20 May

A new dawn, a fresh Canadian morning, overcast skies now departed.

I start the day in silent rapture, stirring my soul and stirring my porridge on the banks of Lake Superior, grateful for mild anhydrous conditions.

My sled takes me due north, and I pull in at at Agona Bay. Outside the Vistor Centre, a handwritten sign urges: ‘Ask us about bears!’

Why it had to be scrawled in blood-red marker pen is beyond me.

I don’t know who or what to ask about bears, so instead I pay an entrance fee to tour the unmissable interactive exhibition.

I learn about the power of the lake, in French. And I see a diminutive lighthouse reconstruction, to rival the novelty ones at Kagawong and Lion’s Head.

Stunned by the presence of so many people wandering around the same exhibition space (seven, maybe eight? … where did they all come from … ?), I escape up the road to Katherine Cove, for a stroll around the shoreline to nearly end up underwater, swimming with the fishes.

This I figure is the result of a long drawnout winter … the heavy snow melting and darting furiously towards the lake, raising the water level, inconveniently submerging all of the waterside hiking trails.

There is an unexpectedly large billion-year-old boulder in the bay – I guess it moved in when no-one was looking.

Orphan Lake Trail is a hike around an inferior lake, through thick forest, around the pebbly beach to the superior lake.

Returning in an inland direction, here is a grown man waist-deep in the drink, fishing for answers, politely watched over by his obedient hound.

The air remains calm and still until my presence is felt, at which point that hound mutates into a wolf-dog, turning the air several shades of blue in an uninhibited canine swearing meltdown. The owner is nonplussed. Or unconscious; maybe I should have checked.

Beyond the rude awakening, a narrow metal bridge leads me to perpendicular cliffs, gliding eagles, racing waterfalls, still trees. Trees, trees … endless trees. All covered in bark and shedding leaves.

Tiny unknown birds dart between them, skilfully swerving this way and that in less than the blink of an eye. And always avoiding a head-on collision with a tree trunk … I don’t know how they do that.

From the Orphan Trail to Old Woman Bay … and I can’t see her / will never see her. I think this Old Woman has gone away, gone fishing.

The old Group of Seven (Canada’s Got Talent winners, 1927) took a jolly excursion here on their push-pull trolley-train – maybe they could see her. If I’d brought my easel and a blank canvas, I’d paint something out on the spot, making it all up as I go along.

On the beach, dogs.

And groups of bodies sauntering along under their own steam, under the clear blue sky.

I leave temporarily, only to spy the Nokomis Trail on the other side of the highway, forcing me to immediately reconsider my afternoon options. I’m going up that damn trail!

And I don’t know where I’m going … I just follow the open path into the circular trail, which is one-way only, and hard work most of the time.

Occasional snow stacks hold deep and fast in dark corners of the guilty rocks, in places where the sun can’t reach.

In vague light, gully corridors transporting distant traces of activity: outlying human voices, muted dog yelps, a bear cry.

Ramshackle bridges, secret streams, muddy tracks, louder voices.

Then into a clearing and a dramatic view (trees), to chance upon a collection of people; one of whom jumps distinctly on mistaking me for a bear. Which is the first time that’s ever happened.

These are Wawa people, one dog down – hence the infrequent shouts and muffled screams I’ve been gleaning intermittently on my way up here.

Even so, we’re all very laid back … for this is one hell of a room with a view, gazing out from the suspended bluff and over the neverending woodland in front of us.

Forget the lost dog, let’s take some photos!

Even the locals here are so knocked out by the scenery that they temporarily don’t give two shits about their toils and strains and godforsaken endeavours. Or their pets.

And yes this is another huge forested expanse; how many trees can one country hold?

On a clear Spring day, I meet Autumn on the tricky climb down. Autumn is suddenly very attractive in the middle of a perfect Spring day – especially so for going against the grain and sticking two fingers up to the one-way system, ha!

I secretly hope I might see Autumn again some day.

Absentmindedly, I practically topple down the mountain, pretty much head over heels, in complete ignorance of the nature around me.

And I forget to look out for the lost dog; but by the time I reach the trail’s end, I don’t recall any canine interventions.

Instead I see an actual human being, with a beard, making a lot of effort to drag himself along the Trans Canada Highway.

