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.