What they miss on a Muskoka walk – I cherish with all my heart

I can’t remember one moment in my life thus far, (51 years in this body anyway) when I have found it tiresome to be in the company of unspecified enchantment(s). My mother once said to me that I looked at life through the eyes of an artist, and wrote with the heart of the poet. We count on mothers to say things like this, during moments of frustration and discontent. She had high hopes that I would eventually become a best selling author for all my hours spent huddled over the typewriter. Maybe I should be disappointed I haven’t achieved great acclaim as an author, yet as I’ve written frequently in these blog submissions, at the very least, “I’ve led a writer’s life.” By this I mean, my enterprise of immersion, observation and perpetual wonderment at all things surrounding me, has been reward enough for my toil in the profession.
I’ve sought it out. As a child, wandering the Burlington ravine where Ramble Creek meandered through the thickets of live and decaying vegetation, toward the stone-laden waterfront of Lake Ontario, I quested for signs of the “fantastic,” every step I took. I watched carefully for signs of ghosts and wee beasties lurking in the cavernous and dark places under outstretched boughs, and in the morning shadows fingering along the creek bed. I kept an open mind about such paranormal stuff through every play moment and creek-side frolic. I was allowed to freely wander the sun bathed lowland of my Burlington neighborhood. I was in paradise. A place of grand stimulation to every molecule of untapped imagination; a place to explore where nothing was entirely as it appeared, and magic was cast about like the sunglow dazzling down through the canopy of hardwoods, like gold veins exposed across the forest floor.
In my early days, wandering with a gypsy’s heart, I knew that my truest satisfaction on any day, was to be amongst these soft, thriving ferns; in the midst of the cheerful melody of windsong and waterfall, and the trickle of the shallow creek’s flow over the exposed flat rocks that made a perfect bridge from here to there,…. on the way to nowhere in particular. It didn’t matter to me that this little wooded ravine was in the midst of an expanding, soon-to-be city, Burlington, and that one day it would be stripped of its vegetation and replaced by an urban jungle. I was too young to know about urban sprawl but astute enough to find the importance of memorizing the experience, as if a mural study of the way things used to be here in paradise lost.
I don’t take anything for granted around me these days, especially those values of Muskoka community life I happen to adore. Change is rampant here now, and it seems that everything I have particular admiration for, gets gobbled up or knocked down sooner (than aspects I deplore), by the eroding wave of progress. I’m always making mental notes I suppose, although it’s not what I intend to do when I set out to walk the mainstreet, or sit in Gull Lake Park for a summer concert night on The Barge; one of the most fascinating, beautiful nights of entertainment you can spend in my hometown. I guess to some degree, I even worry about losing The Barge concert series, should political will to preserve it diminish in any way. I hate losing precious traditions, and sources of inspiration, and for my wife and I, spending our Sunday nights through the summer at Gull Lake Park, has become an end-all to a summer well spent.
As I used to wander and dawdle along the Ramble Creek ravine, seeking out every vestige of mystery and magic, I’m not much different today, as I amble slowly along my daily path from home to mainstreet and back. As a writer who frequently feels cursed by creative enterprise, I confess to observing my surroundings as almost a last will and testament, as if every venture could be the last biographical chapter. I worry a lot about Muskoka’s welfare these days and with considerable justification.
I have pondered many times that it would be helpful at times, to be able to turn off the adventurer’s quest of discovery, and just take an uncompromised, otherwise unremarkable walk. At no sacrifice of enjoyment of course. Alas, it is not possible. Just as it was impossible as a youngster to separate thoughts of the fantastic from the clear context and knowledge of reality. I could of course see each leaf and fern for what it was in nature,…. yet I never doubted these same plants could be the protective shelter from daylight, for Queen Mab and the midnight revel of fairies and their kind.
Think of me as foolish and disconnected from the mainstream of observation and dissection but I steadfastly fall upon the advice of author Washington Irving, who worried about the failings of tradition and lore by the exposure of precise science upon all the mysteries of existence. He wrote about the dissection of the elements of nature, in order to identify what properties of nature give and extend life. While not dismissing the relevance of science and its exactness to help man fully appreciate nature, he cautioned that it was important as well, to possess equally, the elements of intrigue that stir our imaginations from complacent thought. Iriving thought life would be a dull existence without the fantasy of keen imagination and expectation; a poor partner however, of this new study of life science. Afterall, what would the scientist, even today, say to the keeper of lore, who believes with heart and soul that fairies still haunt the woodlands.
If you, for example, stand out in this moor I call The Bog, for even a short period of time, you can imagine all sorts of mysterious events and sounds unfolding in dark, heavily wooded pockets of the gently contoured earth. When the crows are agitated in the early morning here at Birch Hollow, it’s as if they’re chattering about my intrusive footfall…. the unwelcome watcher in the woods. They will flutter noisily overhead as distraction, and perch directly above and “caw” with a ripping reprimand for the voyeur’s unwelcome entry into their domain. At once you take notice and look up, and recognize you are being closely watched by a half dozen wise old crows possessing the treetops. There are strange natural sounds the traveler tries to identify, as coming from friend or foe. There is a tree for example, that has made the most curious ticking, knocking sound for the past two years, and I have yet to appreciate why it emits any sound at all. Even after close inspection, all I can attest is that it is a “noisy” tree. Enchanted? Possibly! It ticks away whether in wind or the still evening air, yet there is not overlapping branches or tree top that would explain the rhythmic tapping all day long.
Throughout the day these often subtle enchantments will carry-on, defying the observer to identify the precise cause. The change of light and intensity, from morning until moonlight bathes across the scene, always manifests a profound change of mood, reflected by a certain fear and trembling of all mortals in its embrace. I cherish my walks in these haunted woods.
I can’t imagine even one day spent separated from this over-active imagination of mine. I couldn’t survive for one day without the company of expectation and passion for exploration; whether it is a pleasant stroll from snowy churchyard to corner store, or hike along the lakeshore to the pinnacle of cliff that affords such a startling view of golden sunset on a tranquil bay. I would be lonely indeed, without the partnership of enchantment, that challenges me each day, to look beyond the obvious, and regale the natural and the supernatural, as I benefit from the beat of a heart; alas I’m have remained the captive of childhood wonderment, of which I’m happy to remain thusly fettered.
Think back to that wild imagination you had as a kid. Now go and find it again, give it a good shake, and make up for lost time. Being young at heart isn’t just a cliché. It’s the science of emotion. Life’s too beautiful to be under-explored.
Thanks for participating in this blog adventure at Birch Hollow, Muskoka. More to come.