Misty 9

Day 9

A nice thing happened at day’s end.  It was another day on the road, overcast but not raining and the usual wiggle butt came on after about the 6th hour sitting.  Around 4:30 we began to look for a spot for the night hoping to try our luck with a Provincial Park but got a bum steer of directions from a gas station attendant/mini mart clerk. Remember  when they could give directions and even give you a map?  So we had to backtrack a few miles.  No big deal but there is always that end of the road anxiety where one ponders where will we sleep tonight and will I have to back up 48’ of rig into a tree lined slot  only 15‘ wide in darkness between two $400,000.00 behemoths.

As the sun shot low amber rays we saw the signs of “Happyland Campgrounds and Marina.”  The name conjures up hundreds of yelling kids and the dreaded water slides. We turned off the road and immediately the road turned to packed dirt, crossed the railroad tracks next to an auto junkyard.  Here we go.  Again thoughts of wrong turns, was there really a sign there?  There are no other indications and this road goes on and on  5, 6 miles under high tension wire easements.  The road deteriorates to rough dirt and mud holes and the truck and trailer are jarring up and down separately.  Mile 7 and 8 goes by.  Did we stow  everything tight?  Where can we turn around and head back to the highway?  After the 8th mile the road drops down into a lakeside spot.  Lake Nepawassi.  There to the shores clung an old weathered wooden marina building with rusty boat trailers and a couple of yellow kayaks hung on the wall like giant bananas.

An old wooden gazebo sat on a bump of land over the water.  A large grassy slope for RVs rolled away from the lake but was empty save for two trailers, one with grass growing up through the undercarriage.  It looked as if it was closed for the winter except this was the height of the summer travel season.

A woman rose from the gazebo and came over to the truck and rested her arm on the open window sill commenting on the neatness of the airstream and asked if we wanted to stay the evening.  We were still a little shy about the directness of her approach and the emptiness of the campgrounds that we stammered we wanted to drive through and check it out first.  “Well its empty because they were late in installing our signs up on the roads, the Highway department that is,” she said.  I replied, “We were not prepared for the 8 miles of dirt road to get here and there were no location indications.” “Yes, well I am sorry,” she said with apologies in her eyes that caused me regret at the reproachful way I had chimed up.  We drove around and almost immediately came to our senses about the quiet and beauty of the place.  The lake shore was not more than 60’ away from the grassy bank where we pulled in facing outward for a front row seat of the lily edged waters. We stayed and Jo went to register while I set up.  8 miles in also meant no freeway noise as with all but one of the previous campsites.  As it turned out the woman running the site by herself had Hodgkin's disease thus the head bandana turned out to be courageous, kind and accessible.  That evening we dined on steaks and salads and of course appleton Estate rum and cokes.

Sometime in the early what should have been pre dawn a bright light enveloped the trailer and seeped in through the windows and around the edges of the shades and glass lite on the door.  It was such an even intensity.  As I propped myself up on an elbow and peeked out beneath a shade all I could see was a luminous mist with the sun an unseen source of light.  There was nothing else, no distance or depth perception, a mist out.  But not a damp fog like blanket.  It was soft and bright.  I opened the door and in the absolute stillness I thought I could hear the wet rustle of a lake bird shaking off his wings, perhaps the unseen loon from last nights serenade?

I stepped down and out into this soft whiteness and listened to the stillness, the utter silence.  There was only the subconscious synaptic hum from deep behind ones own brain coming alive and trying to process such an absence of stimuli.  Walking through the velvet caress I could not even see my feet despite the brightness.  Had it not been for the wet swish of grass beneath my soles I could have been walking inside a cloud above the earth.

Soon a diffuse globe of brighter light began to insinuate itself low to my direction of vision and I realized that the sun was on its way in the distance above the horizon of the lake, shooting a growing silver trail to my feet at the waters edge.  Its warmth slowly cut through the mist of the lake and like silken curtains of gauze the veils were dissipated by the slowest immutable degrees.  Drifts of sunflower rays touched first the dock whose end still disappeared in a one point perspective into the waters the same color as the mist, gently waving planks of wood suspended in infinity.  Then the stones on the opposite bank drifted in and out of sight.  All was so slowly released from the night’s hold  and revealed to its own rhythm that would not be rushed nor stopped.

So starts another morning in another country of the road.