, I long for the deep cold of Algonquin.

Algonquin fills me with desire. The desire to play amongst Algonquin forests, to paddle its sweet, sweet lake waters and swim from its Islands. Not a day passes where my mind doesn’t travel down Highway 60, past the gates that mark the entrance to heaven on earth and into a place of profound comfort. A place where the world simply feels right. A place where the stars align to guide weary travellers.

A dark, star filled sky is how I describe Algonquin to those never welcomed to its bosom. A black canvas on which constellations dance to the haunting, romantic wail of the master of the northern waters. The vocal blessings of the loon accompanied by the chorus of the forest, the aria of the wilderness. This beautiful song that is the spirited call of the Loon echoes the call of my soul to the heart of the universe. A beckoning for understanding and forgiveness of self.

I vividly recall the first loon I heard in Algonquin. I remember how dark and still and silent the night was, a storm approaching, the forest ill at ease. The scent of imminent rains carried on the winds of warning. Algonquin is no stranger to violently destructive windstorms and can sense the approach of this acquaintance as much as you or I would a stranger at our door. All things wild brace themselves and scurry into their shelters for protection. The loon however, sailed across the blackened sky, singing. The flight of a loon is decidedly distinctive, strong, direct and rapid.

It’s song even more so.

The scream of the loon, uttered at evening, or on the approach of a storm, has to my ear, an unearthly and mournful tone resembling somewhat the distant howl of a wolf. It is a penetrating note, loud and weird, delivered with a prolonged rising inflection, dropping at the end.