A trip into the inner parts of Aiguebelle provincial park, to meet French-speaking Doris – who doesn’t speak a word of English – and her giggling companion (nameless, who does).
I’m grateful for the lift they give me along broken-up tracks to an empty car park, as it saves me a slightly dull half hour slog.
Jolting around the shabby and dusty crew cab, with Doris’s colleague in the bed out the back, we’re diving in and out of potholes, and yet I’m like an excited dog with it’s tongue out and it’s tail wagging uncontrollably.
This is what happens when I spend a good 36 hours in complete isolation, in my remote cabin by the lake, under a rain cloud.
So I smile and nod and say “Oui” to all of the things that Doris says to me in French, even though I’ve barely any idea what Doris is saying to me.
It’s quite possible as I exit her Ford Ranger that I’ve just admitted to multiple abhorrent crimes, which may well be reported as soon as Doris tracks down a mobile signal, or finds a landline.
I reason I should be safe for a few hours. So for now … walkies!
At least I can pad off down the track with a keen sense of smell and no sense of direction. I ain’t nothing but a hound dog.
I scamper on down to Les Paysages, a snowy trail which leads through dense trees, across broken-up bridges suspended over busy streams, to the top of a sheer drop, only to fall down in circles around and around the vertical spiral staircase … an alien mechanism, this – at odds with the surrounding landscape, as if it’s just fallen out of a passing plane and planted itself against a tall cliff.
Feels almost like a 19th century theme park attraction – Vertigo – one for folk who wear bonnets and never smile and see everything in black and white.
I go around and around the pole to down below (ground level?), where the environment suddenly overtakes me and appears in front of me: spinning, in vivid colours.
Who needs hallucinogens, after a bracing trip with French-speaking Doris and her giggling companion, followed by a tumble down a spiral staircase?
Logs now piling up in the lake, threatening to submerge the wooden walkways and why can’t we all swim like beavers and my thought is: I will not turn around today.
This monsieur is not for turning. I will sink before I turn around.
Persevering with my allegedly waterproof body to get glimpses of front-cover glossy magazine snapshots of jawdropping scenery, via the lost track which plays hide-and-seek with me.
I enjoy a lookout as much as the next person, and today is little exception.
Except on turning around, here is danger – loitering on the rocks, above the wooden staircase (this one slightly more conventional than the spiral one).
A woodland crime scene in front of me beckons.
In the narrow ravine, there must be a good ten feet of months-old snow.
Before I push on, I give myself some curious advice: watch out for banana skins.
Which is possibly as bananas a thought as any I’ve ever had … I’m about to strike out through ten feet of heavy snow …
But the earth is an animal – so I’ve read – and the animal instinct in me sees me through, unbelievably; sniffing out prey while I’m at it.
Nothing gives, my senses low; my cheese sandwich will have to do.
I am a pioneering fool, a sacred mule perhaps, albeit one with a first aid kit and an emergency butter tart (should things go seriously wrong).
The trees don’t think much about this – they stand there mainly silent, occasionally creaking and sometimes swaying. Always present, always rooted; at various angles too, not just ninety degrees as you’d expect.
They very definitely Know Things, these trees. And they’ll outlive us all, which is annoying to say the least.
Up ahead, Lac du Sablon. And a wish that I am the only person in the world too see this view today, which is certainly possible given that I’ve only seen two people today: French-speaking Doris and her giggling companion.
I drink in the view – with an obligatory brew – and arrive at the realisation … I don’t want or need anything; never want again, or need again.
Apart from my rental car, which I could do with seeing again at some point reasonably soon.
Alone, around the bend, with small comforts enveloping me from the low-level hum of the gigantic forest. And I’m only touching the surface here.
I feel like my surroundings pitch me into some kind of serene calm … if only the phony future weren’t constantly kicking me up the arse.
The future very kindly takes me to my picnic table on the rocky promontory outside my log cabin by my private lake, to drink in the scene with the Nightwatcher (a dark stout), watching the beavers work the waters: back and forth, back and forth; me smiling at the fact that we have so much in common.
Like – adapting our environment to suit our needs (although they don’t need to know that I’ve paid to be here – on credit – to do this).
In the midst of all this, the daily symphony of an avian cacophany starts up. Just who is conducting this circadian orchestra?
At various points, this barber shop chorus of airborne car alarms is interrupted by an even louder pair of ducks crossing the lake.
And I think … if only French-speaking Doris and her giggling companion were here right now, the lot of us exchanging our bon mots over the most warming and glorious of fires, collapsing into hysterics under the clear night sky.
Alas, I raise a glass instead to the peaceable moon, pegged as it is to a corner of the outer atmosphere, snuff out my tepid fire, and retire shivery but content – and with a smile – to my singular sleeping-bag quarters.
An Outside World 