Sherri the Kool Kat emerges into a new day wrapped in a home-knit cardigan, effortlessly smiling and giggling at my otherwise banal pleasantries from under a halo of smoke.
It’s all I can do to salute Sherri and Mark as I drive off in my rental car, for being such saintly and exquisitely offbeat innkeepers.
Before leaving town, my Lynchian hallucinations continue up on the Bridal Veils path, where Max Monroe is waiting to tell me his life story and sell to me the benefits and advantages of hydro-electric power and show to me the machinery which enables this, which to me looks like a very big yellow metal blob in the middle of a dark and dusty room.
He points out the small blue round door, through which some poor character crawls to clear out all of the twigs and leaves (a Lilliputian person, or maybe just the man from another place).
He doesn’t let me cross the door line, for a closer look, “for insurance purposes”.
Why is he telling me all of this and why did he wander up to me as if he was expecting me are the questions flitting around my mind and through the surrounding trees as I nod my head at all the technical words and industrial processes I’m pretending to understand.
There follows a brief lecture on jealousy. Yet I think it may well be envy and other sins I’m being briefed upon.
This man Max is the manager / PR / engineer and yep he loves it all of the time, sledding it down the hill to his hydro-electric cave by the rapids.
When someone crosses his path, words topple and fall from out of his mouth almost like the waterfall itself.
I’m doing my damnedest to stop it, yet the flow is relentless and incessant until we reach the point where we call it quits because it’s time for breakfast – brunch actually – and we finally leave each other to move on with our lives in very different directions.
On my return along the very same path, an inquisitive local stops to quiz me about where I’m from.
Prepared for this, I wheel out all the trite old shite about the places I’m come from and a selection of the Things I’ve Seen. But not why I’m here; never why I’m here.
At the harbour, single men are fishing for alewives, which trust me is not as bizarre as it sounds if you’ve seen the things I have. Possibly it’s all pipe dreams, I don’t know.
My thoughts go back to the start of my trip, to Barrie and the Flying Monkeys, and their proclamation that normal is weird – which is indeed coming to pass … in spades, in fishing rods, in flashing lights.
Me, I’m up in the clouds and heading off to Little Current, which is a gas station and some retail stores by a single-lane swing bridge, connecting the island to the mainland at most times of day.
I dive off that century-old iron bridge and straight onto the Trans Canada Highway … yeah!
Big rigs and camper vans and lesser-spotted tourists in rental cars; locals occasionally dropping in from stage-left to say hello / wave goodbye.
For no good reason, I take my lunch at Kensington Point, where a busy boatyard is looking over to St Joseph Island and wondering what the hell’s going on over there … everyone goes there no-one comes to see me.
Today, you have visitors.
I’m setting up my own outpost for one – right here, right now! Cheese sandwiches and potato chips and butter tarts for no-one except me.
Back on the road, in and around Big Soo on the multi-lane highway, interrupted regularly by inconveniently-placed ninety-degree corners, stopping briefly for supplies in the hypermarket / food mart / grocery store … whatever the hell they call it, after the last few days a trip here is like a trip to Mars.
Within half an hour, the blue sky overhead shows me the way to Harmony Beach and my hidden cabin for the next few nights.
Unexpectedly, and immediately, I surrender myself to Robin, and together we hike up the secret mountain around the back of her house (crossing the TCH as we go).
We’re following ribbons and markers and how is Robin doing this while holding a goddamn hot cup of coffee is beyond me. I am a mere amateur, following.
Carrying around my deadweight backpack, wearing my fleece and cagoule in the never-brighter sunshine which makes me feel a creeping sense of unbelonging, or at least a partial fraud.
There is much up here to admire, and it’s warmer no doubt the higher you go – this much is obvious.
When we wake up and abandon the coffee, the scrambling starts. I am not a rock-climber, I casually divulge to Robin, as we clamber higher and higher.
Through false starts and along non-existent paths, with my accomplice telling me to follow the coloured ribbons that I put there.
At several stages I’m leading the way, having fallen victim to an illusory superiority.
Up a mountain I never knew existed and would never have known existed, had Robin not suggested when I arrived: shall we go for a hike what a lovely day I’ll go and put my serious gear on.
Yes, I said – it was the easiest word to say.
And now at the highest peak (unverified), we are suddenly way above the treetops and gazing down on the Trans Canada snaking along the Lake Superior shoreline; in the other direction, an expanse of forest and hidden life and bird calls and mystery and other peaks undiscovered.
We go to this hidden place, where we then spend ten minutes thinking about not very much, thinking about fuck all apart from the grandeur of the view in front of us.
Also that I’m pleased I’m up here with a near-perfect stranger who is letting me stay in her self-described cosy cabin around the side of her lakefront home and who seems to believe I’m a strong hiker like what?
On the scramble back down, we lose our way many times. At various stages, we’re going back UP the freaking mountain.
Clear to see who’s in charge around here, no matter how many strips of ribbon you tie around the all-knowing trees.
At lake-level, everyone knows I’m here to start fires … er, yeah, I know how to start a fire … I’m a real man beating my chest every morning and drinking strong ale out of a horn every fricking evening, and in between listening to Megadeth and Slayer and Sepultura, etc.
So I light my first fire, toast it with a brew, then let it fizzle out – I have a Fish Fryday supper to get me to, along the sand-strewn shoreline to the RV park, the cowboy lounge, the salad bar.
Robin has recommended the fish special (“if there’s a special, always take it!”) and the high-as-a-kite waitress takes her / my order. For refreshment, I get a dirty beer.
Suddenly the whole room gets up as one, to load up on pasta salads and piquant peppers … yeah we’ll beat the system!
We have hooned it here in our Chevrolet and GMC trucks, for many lake-caught pieces of whitefish, served up with the obligatory fresh-cut fries … which will never ever never ever be anywhere close or even in the same province as my Mudtown fries from down south in Owen Sound.
And in my eyes you can fresh-cut whatever the hell you want … I don’t care, it’s not a benefit, you’re not selling it – it’s pris-inclusive and why is there never any mashed potato anyway?
Propped at the bar, the mandatory old-boy regular with the John Deere cap and the grizzled face, surveying the scene with apparently no bourbon and in fact no drink at all – what does a guy have to do to get served around here I wonder … how many years has he been waiting?
I think I may have fallen into a film scene again.
With my cowboy boots on, I exit after paying (cash), through the very same set of doors I flung open around about one hour earlier, silencing the extras who were placed here for my benefit.
Over to the beach and a lakeside sunset which is an extended version of some reality, dousing the water and smothering the headlands either side in a gradual advancement of increasingly fiery colours.
And my thought is – I’m glad I’m not colourblind.
It’s only right to stand here motionless, gawping at this in some kind of dazed wonder, clutching a tin of soup and occasionally taking a long drag slurp into another world.
When starry skies cover this whole, I take my dark life back to my cabin.
Inside is an aura so thick it makes my eyes hurt.
Despite which, I sail effortlessly into sleep.
An Outside World 