My Ontario - Ontario-tourism.net

40
MY ONTARIO • ontariotravel.net
THIS PAGE: Riding the surf along the Lake
Superior shore. RIGHT PAGE, TOP –
BOTTOM: Cooling off in Denison Falls;
Nightfall on Lake Superior.
When people talk of pursuing happiness, I think it’s moments like this they
are referring to.
Three days into a week-long solo trip, today was the most beautiful
so far. When I arrived here at Cascade Falls, the sun was just breaking
through the fog, illuminating the ragged shoreline like a misty mountain scene in a
Chinese watercolour.
I recognized the place immediately, even though it’s my first time here: those cedars
hanging over the cliff between the falls, the jagged grey-black rock, the pattern of the
whitewater veil. The base of the falls have dredged a deep pool out of the gravel beach
and I dove in with my wetsuit on, then stripped naked and dove again. I set up camp as the
only person I know with my own private waterfall and then built a makeshift Finnish sauna
with a rain tarp and driftwood.
People underestimate Ontario’s sea kayaking because we have no ‘sea’. When I moved
to the West Coast and started kayaking, I was surprised when my friend Dave, a passionate
kayaker and wilderness lover, told me that some of the best paddling anywhere was back
where I’d come from. The land was beautiful and wild, he said, and there were fewer people
and less boat traffic than on the ocean. So when I moved back home, I vowed to explore
Dave’s favourite place, Lake Superior’s northeast corner starting at Pukaskwa National Park
and finishing at Rock Island Lodge at Michipicoten Harbour.
In Aboriginal lore this lake is the ‘Ojibway Ocean.’ In textbooks it’s an inland sea with so
much fresh water – 10 per cent of the world’s supply – that it takes 191 years to recharge.
In reality no myths or mathematics can evoke the picture you get from the seat of a kayak.
You can look at a cobble beach and see the rock scrubbed clean by winter waves the
size of buildings, see driftwood logs deposited improbably high on the shore, and truly
understand the shipwreck songs and Ojibway legends of Misshepezhieu, the horned
serpent who whips up storms with a flick of his tail.
But the real secret is that in mid-summer the lake is typically calm. The warm weather lulls
long enough for novice kayakers to discover the sweeping beaches, the century-old lighthouse
at Otter Island, abandoned logging camps like Pukaskwa Depot, the towering cliffs of Point
Isacor, and the mystifying Pukaskwa Pits that reveal prehistoric human habitation.
And kayakers can camp at river-mouth cascades worthy of a movie set, like Denison Falls
on the Dog River, or here at Cascade Falls.
In fact it’s from a movie that I know this place. The famous canoeist, artist and filmmaker
Bill Mason immortalized this whole coast and shoots a long scene here in his feature film
Waterwalker. Years ago I got that movie for Christmas and watched it again and again,
dreaming it was me sitting on the beach. And now here I am.
At sunset I light a fire to celebrate, raising a toast of tea to simple pleasures and dreams
come true. I wonder for a moment if I had dreamed of being a millionaire, if I would have
accomplished that too. But I don’t think about it. I’m glad I chose this. MO
northofsuperior.org 1-800-265-3951
paddlingontario.com
ontariotravel.net/outdoor
ontariotravel.net • MY ONTARIO 41