He’s going so slow I wonder where he’s aiming for tonight – it’s practically walking speed and we’re miles from anywhere. But hey, don’t mind me while I take a photo of you from among the shrubbery, like a Scooby-Doo paparazzo.

Wawa is one for the birds, it’s to the birds; and I motor on down through an out-of-town housing estate to the first reserve, to an outpost on the edge of an Ontario landscape.

Where tonight I’m gonna be a Rock Lodger … Here comes a stingray / There goes a manta ray.

Seems that everyone’s out on the rocks, baking in the sun.

Then Andrea appears, who is a little over-excited about my made-up pretend story of a journey; so too is Evan, when he realises I started this trip two doors down from where he lives in Barrie.

In the meantime, Andrea is showing me around this goddamn beautiful rocky outcrop … and my thought is – this is probably all wallpaper to her.

Still, Andrea seems to remain low-level giddy at what I’m doing, which is not the first time I’ve been surprised at the excitement other people have for my exploits.

I’m doing what I’m doing, what I need to do; I’ve climbed down from the hamster wheel and I’ve wandered away. I’m disowning the life template (I try to persuade myself). And I’ve landed in the near-perfect place today.

Turns out so have the geese, although they’re a few miles away, just outside of downtown.

One is trying to escape the General Store (frozen in a goldrush), and the vintage fire engine (frozen in the fire), while another is trying to flee the Visitor Centre, and ha! We’ve all been there, my feathered friend.

In actual downtown – no geese, and apparently no life.

Except for Joy, the Super Heavyweight Champion, a big red phallic bore, stuck by the crumbling path which I can only think is closed for leisure pursuits and maybe that’s why Joy is here.

I reason I’m not safe being here alone with Joy, just the two of us, and so retreat immediately to the nearest Caribbean-Chinese-Austrian restaurant I can find which overlooks some fjords – Kinniwabi Pines, through the trees on the far side of town.

A Texas-registered car and a solar-powered two-wheeled push-scooter are loitering outside in the parking lot, making for a strange gathering.

I go inside and of course I order the veal schnitzel, which I then eat happily in front of Rich the Vegan – who it transpires is the bearded man on the two-wheeler I spied from the roadside earlier today.

He is pushing himself across the country in three months, at little more than walking pace, to meet philistines like me. Spends his time saving dogs, yet rode straight past a stray one only hours earlier.

I am then invited to go shooting in July with this man, a bewhiskered vegan on a scooter originally from Leicester. This is turning into a strange day.

Once Rich has paid his bill and left (actually, Texas pays his bill for him), the restaurant owner proceeds to tell me, in advancing fits of repressed giggles, about her very first night in Wawa, surrounded by brawny firefighters.

Turns out that while she was busy admiring them from afar, pining after them from a newfound neighbour’s house, watching them speed down the street collecting more and more husky firemen as they went … it was her own burning house they were racing to.

Twenty years later, I’m glad she can laugh and howl about this now, with a stranger from Lancashire.

Wawa people, Wawa stories. I will eat here again.

But what was the soup about?

So here I am giggling along with the most entertaining restaurant owner from Trinidad that I’ve ever met, right by a breathtaking series of swollen rapids in the heart of Canada, in a town that seems to worship geese (in particular, three big plastic ones), opposite the White Fang Motel, where a vegan from Leicester on a custom-built Finnish push-scooter is staying, who likes to save dogs in South Korea.

It’s all I can do to retreat to the Rock Island Lodge, to slurp down a cannette with a slightly stunned expression – the kind you generally only see on stuffed animals – in the same room as a contented pug from Toronto who is enjoying a roaring fire, all of the time doing my level best to process everything that has just happened in the last two hours.

While I’m supping away, I’m being recommended things and places in faraway lands from fellow lodgers – all the time thinking … I need to get myself outside pronto and absorb that sunset!

In the process of which, I inadvertently roam straight into a video being shot on the rocks by an Argentinian couple.

To cap all of this moderate weirdness off, I rip open the fortune cookie I was given earlier at Kinniwabi Pines.

In strikingly elaborate font, it states: “You add an aesthetic quality to everything you do”.

Sometimes, I can’t even compete with myself.