MUSKOKA AS WALDEN -

SPRING AS WINTER - WHEN WILL THE SNOW COME TO STAY?

It feels today, as I'm lazily strolling through an English moor, as if beneath the hillside perch of an ancient manor house, like Wuthering Heights, or Bracebridge Hall….the gray sky with misty rain, makes this scene hauntingly similar to the countryside of old England…..not Muskoka, which should by now been in the icy grasp of early winter. I should be shivering here, in the open, sneaking my chin down into my upturned collar. Instead it is not even a necessity of apparel, to don cap and sweater, to stand here on the woodland slope, overlooking The Bog. Instead of snow, there is a wafting, eerie mist laying low over the dry cattails, silvering over the field grasses still wavering in the shallow wind of a Muskoka morning.

We have had snow on several occasions this winter season already, but the temperature has not been low enough to maintain it on the ground. Without the cold temperatures, over many days, there is little chance of forming ice down into the soil, which keeps the snow frozen on the ground when it does fall. Today instead of hearing the snow hitting the outstretched evergreen boughs, and settling on the mounds of folded-over lowland grasses, I can hear the myriad tiny cataracts, along the snaking course of the little creeks that cut side to side, and lengthways toward the lake. From even the highest part of the backside, you can not clearly see these crystalline water declines, with the matting of grasses, hilled-up over decades of growth and decline. It is quite a sensation, to stand here and listen to all the subtle but intrusive noise, from these water-courses, causing at times, the feeling the whole landscape is eroding into water, and that the hillside might soon erode away, and fall into the muddy water racing over the declines toward the lakeshore.

Some voyeurs here, might think it uncomfortable to stand out here today. It is not pleasant weather-wise, yet because there is no snow, and temperatures are well above zero, at a wintery time of year, this watcher in the woods, is rather pleased by the spectacle, of nature so barren and beautifully rough hewn. No flowers, no fanning fern leaves, no butterflies or hummingbirds. No leaves on the hardwoods, no mushrooms flourishing at the base of birches. Just a vista of perceived melancholy, which isn't really, but to the casual passerby, it is less captivating than if it had a canopy of December snow. Even now that a heavier rain has begun to fall over this bogland, and our home at Birch Hollow, it is still a most alluring landscape, haunted, spirited, and strikingly poetic to those of passion for the supernatural; the paranormal that seems to abound in the minds of creative thinkers, story writers and spinners. This is a paradise of contradictions, between what is naturally beautiful, and what is appealing to the eye…..so that the sentimental heart won't be disappointed by the blandness beyond.

I will take this remarkable sojourn, in celebration of what it doesn't have, but what it does so poignantly exude, as a topography, in a truly haunted place on earth. I'm helplessly drawn to it as a poet, an artist, and in its bleakness, is a powerful enlightenment to be fulfilled, the questing heart.

One can look at the stark and prone figures of the fallen pines, their branches still reaching upward with regret, and rotting old birches, that cast thin shadows, and feel this is a desolate place. If on the other hand, as the artist, you found these same grotesque shapes, honest portrayals of our natural existence….., might you paint them onto the boards, that may one day hang as a reminder, when this place too, has been paved over and developed, to meet the urban standard. Pity, we don't find this a glorious place now, in its modesty, between autumn and winter.