At 543 metres, Silver Peak isn’t the highest of mountains. Even the word “mountain” sounds like a bit of stretch. But it is the highest point in Killarney Provincial Park and offers breathtaking panoramic views of the La Cloche range, the closest we get to mountains here in Ontario.
I lower my canoe into the water at the end of a short portage from Ruth-Roy Lake into Johnnie, and it takes me a few minutes to register how smooth the water is. Every time I paddled Johnnie Lake in the last couple of days, it was choppy with a generous helping of a strong side wind. This unexpected calmness looks like a minor miracle; I do a quick happy dance. The night before I passed beautiful cliffs but couldn’t pause for photos for fear of being turned back or, worse, flipped over. With waters finally calm, I decide to take a quick detour from my trip back to the parking lot and make a stop by those cliffs for a few shots. The sky doesn’t look particularly supportive of this endeavour. Dark and heavy with copious amount of tears, it is threatening to unleash its pent-up sadness at any moment. I know rain is inevitable; I just hope it will hold off for another 30 minutes or so.
My attempt to ‘outpaddle’ rain to get a few photos of the cliffs on Johnnie Lake fails spectacularly.
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
L.M. Montgomery
Last week, I went for a walk in a nearby park during my lunch hour. It was a beautiful day with summer-like temperatures but the first signs of fall were already present: that earthy smell, the crunch of the first fallen leaves, yellows and reds breaking through the shield of green. That’s when it suddenly hit me that it was already October. I did know the date, of course, after all I have a calendar at work but I’d never fully processed it. Ever since we came back from our road trip, I was thrown in the work vortex . Plus with the deadline for a translation project I am working on fast approaching, the month of September flew by. If it wasn’t for a request to record my favourite summer memory for CBC Radio and to write a piece for Parks Blogger Ontario about the best places to see fall colours, I doubt I would have registered the change of seasons.
A lack of nature was beginning to take its toll, so needless to say I was excited about the upcoming long weekend and our trip to Killarney.
Gone Camping 